Architecture News

Luca Battaglia's compelling photographic series, 'Ticket non remboursable,' invites viewers to reconsider the ordinary carousel through a lens of extended time and transformed perception. Utilizing long exposure techniques, Battaglia converts these beloved amusement rides into luminous, almost ghostly architectural structures, blurring the lines between movement and form, and probing the depths of childhood memory and transient experiences.

Artist Luca Battaglia Reimagines Carousels Through Long Exposure

In an evocative ongoing series titled 'Ticket non remboursable,' Italian photographer Luca Battaglia, influenced by his Milanese childhood and the phantom memory of a vanished carousel, embarks on a unique artistic journey. By employing long exposures ranging from 20 to 30 seconds, Battaglia photographs carousels as they spin in various public spaces and cityscapes across different cities. This technique dissolves the individual components – horses, decorative elements, and riders – into mesmerising streaks and bands of light, creating an otherworldly, architectural presence.

Battaglia's meticulous photographic process fundamentally alters the carousel's familiar appearance. Using neutral-density filters (ND256 or ND1000), he captures the continuous motion of the rotating structures. During these prolonged exposures, the carousel's movement is recorded as unbroken lines of light, causing its intricate details to gradually fade. The result is the emergence of glowing rings, vertical elements, and luminous volumes that evoke floating architectural forms or temporary urban installations. The artist suggests these images represent objects that have briefly touched down in the urban environment.

The series' title, 'Ticket non remboursable' (non-refundable ticket), adds a layer of poignant reflection. It symbolises the cyclical yet non-returnable journey of memory. Just as a carousel ride offers a journey that always loops back to its starting point without true progression, Battaglia's work revisits the profound image of his lost childhood carousel. While the specific carousel remains elusive, its essence reappears in the varied forms he encounters globally. The landscapes and contexts change, but the underlying memory persists, subtly echoed in each new structure.

Comprising over 50 photographs and continuously expanding, Battaglia's collection forms what he describes as an 'imaginary constellation.' This artistic galaxy connects diverse locations through the recurring motifs of carousels, light, and motion. By positioning his camera at a child's eye level, Battaglia imbues his long exposure photographs with a suspended sense of time. The attraction, stripped of its conventional appearance, is transformed into fleeting sensations fixed on paper, offering a visual memory that is often blurred, altered, and subtly unreal.

The inherent transience of a carousel – its temporary installation, operation, and eventual dismantling – contrasts sharply with photography's ability to immortalize moments. Yet, Battaglia's long exposures do not merely preserve the carousel's static form. Instead, the longer the camera records its rotation, the more its distinct features recede, deepening the connection to the intangible nature of memory. Battaglia does not seek to rebuild the carousel of his Milanese youth but embraces its absence, finding echoes in the unique colours, structures, and surroundings of carousels across the globe. These photographs become a testament to how movement can transform the familiar into something subtly altered and profoundly memorable.

In February 2000, during his fashion presentation in London, Hussein Chalayan meticulously arranged a domestic space on his runway. Four chairs, draped in grey covers, encircled a low coffee table, with a television positioned behind them. Before the models emerged, a family entered the scene, settling into this strangely familiar setting, evoking a sense of a private home momentarily transplanted into a theatrical venue. For the attendees, the furniture served as mere background, and its presence soon faded into the periphery as they anticipated the sartorial creations.

As the collection unfolded, subtle hints emerged regarding the true nature of the pieces. Some garments featured expanding pockets designed to accommodate objects from the room, while others showcased architectural seams that contoured the body with precision. Yet, the living room persisted as just that—a living room. Spectators observed the collection parading past it, oblivious that several of the pieces had been an integral part of the set design from the very beginning.

Towards the conclusion of the show, four models approached the chairs, commencing the removal of their grey coverings. These fabrics gracefully detached from the furniture, enveloping the models' forms as elegant dresses. Subsequently, the chairs themselves were cleverly collapsed and carried off the stage, akin to luggage. Chalayan later expressed that this particular sequence, where the models initially began disrobing the chairs, captivated him even more than the renowned coffee table metamorphosis that would ultimately become the show's most iconic moment. This climactic revelation compelled the audience to re-evaluate what they had perceived throughout the entire presentation. A chair cover transformed into attire, yet the more profound shift occurred within the minds of the observers. The set, it turned out, had been an intrinsic component of the collection all along, a fact intentionally concealed by Chalayan. For a fleeting few seconds, everyone in the audience was prompted to mentally retrace and reinterpret the room they believed they had understood.

'After Words' drew its conceptual roots from Chalayan's reflections on wartime displacement and his family's own history in Cyprus. His mother, as a teenager, was compelled to flee her home amidst the hostilities preceding the island's partition in 1974. Chalayan's contemplation centered on the urgent decisions necessitated by evacuation—the precious few minutes a person might have to choose what essentials to salvage. Within this collection, personal belongings seemed to dissolve into clothing, and furniture was endowed with a secondary purpose, designed around the imperative of escape. Viewed through this lens, the finale acquired an even deeper significance. A model approached the circular wooden coffee table, carefully detaching its central portion before stepping inside and raising it to her waist, transforming it into a rigid wooden skirt. She then departed, literally wearing a fragment of the room. By the show's end, the furniture had been entirely dismantled and carried away, leaving behind an empty living room, a powerful symbol of displacement and adaptation.

Chalayan consistently explored this motif of transformation throughout his body of work. In 'Before Minus Now,' presented just prior to 'After Words,' a fiberglass dress incorporated remote-controlled panels that unfolded across the wearer's body, reminiscent of aircraft components. Several years later, his 'One Hundred and Eleven' collection utilized hidden mechanisms to seamlessly transition garments through various historical silhouettes while models stood static on stage. Regardless of evolving technology, the recurring core concept was that the garment achieved its complete meaning through dynamic interaction and movement. While a static photograph might capture Chalayan's iconic table skirt, it inevitably misses the essence of the experience. The captivating strangeness of 'After Words' lay in witnessing one identity morph into another, and the subsequent realization that both existed simultaneously. Chalayan ingeniously orchestrated not only the garments themselves but also the audience's delayed comprehension. For a significant portion of the show, everyone believed they were simply observing a living room. Ultimately, every object within that room had metamorphosed into something portable, capable of being carried away by the body, profoundly challenging conventional notions of clothing, environment, and personal narrative.