"I do not deny that those ties of feeling oneself a citizen of a nation or similar macro-identifications are facing a great crisis within the development towards global societies that tend instead to consolidate group, neighborhood or territorial union feelings, so that globalisation somehow is also a way of locating oneself: maybe we are going through the first non-territorial civilization in which the place itself becomes more a product of our imagination than a geographical space and no longer, as in the past, relates the individual to his or her unique culture. "
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"In his new project, Alexander Honory wants to develop this theme as a large-scale "field project". His interest is consistently aimed at the tension created by the interweaving between the individual in particular and general social structures. Analogous with a natural science experiment, a few basic parameters are determined and working hypotheses are constructed. On four continents, in twelve cities respectively, the faces of 720 passers-by will be photographed in front of a neutral backdrop, and recorded on video for 10 seconds. This will be done in office containers situated in central locations in each of these cities. The images taken in every city will be documented in a publication and on videotape; they will be made available for research in the city archives.
The working hypotheses for this project are as follows:
1)When one has, as in the aforementioned quote from Hegel, to rely substantially on one's social surroundings for the construction of one's personality, is one able then to observe in the photographs of the faces of people in a certain place, something of the "relations" of that place and that time ?
2) How do I take in the faces, when I see them on thousands of photos one after the other, or as part of a continuous 24 hour-long videotape ? Is it possible to remember the individual faces in the series or, is all that is left a mixture of diffuse atmosphere-loaded images ?
3) When all the photos have been looked at, is it the common features of the faces in all the photos which prove important, or is this outweighed by the need to pick out distinguishing features ?" source
