“Ambiguity is the appearance of dialectic in images, the law of dialectic at a standstill. This standstill is utopia and the dialectical image … dream image” Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 1927-1940

September 2016
Phantasmagoria, non-place of desire explores the irreversible dynamic of time – and our attempts to find fixity. Where does linear time become episodic, to form our memories, our identity? How do the places we inhabit help to conjure our dreams? The Phantasmagoria of objects and experiences offered to us is generated by the market, but also from our own dreams and desires. Here we are haunted by ambiguity and the ghosts of our perfect selves. In a world increasingly made up of generic spaces? the departure lounge, the motorway, the shopping mall, even the gallery? we experience dislocation. In these “non-places”? of “circulation, consumption and communication”?[1], our desire is manipulated toward consumerism. However, here, we are also hyper-aware, open to emotion, from boredom to pathos, excitement to joy, melancholy to grief.

My work was exhibited as part of the Graduate Degree Show at Glasgow School of Art September 2016 where I received an MLitt Fine Art Practice (Distinction).

[1] Auge, Mark Non-Places introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity, (London: Verso 1992) pg 92

Photography by Alan McAteer Photography