Self-portraiture: on photography’s reflexive surface
(2016)
author(s): Elisavet Kalpaxi
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
This exposition deals with narcissism, narrativity, self-portraiture, and photography. It illustrates a practice-based research project instigated in 2007 that aims to decode and recover narcissism as a useful sense-making scenario or system. This approach can help make sense of photography and self-portraiture in the present, and can be employed in the development of visual strategies in photographic self-portraiture.
Here I present the practical work that was produced and the theory that influenced my practice: namely, the revaluation of the relationship between self-portraiture and narcissism, and ideas from the semiotics of photography and narrative theory. The three main sections of the exposition illustrate the chronological development of my work, and each section is divided into two parts.
The first part of each section presents the practical work, whereas the second part illustrates the theoretical aspect of this project, which stems from a wish to reflect on my own art practice and increase my understanding of self-portraiture, while also interrogating narrative codes and devices in photography, such as the double, mise en abyme, and mirroring structures, and their association with narcissism. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, semiotics, and narratology, I argue that narcissism in self-portraiture can simultaneously represent an imaginary withdrawal of the artist, a structure within the work, and a vehicle for narrativity. By eluding structured language systems, narcissism provides a vocabulary for narrativising procedures, as well as meeting the artist’s/viewer’s modes of engagement.
These ideas informed the practical component of the research project and provided the basis for a number of visual strategies employed in the development of the photographic self-portraits that are presented in the second part of each section. In these sections, I also explain the different strategies adopted in producing my images: the role of codes, narrative devices, layering, and reframing for understanding the density of an image and its inherent narcissism. In the process I propose that narcissism should receive a much more central role in the consideration of images and the way they communicate with a contemporary audience.
NTNU Live studio
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): trygve ohren, Steffen Wellinger
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
NTNU has a long tradition of students undertaking Live Projects. Many schools of architecture do. What sets our projects apart is that a big number are initiated, organised and managed by the students themselves. These initiatives are made possible with support from the university, and a focus on live aspects through the education. Already the first semester, architecture students at NTNU have to design and built a 1:1 timber construction.
NTNU’s Live Projects have varied from small traditionally crafted Norwegian boathouses, to larger scale community development based projects in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Students employ a context-based design approach whereby they have to work closely with local municipalities, professionals, grassroots organisations and other stakeholders. It’s this collaborative focus that truly allows the projects to take flight.
In recent years, students have shown a soaring interest in Live Projects, be they independent, part of self-initiated curricular course or a curricular course that focuses on building. This confronts NTNU with the challenge of responding to their enthusiasm in a way that acknowledges their contribution, but also generates academic returns. The institution must be able to be responsible for the students’ learning, well-being and the quality of the projects, yet at the same time, give them independence and entrust them with full social and professional responsibility.
NTNU Live Studio is a platform from which students find support and encouragement for Live Projects, from which they discover or learn, on their own terms, what architecture is, or does, and what becoming an architect is about.