Short Stories on a Long Theme
Already at the beginning of the 20th Century, sociologist
Georg Simmel proclaimed that one of the biggest problems in modern life flow came from the endeavour of individuals to maintain their own independence and individuality towards the powers of society. Today, a century later, we are still coping with the same issues. We are becoming increasingly anxious and, in an effort to explore the world and ourselves, also confused whether we belong somewhere whatsoever. The notion of a home takes on a new dimension.
People are no longer as close to one another, for we gave up thinking and living in terms of community in favour of our inner fulfilment. City life has transformed the former struggle with nature for survival into a conflict between ourselves, and what we fight for is also not anymore guaranteed by nature but by a man. We are trying to prove our irreplaceability; however, precisely because we all are striving for this, we are subliminally forced to suppress, gradually, our personality or we’re left with insecurities and doubts. Albeit perhaps possibly, it’s the price we all have to pay for individuality – or at least to attain it at a certain level.
Georg Simmel proclaimed that one of the biggest problems in modern life flow came from the endeavour of individuals to maintain their own independence and individuality towards the powers of society. Today, a century later, we are still coping with the same issues. We are becoming increasingly anxious and, in an effort to explore the world and ourselves, also confused whether we belong somewhere whatsoever. The notion of a home takes on a new dimension.
People are no longer as close to one another, for we gave up thinking and living in terms of community in favour of our inner fulfilment. City life has transformed the former struggle with nature for survival into a conflict between ourselves, and what we fight for is also not anymore guaranteed by nature but by a man. We are trying to prove our irreplaceability; however, precisely because we all are striving for this, we are subliminally forced to suppress, gradually, our personality or we’re left with insecurities and doubts. Albeit perhaps possibly, it’s the price we all have to pay for individuality – or at least to attain it at a certain level.
Short Stories on a Long Theme investigate topics of belonging and alienation within a bustling urban environment and therefrom ensuing feelings of dislocation and solitariness. The endeavour of an individual to recognize something known and finding a way how to belong to an unknown environment thanks to it, is accomplished in the constant physical presence of others, but yet it is continually overcome by a variety of dividing factors, such as colours, structures, shapes, shadows, movements, reflections. Precisely such barriers represent values or things that might have lost their meaning here; nonetheless, if understood through entirely academic depersonalized colour theory and colour harmonies, they can surprisingly still make sense.
The proximity of the fellow city inhabitants thus turns out to be, in the end, illusory: they are merely objects of the fragmentary city landscape, isolated artefacts always at the mercy of a permanently present stranger’s gaze.
The proximity of the fellow city inhabitants thus turns out to be, in the end, illusory: they are merely objects of the fragmentary city landscape, isolated artefacts always at the mercy of a permanently present stranger’s gaze.
︎ Part II
Press: C41 Magazine, Semi Magazine
