The Golden Architecture of Pirot
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Perhaps Domus aurea was not the first image of a house on an ash covered by sanctified soil that initiated the idea of procedures for preserving from oblivion, but it launches layers of construction tools and projects of deletion, transformation, deconstruction, reconstruction, adaptation, interpolation, conservation. Architecture belongs to everyone. The language of the form, through symbols and signs of the public space which are landmarks of style and culture on the map of the city, determines its character, outcome points and directions of movement, memory and remembering, history and foundations, prominent façades of social projects, facade of family branches, stairs and balconies, poetics of arches and roof wreaths. Gold is placed here through the story of the end in the eternity, the sacralization of a profane residential or representative public object, the related religious and monumental plastics, which are there, they already exist, but life without them is equally possible, in the new face, through new metaphors? The oldest house in the town carries within itself an epitome of duration. Made of particular material, with a particular layout of the mass of a particular builder. A long period of degradation of an inherited home without protection, or protected space without adequate restoration, erases the sense of identity built by interchange, change, transfer, vow of a single matrix to which its particularity is owned. By using the photographic document and the recorded situation, the systems of transferring the analogue to the altered digital state and its further processing, applying paints by hand, cosmetics in the retouch technique, the autoironic canvas of the town is attacked by its weapons. With the iconic presentations of recognizable cultural monuments, just as a postcard, the author emphasizes their intangible value, reminds of the consecration, the rule of the protector's profession, demands and seeks the Golden House in the foundations of a new culture recognizable by the new pattern of memory erasure.
PhD Dragana Dragutinovic,
New Art Scene, Pirot, Serbia