The City is a Creature

Alongside the Breathing City, I made a biology textbook page. The role of this is to explain the reasoning behind my model, and prompt viewers to question the biases they hold. This has been achieved with written rhetorical questions, and the juxtaposition of seeing a city discussed within a biological textbook - this is unexpected, setting viewers up to accept unexpected ideas, suspending disbelief.

The textbook is styled similarly to ones familiar to us. The graffiti allowed me to include ideas that would seem out of place in a biology textbook, such as comments about souls, or second guessing apparent facts. Just as importantly, the graffiti allows a more personal and human touch to be added, making the piece both more realistic and engaging - viewers are likely to relate more to the language and the people behind the graffiti. There's actually a few thing I forgot to include: there's a strong similarity between money and ATP (small units of stored energy in the body), or the similar functions of health services and the immune system - for example cities infected with Covid have behaved similarly to ill organisms, by slowing down and shutting down non essential activity.

Wanna see the Breathing City? Please visit https://vimeo.com/546088065

To see the textbook page, or photographs of the model, stay here and scroll down :)