Date of Submission

Spring 2022

Academic Program

Architecture

Project Advisor 1

Ivonne Santoyo-Orozco

Project Advisor 2

Olga Touloumi

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Domestic Mythologies delves into certain object details inside the Ameri-can home: the curtain, buttons, napkins, piles, the kitchen sink, and screens. Each essay hopes to reveal the way each object encourages certain ideological tendencies, and at their worst, ideological abuses. By investigating historical and contemporary promotions by way of their use in spaces, the effort aims at measuring our present alienation inside the space that is ready to, ideologically, burst at the seams: home.

In the style of Roland Barthes’ Mythologies, explores three aspects of each object. First, the ideological analysis on “the language of so-called mass culture” relating to contemporary home essentials. Second, an attempt to analyze their semiological mechanics as having a restricting influence on us. Third and lastly, their role in “home” as myth.

Roland Barthes defines a myth as [stolen] language, or, as a type of speech, a system of communication, a message. Therefore myth is not an object, a concept, or an idea, it is a mode of signification, a form attached to a thing through our own substance of understanding. A domestic mythology follows this provided logic:

“Thus every day and every-where, man is stopped by myths, referred by them to his motionless prototype which lives in his place, stifles him in the manner of a huge internal parasite and assigns to his activity the narrow limits within which he is allowed to suffer without upsetting the world.” Barthes, 155

After unraveling the details — I will conclude with an analysis of home as myth itself, home as collage, home as a reconciliation between reality and person; between things, their explanations and their clashing with our general know-how. The format will follow a bookmaking process of joining text essays with playful graphic design to emphasize the object’s relation and representation in space. The final product will be delivered to the office mailboxes of architectural board Ivonne Santoyo-Orozco, Ross Adams, and Olga Touloumi one week from today on May 11th 2022 and will be distributed throughout the Bard College campus’ public spaces. The publication is meant to act as a guerrilla house book, welcoming further mutation on how to think of home as containing arguably the most radical potential for great change.

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Open Access

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