The Concept
This project attempts to visualize the essence of the fictional city of Zemrude by Italo Calvino (Invisible Cities), based on personal experiences, feelings and point of view.
The city of Zemrude, fictional yet relatable, touches upon the notion of familiarity and routine, as people become accustomed to walking the same streets and encountering the same ill-humor each day. There is a sense of resignation and a loss of wonder as the beholder’s gaze gradually shifts downward. This downward shift signifies a detachment from the external world, a loss of curiosity and engagement with the city’s surface, and a deeper exploration of its hidden depths.
The project prompts it’s viewer to reflect on how their own perspectives and emotional states shape their understanding and experience of the world around them and encourages them to consider the layers of meaning and hidden aspects of the city they live in.
The city of Zemrude, fictional yet relatable, touches upon the notion of familiarity and routine, as people become accustomed to walking the same streets and encountering the same ill-humor each day. There is a sense of resignation and a loss of wonder as the beholder’s gaze gradually shifts downward. This downward shift signifies a detachment from the external world, a loss of curiosity and engagement with the city’s surface, and a deeper exploration of its hidden depths.
The project prompts it’s viewer to reflect on how their own perspectives and emotional states shape their understanding and experience of the world around them and encourages them to consider the layers of meaning and hidden aspects of the city they live in.
It is the mood of the beholder which gives the city of Zemrude its form. If you go by whistling, your nose a-tilt behind the whistle, you will know it from below: window sills, flapping curtains, fountains. If you walk around hanging your head, your nails dug into the palms of your hands, your gaze will be held on the ground, in the gutters, the manhole covers, the fish scales, wastepaper. You cannot say that one aspect of the city is truer than the other, but you hear of the upper Zemrude chiefly from those who remember it, as they sink into the lower Zemrude, following every day the same stretches of street and finding again each morning the ill-humour of the day before, encrusted at the foot of the walls. For everyone, sooner or later, the day comes when we bring our gaze down along the drainpipes and we can no longer detach it from the cobblestones. The reverse is not impossible, but it is more rare: and so we continue walking through Zemrude’s streets with eyes now digging into the cellars, the foundations, the wells. (Zemrude by Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities)
This body of work is a 90x230cm mixed media collage of political posters collected from the center of Athens, hand-stitched and glued on fabric and is our way to visualize the life and voice of the city we live in that ultimately affects us consciously and subconsciously.
The video contains original footage taken in the city of Athens as well as original soundtrack thanks to our very much appreciated collaboration with @dalmin_.
The zines include a modified narration of the original text, as well as a visual storytelling through collage.
