Dinner for 7: A Conversation With Five Obstructions

Kristi Dykema Cheramie and Jeff Carney

"a little gem we are now going to ruin"

- Lars Von Treir

As outsiders can we ever really know a place? As designers do we see the world as it is or is our vision hopelessly clouded by our own experiences, desires, fears, and objectives? ...Is this a bad thing?

This research methods and representation independent study will ask you to document a place using all media, and methods at your disposal. Working as a team you will document the Lower Bayou Lafourche. You will define the first documentation: the content, the mode of inquiry, the method. We ask only that your observations tell a story of the place. Choose a character, and environmental condition, a social need, a feature in time, something lost, something feared... You might approach the project as landscape architecture students but you might also approach it as outsiders, as men, as boaters, drivers, silently, with indifference, or as your home. The critical direction of your documentation is completely up to you.

Following this initial investigation, we will meet for dinner once every two weeks. Your critics will observe, question, critique, and debate your work. You will then be issued a series of obstruction to which you will need to respond, react, and remake your observations. As important as the initial making, your must navigate the design challenge embedded in the documentation of the first act.

This study is based on the film "The Five Obstruction," directed by Lars Von Trier

-Work to follow soon...!