In Antcipation: thesis

I once dreamt of the Middle Ages, but I am no longer dreaming of them. I thought I was escaping into them because sometimes reality makes less sense. Maybe in that escape, there was a sort of hope that something could be excavated from the past and reimagined for the future. In my head, we toiled in the humble fields, we carried hens and vegetables to the chapel praying for rain in the coming season and for plague to wash away.

This text is an attempt to understand the peculiar fascination with the Middle Ages and its connection to defence, beginning with my first encounter with it - the fortress. The fortress is not a desolate structure but one whose form continues to bleed into the present. 

I think at times I look for comfort and inspiration in the cracks of such impersonal architectural forms like the fortress. I think we try to imagine a way out, but sometimes all we can see is what came before - so we restore the pieces we know how to build with to satisfy our present, however imperfectly. Maybe I am no longer dreaming because I am already here; escape has become a necessary part of how we inhabit the world. The past floods into the present - reality and fantasy become confused. I no longer know what fantasy is doing here.

I stand inside the structure, learning every day how to leave it  (if I need to leave it)  how to lower the drawbridge, how to function under siege without becoming it, how to question what requires defending, how to rebuild after we surrender and collapse - how to begin again from the ruins, how to reuse and reinterpret its form, why it exists in the first place. 

I don’t think the goal is conquest or hunger for enemies. I think in the end, we continue to search for the same thing: for something that holds.

Thesis and poster designed by Cleo TSW