Statement
Inspired by the neo-noir aesthetic of Alex Proyas’ sci-fi film Dark city, this project uses high contrast and low exposures to transform urban architectural spaces to appear futuristic and dystopian. My thinking here was greatly informed by French anthropologist Marc Augé and his theory of non-places — I approached the city through his lens of supermodernity, imagining urban spaces as sites of transience that hold us between two realities: present and future, physical and virtual. Dark city envisions a future city of both excess and empty space, with no origin, identity or history; a place shadowed by the thrall of cyberspace…
Ashini Nanayakkara is a Sri Lankan photographer, currently based in Naarm/Melbourne. Her research project Spatial Sense draws on the visual language of Constructivism to contemplate an urban future where physical and virtual worlds merge into a new dynamic and layered reality.