WAI Architecture Think Tank
The Meeting II, Collage No. 9 Wall Stalker
A call for narratives As a strategy to address neglected topics on urbanism, we have been working on a series of architectural narratives. The creation of these urban episodes allows us to discuss topics that are usually left out of any discussion. The first of the narrative series titled Wall Stalker uses Andrei Tarkovski’s film as inspiration and as a theoretical framework; the main protagonists and the film’s inherently grimy environment become part of our reflection on urbanism. The images of Wall Stalker show the journey of a three-man exodus out of a failed city in search of a mystical wall where they hope to find the essence of architecture. The animation contrasts the visually puzzling effect of urban abandonment with that of the ultimate form of hygienic architecture: a colourless, featureless wall. This monumentally silent element enhances the presence of all the neglected parts of the city from where the three characters came from. Like Haze , and Stalker , Wall Stalker activates urbanism’s inner convictions, making dirt a part of the aesthetic canon of the discipline responsible for thinking of our urban environment. To achieve this, images of desolation, neglect, dust and haze have to become part of our visual repertoire, both as provocations and as rhetorical pieces of intellectual dialogue. We must not strive to glorify or work to achieve dirt, but we should include it as a potential tour-de-force . Dirt must be part of urbanism’s lexicon; it must be discussed, analysed and represented. As with Wall Stalker , we propose a subversion of dirt and all that it represents. To achieve change, to make urbanism relevant again, we propose to make it part of our representations and the aim of our efforts.
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We call for a manifesto of Dirt.
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