Site&Sound is an event series that explores the relationship between architecture and film. Each session will feature curated clips and short films around a chosen theme, inviting discussion around particular elements of representation and the different techniques employed by filmmakers. Themes will examine a multitude of perspectives on architecture, as we explore a world through the lens of the built environment.
“What the hell, I don't know, but to me a home in the suburbs is a sort of isolated hell where nothing happens” - Jack Kerouac
The suburbs appear as a place of safety and order, often depicted with row upon row of identikit houses and manicured lawns. However, films understand that there is more beneath the surface, which is often weird, wonderful and a bit disturbing. You can argue that suburbs are built on exclusion, when anything outside the narrow bounds of acceptable becomes threatening and intolerable. Prejudices based on race, sexuality, class and even appearance lead to ideas that such nonconformity must be contained, denied or expelled.
The juxtaposition of banal and weird emerges from this tension, with the suburbs' visual perfection becoming a container for secrets. But perhaps it is the normality that is the true mask. To combat this, cinema creates outliers - such as Edward Scissorhands - to figure out what happens when their appearance challenges the landscape of artificial perfection, and the response is often swift and brutal. The Incredibles reverses it, as a superhero family performs mundane suburban life while harbouring extraordinary secrets, using the domestic space to cover for their radical difference.
This edition of Site&Sound will examine how the suburb's visual serenity sets the scene for what happens when people cannot (or will not) fit the mould.
Speakers include:
Rosie Dart
John Grindrod
Sofia Smith
