Author: Shreeya LalitShrimali 

Cat Links 2022 Blog, Final Video Essay, Uncategorized

[Field-Homework 3] Housing Estate: Our Collective Home

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Video Essay Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99HTXXm3enY Title: Housing Estate: Our Collective Home ‘The unique privilege of architecture is not that it is guaranteeing a convenient void but that it is constructing an interior world.’ – Rudolf Arnheim Initial Theme The housing estate is a single form that brings together homes. It is meant to connect houses with magnificent stories and experiences. However, since the housing estate is born out of a human need for survivability it is treated as rigid, robotic and geometric. Making it an amalgamation of opposites which culminates into a complex ‘Hybrid city’. The main theme of this video

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Cat Links 2022 Blog, Fieldwork

[FIELDWORK] ROUGE, YI HUNG BROTHEL

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ROUGE, DIR. STANLEY KWAN (1988)            Yi Hung Brothel, Shek Tong Tsui, Hong Kong Stanley Kwan’s ‘Rouge’ (1988) is set in 1930s Shek Tong Tsui, a prevalent red light district at the time. The Yi Hung brothel is the centerpiece. 1 It follows the unrequited love story of a sex worker, Fleur, and a wealthy master, Chan Cheung-Pang. Chan’s family does not approve of their relationship so they commit suicide together to be reunited in the afterlife. However, when Fleur does not meet Chan in the afterlife, she returns to a modern 1987 Shek Tong Tsui

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Cat Links Lecture 2: Filming the Modern Asian City

Reading Response: Giuliano Bruno

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Alfred Hitchcock’s Bomb theory, an analogy for difference between surprise and suspense, comes to my mind while reading about the relevance of ‘real time’ vs ‘reel time’ in Andy Warhol’s ‘Empire’. Much like the ticking of a bomb, ‘empire’ builds suspense over the period of 8 hours however chooses not to surprise the audience as Warhol adapts a zero degree cinematic perspective. The transformation from daytime to night-time along with subtle changes in atmosphere show how the urban environment and architecture itself is the suspense of the rhythmic filmic experience. The mundane real and the fantastical cinema reflect onto each

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Cat Links Lecture 4: Urban Everyday Spaces as Narrative

Reading response: Nezar AlSayyad

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Even though all three movies are from 1954, 1993, and 1997 respectively they all still accurately depict how gaze, through the means of technology, may serve as a method for control and power. Moreover, they show how observing and fantasizing through a lens, window or CCTV cameras is not equivalent to real human interaction, desire and experience. In modern dystopian times, something similar to such ‘voyeurism vs flaneur’ theme is ‘celebrity culture’ in which fame is transformed to become the main product brands for ‘we’ the consumers. We observe celebrity lives through a lens and consume their representation in the

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