G2 / SPIRITUAL MAZE / Aline DALAPA AMANA SURPRIS, Mary Alison MAUGUERET et Manon AIGRET

1 / Cartoon

Manon AIGRET

SOME DARK CORRIDORS 

life under buildings, darkness and rapidity

The Real US, DALAPA AMANA SURPRIS Aline 

Inspired by the movie of Brazil 1985, this drawing is a critique of society. In this story, Jaune is omnibulated by his success in society. This omnibulation we'll take him at his loss. He was caught by this terrible machine that transforms humans into robots without color, without life. Following their transformation, all of the robots are going to be attracted by this strange building made of different mirror, which is going to deform their face to create their real persons. 

Like the movie "Brazil", the society is all-powerful, it is a predator who is going to transform their victim by these slaves. And here the society takes differents forme like for example the money, the machine, and the building. It symbolizes his omnipresence.

Through my cartoon i wanted to criticise the political sphere through a building that shows how overly-complicated it is to do paperworks : this concept was presented in the film Brazil and it seemed really interesting to me.  

Description of the cartoon : 

The cartoon starts with a character (a middle-aged woman) in front of a town hall, everything is gray except for the character because she is the only element filled with emotions and humanity. She enters the building and ask the desk person for instruction, we do not see the later's face because she is inhumane, like a robot and gives very bold directions. The character is shown a large corridor with multiple rooms. Everything looks the same and the character gets lost and spends fifty minutes trying to find the right room. Unfortunately as she is about to get to it, a wall suddenly moves and  blocks her : she discovers a mechanism installed in the corridors allowing walls to move. 

She is stuck and goes on the her saviour : the internet to find the map of the town hall and another way to the room. When she finally gets to it, she discovers that the person supposed to help her is on lunch break and won't be back before another 5 hours. 

Explanation and references : 

The labyrinthic space represents how difficult bureaucracy can sometimes be  and how easy it is to get lost. The lack of sympathy of certain bureaucrats is also represented by the lack of face of the latter and also by the robotic way of talking.

The use of the internet is an allegory of how we sometime prefer to go on the internet to do our paper work.  It can also be compared to the thread that Arianne offered to Thesée in greek mythology. This thread helped Thesée to find the way out of the maze of the Minotaur. Here the internet is what helps the character to find her way through the building and thus the internet is what helps us to get through paperworks and bureaucracy. 

Drawings done while researching on the Minotaur's maze

 

Representation of the Minotaur's maze

Example of france's online visa website

3/ Video

First of all we watched Brasil , done in 1985. This movie criticizes politic and consumer society and it mentions others points which have inspired us : the absence of the natural light, the superficiality of the characters, the jerky scenes and the succession really fast of the different situations.

Spiritual maze is a spiritual walk through a maze buried in the dark, a discovering and exploration of our senses. Our aim was to awake the visitors, the passers-by in the city. We would like to shock and disrupt the minds.

We are in Verona, an Italian city which is famous for the beauty of his typical architecture.
Our architecture is a parenthesis in the city, somewhere where we loose balance, we realize that we loosed our humanity.
The facade is a noticeable envelope, geometric, jerky, frozen, a triangulation growing, which reflects with its mirrors the town and the users who comes nearer. This building contrasts with its environnement and provokes the curiosity of people, as all the objects that we can find today in this consumer society.
Inside, you will feel different. It’s dark, really dark. You have to go along long corridors in the darkness : the corridors have a big height under ceiling, to make you feel small, anxious and unsettled. The corridors sometimes narrow and sometimes large, sometimes quiet or noisy come one after another as a big maze.
You will leave this space different and alone, in front of yourself and your vision of the world. Maybe now will you think more by yourself ?

To arrive to this result, we merge our 3 ideas :
- the reality and appearances, and the notion of aesthetics

• -  the maze, and the sensation to be lost

• -  the dark corridor, a space outside the time and a space which makes you feel strange

  sensations, undergrounds

  We also had some references which nurture our concept :

• -  New Babylon, Constant Anton Nieuwenhuys, an utopian project about an artificial environment, labyrinthic spaces, disorientation and nomadism

• -  James Turell and his stranger colored spaces which blind you

• -  Tadao Ando and his curious church