Conversations on Mineral Furnishings
August 28, 2010 | Giardini, Venice
August 28, 2010 | Giardini, Venice
Aranda\Lasch with Island Planning Corporation – Modern Primitives, 2010
Modern Primitives – by Aranda\Lasch with Island Planning Corporation and co-produced by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary – is a landscape installation with overscaled mineral furnishings dispersed loosely across the entry of the biennale and the Carlo Scarpa Sculpture Garden. Like rock piles, the space is built from small primitive pieces building up into larger clusters. On one level, these mineral furnishings are corollaries to larger kinds of occupation. Appearing like islands from the distance, they can be understood as a microcosm of landscape and architecture systems. Depending on how these islands are perceived, they seem to both fall apart and build back up, aggregating and eroding.
On another level, Modern Primitives is simply a way to furnish a space; these clusters can be sat on, leaned against, held in your arms. To animate this use, the space will be used to hold intimate events, a series of conversations during the vernissage of the Biennale. It is more of a cave than auditorium; informality is more important than composure.
On another level, Modern Primitives is simply a way to furnish a space; these clusters can be sat on, leaned against, held in your arms. To animate this use, the space will be used to hold intimate events, a series of conversations during the vernissage of the Biennale. It is more of a cave than auditorium; informality is more important than composure.
Conversations on Mineral Furnishings
Introduction by Ben Aranda
Dangerous Substances. Embracing science, art, and architecture
Moderated by Mark Wigley
Participants: Hernan Diaz Alonso, Olafur Eliasson, Chris Lasch and François Roche
The combination of scientific concerns, research methods and the analysis of evolutionary systems leads towards new architectural paradigms exploring the space between science, biology, art and architecture. R&Sie(n)'s thebuildingwhichneverdies is a lab/research center focusing on the physiological dark adaptation to reduce urban light pollution, the circadian human life cycles (melatonin effect) through the control of artificial light intensity, and the UV pathologies resulting from the weakness of Ozon layer. For this third aspect of research, the Lab is populated on its external surface with after-glowing components sensible to UV by Isobiot®ope pigments as a multitude of marker revealing the level of their dangerousness.
The artist Olafur Eliasson is an artist experimentator, an inquisitive explorer of the areas where disciplines and methodologies meet and are able to affect the viewer in his abilities to “seeing himself see”.
Hernan Diaz Alonso's instrument is to examine the moment of architecture's intermediality and to create liquid and/or organic forms through advanced computation. The exploration of scientific methodologies ultimately reverts to the non-prefect, the grotesque; to mutation.
Aranda\Lasch enjoy playing with blocks to make structures that are messy but not without order. Modern Primitives is described as a space but it is also a conglomerate of pieces that can "move, and come together to produce larger furnishing clusters. Then broken apart and reconfigured over and over again". (a\l) The fragmented, crystalline character is the inherent force balancing the work between function and fiction, reality and virtuality. Deleuze describes the multifaceted nature of crystalline forms as "a process and place of the 'exchange' that is enacted between the actual and the virtual" generating an amalgamated form of these two states "in its various stages toward infinity". To renounce the chronological and spatial linearity offers the possibility of investigating breaks and faults, montages and revisions.
Architecture on Display
Moderated by Maria Finders
Participants: Berger&Berger, Sam Chermayeff, Lars Müller and Daniela Zyman
Utopian ideas, architectural models, not yet realized prospects of the future, especially in the context of an international exhibition like the Venice Biennale, are made accessible to the audience through a transfer/a translation into the social and therewith the public space. The media to present these visions of the new and to bridge the initial design (of an architecture) and its three-dimensional realization is mostly a two-dimensional one. The manifestation in drawings, photographs, books, films and computer-generated models render the public display possible and at the same time transmit a supplementary representation between idea and realization.
The curating of architecture, its history of “displaying” has yet to undergo the investigations performed in the area of artistic research (“institutional critique” and post-conceptualism), but experiments such as the Serpentine Pavilions or TBA21’s Art Pavilion projects are new explorations in 3-dimensionality and thus allow for new forms of architectural thinking.
Continuing the search for alternative forms of architectural representation we also want to open the discussion to the cinematic perspective. Documentaries, film, video offer the tools to redefine the relationship between architectural design, the audience, time and space.
Berger&Berger's prefabricated movie theater Ça va is dedicated to the meeting of films and their audience. The project "focuses on the dissolving of an architectural object into a fictional system" implying the idea of existing architecture beyond the limitations of physical realization. Film for sure is one of such an (ir)reality where imagination and inspiration surpass the limitations of physics and offer the liberty to bring visions to life.
Occupying Sites
Moderated by Shumon Basar
Participants: Ben Aranda, Michael Meredith, Do-Ho Suh, Matthias Böttger and Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza
Redefining sites through architectural and sculptural interventions is exemplified and discussed through the practice of a new generation of architects and artists.
