PEDER JANSSON: CHORA - PROJECT DESCRIPTION.


Introduction

Chora* is a continuing and expanding photo and text project on the theme of
architecture. The project was initiated in the spring, 2001 in connection with
the Nordic group exhibition ADAPTION at Rovaniemi Museum of Art, Finland,
and is since then running on indefinite time. The project consists of a text,
black-and-white slides and selected silver gelatin prints (Agfa Scala 24 x 36
slides and 40 x 30 cm prints). The text is the fixed basis of the project.
As the project is proceeding, the number of photographs will increase.
At present, they are 125 in number. So far, the photographs have been shot
in Rovaniemi, Copenhagen and Berlin. At each exhibition occasion, new work
will be produced to reflect the architectural environment in the city where
the exhibition takes place. Moreover, a specific selection of all the
photographs taken will be done at each exhibition occasion, this to maintain
an abundance of variation and present a unique exhibition at all times.


Replenishing the Void: Scale versus Spatiality

Architecture, as a fundamental principle is - as is well known - an immense
field that contains far more than man’s knowledge and equipment. The
mathematical and technical aspects of architecture often make it, perhaps
a bit undeservedly, to something formal and factual. In such a sense,
architecture easily becomes like a kind of impersonal storage design,
something that hardly relates to man’s needs and qualities. From a
humanistic angle of approach, one can regard architecture to be an
embracing craft, in which man spends his greater part in life and
perhaps also death. Judging from these two aspects, the foundation of
architecture might seem constructed in a somewhat paradoxical way,
which also is the case with its dependence on both a technical and an
emotional basis. Regarding these disparate policies, I put two relevant
questions with Chora: Is it possible to read and understand the intentions of
architecture (from its foundation) in the same way as one interprets
a language? Can one read the architecture’s various psychological
effects on man, intentional as well as unintentional, and what effect
they might have on the individual?
Chora is an attempt to find a kind of alphabet of architecture to work
with as if it was a basis of a silent written language. With an alphabet
of architecture, I do not only consider literal character inscriptions
and/or ornamental figures, but also geometrical and three-dimensional
indications of building units as well. There is most often a specific intention
present in architects’ interspatial relation to architecture. In nooks and
corners many disregarded messages are accommodated, such as deliberately
misleading factors and ‘trompe de l’œil’. In fact, it is both in the outer and
the inner space that the architecture is put into effect, and to understand
all its intentions more thoroughly than we do today, we have to heighten
our interest and attention round everything that regards architecture,
all the way from its history to every seemingly insignificant construction
detail.



* The title of the project, Chora, only refers to the architectonic and
optical implications of the term. The project has nothing to do with
the term’s digital aspect. Out the abundance of words etymologically related
to Chora, the two most important ones (in relation to this project) are the
Greek’s chora: place, property, territory and the French’s coré:
constructional error in mirrors and lenses.