You Have Become the Space: Cross-disciplinary Translation Between the Built and the Displayed

Abstract

The PhD research in Arts, You Have Become the Space: Cross-disciplinary Translation Between the Built and the Displayed, explores modernist architectural environments and their potential to foster strong communities. The project investigates how moving image practice can articulate the existential dimension of place that conventional architectural representation often overlooks. Building on literary translation theory, the research develops a methodology of cross-disciplinary translation and collaboration to bridge ‘the built’ and ‘the displayed’. Through this lens, the formal, sensorial, historical, and conceptual aspects of architecture are translated into six moving image works and their accompanying chapters, which make visible the layered relationships between camera, body, and space. This approach treats architecture not only as a physical structure but also as a metaphor for sociopolitical dynamics, where architecture embodies past ideologies embedded in design while communities animate it with contemporary values. The research comprises audiovisual works—The House Guard, Roosenberg, Double Exposure, Papagalo, What’s the Time?, EUR42, and Moi aussi, je regarde—and a written component developed through dialogue with seven professionals from the fields of translation, arts, architecture, and cinema: Tiiu Kokla, Anu Vahtra, Caroline Voet, Alicja Melzacka, Angelique Campens, Ivana Vaseva, and Julie Pfleiderer. This dialogue takes the form of a Q&A, a mode of inquiry most commonly associated with cinema, through which the project articulates its critical and artistic contribution.