Manchester Street Photography Continued

Manchester Street Photography

After moving up to Manchester to study Fine Art, I have been documenting different areas and events of Manchester through my street photography. This series is a continuation from the previous, all images are captured on an Olympus OM40 using Fujifilm Superia 400 colour.

 

Requilibrium

Requilibrium - Development of Project

I understood that all belief systems have a complex structure with a variety of elements which help to aid a better understanding of the religion/cult. My first concern was to therefore clarify precisely what my beliefs were in a religious manifesto, this would also contain rituals and teachings of my religion.

The task of creating my own religious manifesto was far more difficult than I thought. It took me a while to fully understand my own beliefs as I have always been an agnostic and never strictly followed the teachings of one separate belief system. I grounded my beliefs on 'A Theory of Justice' by political philosopher John Rawls, the idea that equality and justice are key principles to making society and the world a better place. Simplifying his theory, he believed that equality could be used as a means to achieving justice. Although I agree with the majority Rawls theory of justice and  his other political theories, there are points he makes which I personally disagree with. I presented Equality and Justice as my two main principles. The name 'Requilibrium' was coined through research into Rawls' theory of Reflective Equilibrium, a method which followed his theory of justice, creating a balanced ethical view in individual thought processing.

Following the traits of a common cult I presented myself as the messiah of my religion/cult. This immediately contradicts the key principle of Equality if I create a sense of hierarchy within my religion/cult. I had no cosmic or supernatural powers as the messiah, I just stated I should be followed without question simply because I am the founder of Requilibrium and should be trusted loyally. I did this to get people questioning the validity of my own beliefs and the idea of placing all your belief and trust into a person without question. This absurd and rather arrogant status I had created for myself would also get people questioning their own beliefs.

In the later chapters of my religious manifesto I begin to contradict myself further with my explanation of the heirarchy, initiation test and rituals of Requilibrium. I don't want to delve into too much detail about what these are as they can be viewed on the Requilibrium website - http://lewistoumazou.wix.com/requilibrium  in more detail. I focused on making them as absurd and contradictory to my key principles as possible. They again followed the structure and stereotype of a cult. The reason I did this was to get people questioning the difference between a cult and a religion. Personally I believe cults are immediately demonized for their historical context by society, but mainly mainstream religions which feel threatened by their beliefs and rising power. I don't see any difference between a cult and a religion, they are both fundamentally based on belief systems which in their eyes try achieving good in the world and for their followers.      

   

Requilibrium

Requilibrium

http://lewistoumazou.wix.com/requilibrium

Requilibrium was a project completed two months ago looking at the idea of perceptions and judgments of ones beliefs through religions and cults. The Idea was for me to essentially create my own faith system and a religious philosophy based on my own beliefs influenced by 'A Theory of Justice' by political philosopher John Rawls. However, in this religion/cult, whilst I would preach about me own actual beliefs such as equality and justice, I would embed stereotypical cult elements and rules which explicitly contradicted the main two principles of my beliefs system. This was done in order to highlight a certain amount of ignorance and arrogance I discovered in all belief systems, ultimately realizing that all beliefs are flawed, regardless whether they are moderate or extremist.

I wanted to make sure people weren't actually aware that it was at first an art project. Therefore I created several layers to the artwork itself and how it was viewed. I firstly created a website (displayed above) which could gather responses but also inform people of what my religion/cult was about. I realized that if I wanted to gather an audience for the website I needed to promote my religion to the general public. This is when I added a performance layer to the artwork. I created business cards with the name of the website on them and began to preach about Requilibrium in Bournemouth Town Center  Admittedly I didn't receive a great response on the actual website, however the act of physically preaching stimulated varied interesting responses from the general public. The responses and the journey of the creation of Requilibrium was recorded for the intention of allowing the general public and online viewers to analyse my project for themselves.

I have drawn my own conclusions as to what these responses mean in terms of how we express our beliefs and the social restrictions and limitations to preaching your opinion and other issues explored through the project. So please take a look at the Requilibrium website in order to understand the religion/cult and the beliefs it is based on, but be aware that I do not fully believe in the teachings and rituals of my own religion/cult. I do believe in Equality and Justice as key to making the world a better place, nevertheless the ways in which I express how to achieve this is not something I actually condone. These were simply a way of forming contradictions (among other elements of Requilibrium) highlighting the arrogance of all beliefs and the fact that we must be tolerant of anyone's views and opinions, whether we disagree with them or not.  

More posts are to come, illustrating the development of the formation of Requilibrium in order to give you a better understanding of what the project was about.