Rebecca Gregory, Emma McDowell and Eddie Blake (Class of 2012) designed and installed ‘Mirrors of Awareness’ at Cowcross Street, London EC1M 6DG as part of the 2012 London Festival of Architecture. The installation, carried out in collaboration with Metropolitan Workshop, started as the first line was drawn (22/06/12) and endured until the last line was removed (07/07/12).
‘We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things & ourselves… Soon after we can see, we are aware that we can also be seen. The eye of the other combines with our own eye to make it fully credible that we are part of the visible world’ (Taken from ‘Ways of Seeing’, by John Berger)
The authors say this about their project:
“One’s everyday life can cause their physical surroundings to be assumed and then invisible due to the repetitive nature of social practice. A proposal to transform 14-16 Cowcross Street aims to facilitate a moment of self-realisation for the many daily inhabitants of Farringdon; not by interrupting a social practice per se but by holding up a ‘mirror’. The architecture will be re-instated and used as a tool to reflect & comprehend our position in the urban environment.”
Rebecca Gregory, Eddie Blake & Emma McDowell are three young independent artists/ architects interested in exploring the individual’s interaction with the city. Inspired by Berger, their installation encouraged visual and physical connections in order to playfully animate social and spatial awareness in the city. In the installation, the art of perspective projection was utilised, the geometries of which become perfectly legible from one vantage point only. Move from this point, and the message distorted into abstract forms, dissolving the individual back into their everyday experience.
