RKO Ruins & the Surreal Fragment: Dreams, Film, and Architecture
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Abstract
This thesis explores the primacy of dreams on our experience through the space of literature, film, and architecture. In contrast to the modern definition of “reality,” much of our waking experience is structured in the same way as dreams, as we stitch together fragments of memories we have to make meaning in the world and navigate our daily rituals. This is never reducible to a direct picture or a purely rational organization of time and space. In fact, as many philosophers suggest, looking at creations such as poetry, literature and film may show us how we actually see.
Inspired by the capacity of dreams and film to disrupt spatial temporal relations that are typically considered normal, this project brings to light the significance of dreams and imagination to waking experience. By restoring the abandon RKO Keith’s Theater in Queens, New York, into a contemporary space for surrealist art and film, I hope to answer the question: Can architecture, like film and dream, engage our memory and imagination to augment and enhance our notion of reality?