175 Rome Churches (animation)
175 Rome Churches sequence – online version and documentation. Includes a list and interactive map of all the churches.
During a period of 11 months I walked and explored the city, visiting, documenting, and researching 175 churches from paleochristian to baroque. I was drawn to the inherent desire in classic church architecture – the focus, symmetry, and implied movement. Over time I found that I was making the same photograph in each space - aligning myself to the center axis, focusing on the apse of the church.
All churches are thinly present throughout the sequence. As the animation progresses each image becomes more opaque and then recedes into the mix.
An earlier version of the sequence, 129 Rome Churches, was presented 30 May 2012 at the American Academy in Rome during the School of Fine Arts Concert. It was shown as a visual complement to Lei Liang’s In Praise of Shadows (2005), a piece for solo flute.
Really cool telescoping of space into time, or maybe viceversa. I can’t hlelp but think of how Freud compared the unconscious to the palimpsestic layers of Rome, of traces upon traces, yet he felt that ultimately it was in impossible model, because you can’t have two things in one place, like the unconscious can do and Rome cannot. But maybe a similar effect is achieved here by taking certain spatial similarities spread across 175 churches and collapsing them through time.
Thank you Tom, for this wonderful surprise succinct analysis! Freud’s Rome palimpsest was large in our minds while there, and the layering continues to stew in our minds as we process our experience. You really got at the heart of what that project became for me. Any chance I could use a snippet on the project page? Thanks again, P
Sure thing on the snippet. Yep, there is much intertwining of Freud, spaces of Rome, and film for me, too. I did research back in the day (early 90s) at the Cineteca Nazionale, across the street from Cinecitta out in the ‘burbs. Nearby, some fragment of an ancient Roman edifice stood, and it would fire my imagination not only because of it being a ruin but I would come across it in movies made in the 30s when Mussolini self-servingly tried to revive the ancient glory. It was a bit like screening a fragment (of history) through another fragment (of film) through another fragment (both overlayed when I would walk out of the archive). I had to make a pilgrimage or two to San Pietro in Vincoli (I noticed you included it in the piece), to not only see Michelangelo’s Moses but connect it to Freud’s magnificent reading of it. And then all of the times I got lost wandering the streets and could only think of Freud illustrating the uncanny by getting lost in an Italian town and the sudden recognition he had returned to where he had begun. It’s a great wanderlust city…spatially and temporally, as you depict. Lucky you to live there and explore the city through media.
[...] and French Academy Resident Laurent Montaron is presenting TEATROROTATE, a film screening including 175 Rome Churches and The Syphilis of Sisyphus. Comment (RSS) [...]