«Petersburg, street walker’s handbook» – is the second exhibition of Eli Perelman, an Israeli who has been taking photoes of Saint Petersburg since 2005.
The city is seen as a text by the exposition creators. The exhibition is thought of as a handbook for studying this text.
The idea and literary edition is of Julia Patrakova.
Dear reader!
You are holding a book called «Petersburg, street walker’s handbook» in your hands. Everything seems to be clear about it at first sight. But please don’t be in a hurry, dear reader, it’s not as simple as that.
There are four big sections in the book. They will lead you through the way of a person who is getting to know a new text, Petersburg.
Since we are talking about the text, you will meet a lot of terms on the pages of this book. They refer to linguistics, a science about language. So, let us start our way!
Section one: Morphology (from Greek μορφή «form» + Greek λογία
"science") in a wider sense— science about forms and structure.
When the street walker comes to town he doesn't see the main point, he just sees the form. Houses render the form. The first stage of apprehension of a city text is combination of prefixes - balconies, suffixes - front doors and endings - roofs.
Section two: Syntax (Greek σύνταξις — composition).
Syntax makes part of Grammar and Semiotics and incudes issues of coherent speach structure and consists of two main parts:
o science of word combination,
o science of sentence The first stage is over and the speach is becoming coherent. Light and air of dashes, rhyme of commas and compoundness of reflections appear in it.
The third section: Lexics (from Greek λεξικός — «referring to the word», from Greek
λέξις — «word», «turn of speach») — is part of the language science which studies meanings of words. Lexics is the central part of the language which names, forms and imparts the knowledge about objects of reality.
It is just the right time to meditate about understanding the game of senses, to feel the poetics of street talk, to enter into a dialogue, to juggle with styles answering accidental street walkers' questions.
Section four: Semiotics, or semiology (Greek σημειωτική , from Ancient Greek σημεῖον — «sign, mark»), — a science exploring qualities of signs and signs' systems (of natural and artificial languages).
Information and emotion of Petersburg text become part of our heroe's life. There comes understanding of inner connections and the main point of what is going on. If only for a short time, the street walker is getting incorporated into the text. |
