Traces
Document, Documentation, Documentary
Leigha Dennis
Architecture operates at the tenuous exchange between material and immaterial systems. It has discernible material properties with physical presence and varying degrees of longevity, but it is increasingly defined by immaterial values that are fleeting and volatile. Today’s social media practices can undermine the physical value of a place by biasing the artifacts that document it. Distracted, our attentions are preoccupied by the production and consumption of online content, while we willingly exchange physical spaces for virtual ones.
The vast majority of online media is limited to a few channels, which impose constraints on diverging representations and strip away the necessity to interrogate the meaning of our environments and experiences. Critical documentary practices, on the other hand, can offer alternative representations beyond, and in opposition to, mass media. Although architectural structures may have permanent material qualities, they have impermanent meanings and value systems, which require renegotiation and redefinition. Documentary forms can help to actively produce new realities by constructing novel ways of thinking and observing the present society we operate in, while also identifying and claiming new territory to act upon.