Lauren Porter

Façade

Part of the series Vanishing Point.Sensory deprivation room, slight humming from the computer fan

“I was reading Juhani Pallasmas's The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, and he said something that stuck with me. "The very essence of the lived experience is moulded by hapticity and peripheral unfocused vision. Focused vision confronts us with the world, whereas peripheral vision envelopes us in the flesh of the world."Whether we know it or not, we absorb a lot of information each moment. It is only possible to focus on some things at a time. Production and progress are common causes of everyday stress, and becoming overwhelmed is not uncommon. While speeding through the never-ending list of tasks, more things blur into the background, but there is only an illusion of appearance and disappearance. Although we have forgotten memories and the past lives in the periphery, they form our conditions of being and inform our experiences in the world.What happens when intersections of labour and care are applied to different guidelines of progress and production? Towards self-care or maintenance of oneself. The labour previously directed toward the façades we built to get through the day restructures our memories and creates new perceptible contours of our periphery. Doubting parts of one's past is an added challenge, but it's a start knowing that reflection reaffirms that existence endures even below perception's limits.”