Architectural Association School of Architecture

yasmin keats

Through out the year my work has gone from looking at the universal to the more personal. In my work i explored the relationship between space and human action. The struggle for our society to wait or stay still, and have confronted different aspects of my identity through different projects.

From the quote 'space calls for action and before action the imagination is at work' - Gaston Bachelard.
I took five film stills from 'The Lady Killers'. first I studied the space by plan, and then I broke them down into empty and solid space. The bottom five images call for a conversation with the viewer to interpret their own 'action' inside that space.

An investigation of the tension between two bodies in space as the frame of space break down. I wanted to discover through the use of a stage set (The lady killer) what the minimum number of spatial clues would be required to stimulate the speculator to image how the body is choreographed through space.

In this photograph i expressing the feeling of choosing which path you want to go down in life, The pools of light amidst the darkness represent how different choices glow 'brighter' and 'clearer' pulling us down particular routes.

I am analysing my fascination with high heels. High heels are something i an not wear and this inaccessibility is what makes it so appealing to me. They are like a guilty pleasure of mine, i even (regrettably) dream about them. To show this my image has a sense of surrealism and fantasy.

Investigating an object that is inaccessible to me - almost a dissection to find out more about this alien object. Finally presenting it through a material (paper) which makes it unwearable.

Mapping out my obsession with high heels through out the projects.

I designed this dress as a way to centre myself / ground myself, Addressing my tendency to by quite dreamy and up in the clouds. The mechanism of the dress physically pulls the wearer back down to earth.

From film stills representing how the 'act' of making the dress, hooking myself to the box, and filling of the box with soil (to physically weigh you down to the ground) - was the 'grounding' part of the dress.

From the instruction to make a 'one minute movie' i played on the word one minute - looking at the people on the streets that ask for a 'minute of your time'. I was interested in the struggle of out society to 'stay still' or 'wait'. This is a film still from a video where I asked people to wait for one minute and to be still. However if was the 'lack of stillness' that i notices. During the filming i ignored them and saw how long i could push their patients till they asked when 'one minute' was over?

Here i experimented with restricting my movement with formation made of sacks of earth. This was the inspiration for an idea to design a dress to physically ground myself - using earth again.