Prelude
When we first set foot inside the building, we already had expectations. As the doors were unlocked, those expectations were immediately realised as team 18 moved directly to the main theatre and started a systematic photographic documentation of 73 Brudenell Road. Later, after much research and analysis, those expectations and ideas mutated and diverged, augmented by an underlying meaning that autonomously permeated through the visual work and research we had accumulated during this documentation period. This new perspective affected the perceptions of the group members with unanimous effect and it’s this new perspective that has shaped our collective work.
Layer 2
The interior of 73 Brudenell Rd is a cinema, that cinema is a space, and the perceptions of that space are where the focus of our now altered efforts lie. As you enter the Hyde Park Cinema, as we did, as analysts, with the view to looking for new ways to exploit and exhibit one of the last Edwardian picture houses surviving in the UK, we searched for new visual angles, looking for that something less obvious about this particular movie house that we could show in exhibition. Soon after, we began to see the divide between our perceptions of the smaller, less obvious artefacts that reside in the dark cracks of the architecture and the linear, pre-constructed visual path that the delivers regularly and readily to the paying consumer.
As a consumer or viewer, Hyde Park Cinema is a space you encounter as an immediate aesthetic. Clean and prepared for your consumption the viewer is instantly enveloped in everything they have exchanged money for, popcorn, posters of new and classic films, portraits of movie stars leading into restrooms, red carpets and rows and rows of unified seating, exuding to the viewer the air of everything they already know, want and expect from the experience of cinema.
So typically, Hyde Park Cinema represents to the analyst a whole space devoted to facilitating the preconceived need for the ‘traditional’ cinematic ephemera that creates a specific experience with authenticity and delivers it in a persistent, consistent and inoffensive way. And it’s authenticity is predominantly Characterised by Hyde Park’s long history and it’s transition from a contemporary, large establishment by 1900’s standards to it’s present place, standing out as a more fashionably appealing, small, art house theatre; in amongst the competition of huge, faceless multi-screen displays this picture house appears to both viewer and analyst to contain special validity of it’s cinema experience over most contemporary cinema’s which are created with much shorter term goals in mind.
As we consider it, a contemporary cinema is a disposable space, cleaned and refilled every few hours to accommodate hundreds of cinemagoers whose marks will be scrubbed and wiped away with the next set of patrons. A modern cinema is huge, often supporting over a thousand consumers at a time, having the capacity requirements of these buildings needing large ground space to use as foundation for temporary, prefabricated structures designed for functionality and profitability rather than comfort or beauty. Often, modern cinemas are placed and situated as the nexus of a retail park or shopping centre, and must seem to the consumer like a homely respite from the harsh whites of the shops and vendors surrounding it. But with it, modern cinema is a space in which the only memory, history for the viewer is of the media they have come to absorb.
In Hyde Park meanwhile, it would be easy to consider on the surface, it’s Edwardian visual composition as a hook or novelty to maintain its individuality and hold some niche appeal against technologically superior competitors. Certainly, from an architectural view, Hyde Park’s heritage could be viewed with contempt by a casual observer as even a cursory look around the building reveals the clumsy scars of modernity layered heavily on top of it’s old, classical frame. Security cameras and fire alarms now hang openly over long maintained murals and modern concessions contrast sharply with the organic carved forms occasionally tearing the viewers illusion of an authentic cinema experience.
But, as we found through documentation and research, the cracks lying underneath Hyde Park’s modern hybridisation reveal the sincere struggle of historical architecture begrudging its mutilation through modernisation and it is these conflicting interests of modern temporary space and preserved historical space which is the inspiration for the exhibit.
On one hand you have the first space or top layer, where you see cinema as temporary, consumer and what is normally considered to be cinema. And on the underside, you have a second layer, of history and memory, what has happened and what is happening. Meeting in the centre in an awkward clash unique to Hyde Park’s geography. As a listed building with a long celebrated history, the meaning of this second space today feels swamped inside of the Cinema’s modern role maintaining an illusion of authentic cinema. And the history of a building considered now as only cinema lost. So, our group wished to exhibit and explore specifically this second, historical space siphoning out the first space, dissolving all the overt marks normally associated with Cinema and concentrating on what is not seen or heard by the cinema viewer, but what is hidden and obscured.
