When thinking about deconstruction, the first thing that came to my mind was the idea of dividing an object or entity into its most basic elements and analyzing each of them separately. Usually these elements contain more information or meaning that first seen in the object as w whole; often these are contradictory to the way we see or understand the object.
However, there is more to deconstruction than that.
We are well aware of DECONSTRUCTIVISM - a movement in post-modern architecture dealing with fragmentation of surfaces of buildings. It started in the 80s and the key architects are:
Peter Eisenman
Daniel Libeskind
Frank Gehry
Bernard Tschumi
Rem Koolhaas
Zaha Hadid
Coop Himmelb(l)au
According to http://www.thefreedictionary.com/deconstruction, deconstruction is:
A philosophical movement and theory of literary criticism that questions traditional assumptions about certainty, identity, and truth; asserts that words can only refer to other words; and attempts to demonstrate how statements about any text subvert their own meanings
and
A technique of literary analysis that regards meaning as resulting from the differences between words rather than their reference to the things they stand for. Different meanings are discovered by taking apart the structure of the language used and exposing the assumption that words have a fixed reference point beyond themselves
The origins go back to Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), a French philosopher who developed the theory of deconstruction. The theory of deconstruction originally dealt with written language - text. It attempted to carefully analyze written texts to expose their paradoxes. It was also looking and trying to undermine any axioms (statements that are not proven, only assumed to be true), traditions etc.
In essence, what it says is not to take anything for granted, do not assume the truth of anything without proof. The tool for proving or undermining a statement would be a careful, rigorous, and in-depth analysis.
What is particularly interesting for me is how this can be related to film - and especially film for spatial design. A large part of my practice so far can be summarized by this theory and yet I feel there is still much more to it.
