WORK LINES

After spending almost two months in New York working, reading and over all thinking in what I am going to study [or at least try to] during the next two years, I think I can write it down. Next week I will return to Spain for a short time and I don't want to leave without saying it.

WORK LINES

1. PERFORMANCE IN ARCHITECTURE
or
From the use of action in architecture to the use of Internet as the new battlefield.

I am interested in how the architectural field have used the performance as a means of stating discourse. I would like to know who used this format and how it was developed. I am thinking in people such Vito Acconci, Ant Farm, Haus-Rucker-Co, and so forth. This line will force me to study what exactly means "performance" in architecture. Performance could be an experiment at the street, a self-made prototype or a video record of a lonely action in a laboratory.
I want to link that research to the use of internet as a new public space and how contemporary experimental architecture uses that space. The study of actions on the web.

2. THE EXHIBITION AS A MANIFESTO
This work lines is related to how the exhibition has been used as a way to show new ideas and to produce a direct communication within the society. I would study witch architects have used the exhibition as a way to show their projects. In that sense, I am interested in the exhibition as a rehearsal of experimental practices. The exhibition hall as a production space instead of an exhibition space. The idea is to connect this concepts to the curator figure. How an architect could become a curator, focusing its role in the idea of cultural producer. In conclusion, this work line aim is the reappraisal of the exhibition of architecture and the redefinition of the curator of architecture.

3. EDGE CHARACTERS BETWEEN ART AND ARCHITECTURE.
I am interested in architects who work in the field of art and artists who work over architecture. Or simply I am interested in the collision of this two different fields and the people who work on this subtle line.


Let's see what I can do.

Arthur Drexler

"There are different ways of discussing architecture," he explained. "There is the chore of the journalist, the task of the academic historian or critic; people expect different things." There were also multiple institutional prerogatives for a curator which "Transformations" "refuses to gratify": "The first is that father or mother will tell you what to do.: the missionary role" Second was the expectation that the museum will validate great achievement" by presenting only the best recent work. Third was the role of reappraisal, a role he believed more easily accomplished for work of 1920s than of the present. Distancing his position, he proclaimed: "The missionary role is expressly disavowed; the validating role is disavowed. The reappraisal role is not entirely disavowed. It does occur in the manner in which the material is presented, in the juxtapositions and the quality which do result in a reappraisal."

Arthur Drexler "Response",6.
In: Felicitty D.Scott Architecture or Techno-Utopia (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1980)

The death of Modern architecture

"Happily, we can date the death of modern architecture to a precise moment in time. Unlike the legal death of a person, witch is becoming a complex affair of brain waves versus heartbeats, Modern Architecture went out with a bang.
[...]
Modern Architecture died in St. Louis, Missouri on July 15,1972 at 3:32 p.m. [or thereabouts] when the infamous Pruitt-Igoe scheme, or rather several of its slab blocks, were given the coup de grâce by dynamite. Previously it had been vandalised mutilated and defeaced by its black inhabitants, and although millions of dollars were pumped back, trying to keep it alive [fixing the broken elevators, repairing smashed windows, repainting] it was finally put out of its misery. Boom, boom, boom."

From:
Charles A. Jencks "The language of Post-modern Architecture" (New York: Rizzoli,1977)

blu

BIG BAG BIG BOOM - the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Gil Heitor Cortesao

Born in Lisbon 1967. Lives and works in Lisbon.
Works on the representation of a lonesome, dirty and decrepit modern architecture.

2008 Atrás do Vulcao#1

2008 Atrás do Vulcao#2

2009 Atrás do Vulcao#3

2009 Atrás do Vulcao#4

Amir Zaki at Perry Rubenstein gallery

"Relics",  body of photographic "portraits" of elevated lifeguard towers taken along different beaches in Southern California. 
Zaki has digitally altered the images in order to remove any visible access leading to the tower platforms. This is a work that follows earlier artist's interest in architectural structures.

Richard Hughes at Anton Kern Gallery

From May 20 through July 3, 2010 Richard Hughes has a group of works related to architecture, memory and childhood at Anton Kern Gallery, 532 W 20th Street NY.

CUE art foundation exhibition

Last week I visited the CUE art Foundation gallerie with it's 2009 Grant Recipients.

I found interesting these two works:

Alison Williams

Glasshouse #3, 2010

Mixed media

$16400

Charlotte Meyer

Refusal (66 days and twenty years), 2010

Monofilament, silver, nylon

Neil Gall

En la galería David Nolan de Nueva York se está exponiendo la obra del artista escocés Neil Gall. Actualmente vive y trabaja en Londres.
La exposición se llama "The great constructor" y se trata de unas piezas en óleo y grafito sobre extrañas construcciones.

Jean Marie-Straub y Danielle Huillet

En el Culturas de esta semana [24-03-2010] de La Vanguardia aparece la pareja de cineastas Jean Marie-Straub y Danièle Huillet y en el artículo, escrito por Anna Petrus, se habla del interés que existe en sus películas de encontrar la forma cinemátográfica para la literatura, el teatro, la música o la pintura. Esto me lleva a pensar en la posibilidad de hacer algo parecido en la arquitectura. Cómo sería una arquitectura que fuera una versión de los cuadros de Matisse, o una arquitectura que fuera un homenaje a "El lobo estepario" de Hermann Hesse o bien una arquitectura que formase una serie de Stanley Kubrick.

Con esto no me refiero una translación directa de la estética sino más bien de un trabajo que se superpusiese a la obra de estos autores y la redefiniera. De algún modo buscar una cierta simbiosis entre lo mirado y el que mira. Una pieza donde la fuente de la que bebe se desdibuja a través de una nueva caligrafía, más allá de la simple adaptación.