When we first set foot inside the building, we already had expectations. As the doors were unlocked, those expectations were immediately realised as team 18 moved directly to the main theatre and started a systematic photographic documentation of 73 Brudenell Road. Later, after much research and analysis, those expectations and ideas mutated and diverged, augmented by an underlying meaning that autonomously permeated through the visual work and research we had accumulated during this documentation period. This new perspective affected the perceptions of the group members with unanimous effect and it’s this new perspective that has shaped our collective work.
Layer 2
The interior of 73 Brudenell Rd is a cinema, that cinema is a space, and the perceptions of that space are where the focus of our now altered efforts lie. As you enter the Hyde Park Cinema, as we did, as analysts, with the view to looking for new ways to exploit and exhibit one of the last Edwardian picture houses surviving in the UK, we searched for new visual angles, looking for that something less obvious about this particular movie house that we could show in exhibition. Soon after, we began to see the divide between our perceptions of the smaller, less obvious artefacts that reside in the dark cracks of the architecture and the linear, pre-constructed visual path that the delivers regularly and readily to the paying consumer.
As a consumer or viewer, Hyde Park Cinema is a space you encounter as an immediate aesthetic. Clean and prepared for your consumption the viewer is instantly enveloped in everything they have exchanged money for, popcorn, posters of new and classic films, portraits of movie stars leading into restrooms, red carpets and rows and rows of unified seating, exuding to the viewer the air of everything they already know, want and expect from the experience of cinema.
So typically, Hyde Park Cinema represents to the analyst a whole space devoted to facilitating the preconceived need for the ‘traditional’ cinematic ephemera that creates a specific experience with authenticity and delivers it in a persistent, consistent and inoffensive way. And it’s authenticity is predominantly Characterised by Hyde Park’s long history and it’s transition from a contemporary, large establishment by 1900’s standards to it’s present place, standing out as a more fashionably appealing, small, art house theatre; in amongst the competition of huge, faceless multi-screen displays this picture house appears to both viewer and analyst to contain special validity of it’s cinema experience over most contemporary cinema’s which are created with much shorter term goals in mind.
As we consider it, a contemporary cinema is a disposable space, cleaned and refilled every few hours to accommodate hundreds of cinemagoers whose marks will be scrubbed and wiped away with the next set of patrons. A modern cinema is huge, often supporting over a thousand consumers at a time, having the capacity requirements of these buildings needing large ground space to use as foundation for temporary, prefabricated structures designed for functionality and profitability rather than comfort or beauty. Often, modern cinemas are placed and situated as the nexus of a retail park or shopping centre, and must seem to the consumer like a homely respite from the harsh whites of the shops and vendors surrounding it. But with it, modern cinema is a space in which the only memory, history for the viewer is of the media they have come to absorb.
In Hyde Park meanwhile, it would be easy to consider on the surface, it’s Edwardian visual composition as a hook or novelty to maintain its individuality and hold some niche appeal against technologically superior competitors. Certainly, from an architectural view, Hyde Park’s heritage could be viewed with contempt by a casual observer as even a cursory look around the building reveals the clumsy scars of modernity layered heavily on top of it’s old, classical frame. Security cameras and fire alarms now hang openly over long maintained murals and modern concessions contrast sharply with the organic carved forms occasionally tearing the viewers illusion of an authentic cinema experience.
But, as we found through documentation and research, the cracks lying underneath Hyde Park’s modern hybridisation reveal the sincere struggle of historical architecture begrudging its mutilation through modernisation and it is these conflicting interests of modern temporary space and preserved historical space which is the inspiration for the exhibit.
On one hand you have the first space or top layer, where you see cinema as temporary, consumer and what is normally considered to be cinema. And on the underside, you have a second layer, of history and memory, what has happened and what is happening. Meeting in the centre in an awkward clash unique to Hyde Park’s geography. As a listed building with a long celebrated history, the meaning of this second space today feels swamped inside of the Cinema’s modern role maintaining an illusion of authentic cinema. And the history of a building considered now as only cinema lost. So, our group wished to exhibit and explore specifically this second, historical space siphoning out the first space, dissolving all the overt marks normally associated with Cinema and concentrating on what is not seen or heard by the cinema viewer, but what is hidden and obscured.
James Williams
Sorry it's a bit epic, I'll trim it down over the next couple of days
posted by Team 18 at 11:43 PM
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