Atelier BOW WOW's "Architectural Behaviorology" is an attempt to transcribe "the discrepancy in between form and use [that] has been discovered and considered as one of the most imaginative paths for architectural creation". Following the architects manifesto "the observed range of 'Architectural Behavior' in and around a building is broad, varying from human behavior and physical phenomenon to building typology and effects on nature. We can make architecture more delightful and organic by compiling these distinct elements into a cognoscente synthesis. This is the method of 'Architectural Behaviorology'".
The tension between architecture, environment, social space and institutional space is provoked in many contemporary installations by using architecture as constitutive element. Do-Ho Suh’s fragile installations using fabric, lycra and silk to “recreate” spatial elements and fragments from his past are exploring a space possibly described as “elsewhere within here”. Cerith Wyn Evans interventions – mostly based on light fixtures and luminous sculptures – are aesthetic (autonomous), abstract, and relational (sometimes textural, or sign based).
Dangerous Substances. Embracing science, art, and architecture
Moderated by Mark Wigley
Participants: Hernan Diaz Alonso, Olafur Eliasson, Chris Lasch and François Roche
The combination of scientific concerns, research methods and the analysis of evolutionary systems leads towards new architectural paradigms exploring the space between science, biology, art and architecture. R&Sie(n)'s thebuildingwhichneverdies is a lab/research center focusing on the physiological dark adaptation to reduce urban light pollution, the circadian human life cycles (melatonin effect) through the control of artificial light intensity, and the UV pathologies resulting from the weakness of Ozon layer. For this third aspect of research, the Lab is populated on its external surface with after-glowing components sensible to UV by Isobiot®ope pigments as a multitude of marker revealing the level of their dangerousness.
The artist Olafur Eliasson is an artist experimentator, an inquisitive explorer of the areas where disciplines and methodologies meet and are able to affect the viewer in his abilities to “seeing himself see”.
Hernan Diaz Alonso's instrument is to examine the moment of architecture's intermediality and to create liquid and/or organic forms through advanced computation. The exploration of scientific methodologies ultimately reverts to the non-prefect, the grotesque; to mutation.
Aranda\Lasch enjoy playing with blocks to make structures that are messy but not without order. Modern Primitives is described as a space but it is also a conglomerate of pieces that can "move, and come together to produce larger furnishing clusters. Then broken apart and reconfigured over and over again". (a\l) The fragmented, crystalline character is the inherent force balancing the work between function and fiction, reality and virtuality. Deleuze describes the multifaceted nature of crystalline forms as "a process and place of the 'exchange' that is enacted between the actual and the virtual" generating an amalgamated form of these two states "in its various stages toward infinity". To renounce the chronological and spatial linearity offers the possibility of investigating breaks and faults, montages and revisions.
Architecture on Display
Moderated by Maria Finders
Participants: Berger&Berger, Sam Chermayeff, Lars Müller and Daniela Zyman
Utopian ideas, architectural models, not yet realized prospects of the future, especially in the context of an international exhibition like the Venice Biennale, are made accessible to the audience through a transfer/a translation into the social and therewith the public space. The media to present these visions of the new and to bridge the initial design (of an architecture) and its three-dimensional realization is mostly a two-dimensional one. The manifestation in drawings, photographs, books, films and computer-generated models render the public display possible and at the same time transmit a supplementary representation between idea and realization.
The curating of architecture, its history of “displaying” has yet to undergo the investigations performed in the area of artistic research (“institutional critique” and post-conceptualism), but experiments such as the Serpentine Pavilions or TBA21’s Art Pavilion projects are new explorations in 3-dimensionality and thus allow for new forms of architectural thinking.
Continuing the search for alternative forms of architectural representation we also want to open the discussion to the cinematic perspective. Documentaries, film, video offer the tools to redefine the relationship between architectural design, the audience, time and space.
Berger&Berger's prefabricated movie theater Ça va is dedicated to the meeting of films and their audience. The project "focuses on the dissolving of an architectural object into a fictional system" implying the idea of existing architecture beyond the limitations of physical realization. Film for sure is one of such an (ir)reality where imagination and inspiration surpass the limitations of physics and offer the liberty to bring visions to life.
Occupying Sites
Moderated by Shumon Basar
Participants: Ben Aranda, Michael Meredith, Do-Ho Suh, Matthias Böttger and Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza
Redefining sites through architectural and sculptural interventions is exemplified and discussed through the practice of a new generation of architects and artists.
Atelier BOW WOW's "Architectural Behaviorology" is an attempt to transcribe "the discrepancy in between form and use [that] has been discovered and considered as one of the most imaginative paths for architectural creation". Following the architects manifesto "the observed range of 'Architectural Behavior' in and around a building is broad, varying from human behavior and physical phenomenon to building typology and effects on nature. We can make architecture more delightful and organic by compiling these distinct elements into a cognoscente synthesis. This is the method of 'Architectural Behaviorology'".
The tension between architecture, environment, social space and institutional space is provoked in many contemporary installations by using architecture as constitutive element. Do-Ho Suh’s fragile installations using fabric, lycra and silk to “recreate” spatial elements and fragments from his past are exploring a space possibly described as “elsewhere within here”. Cerith Wyn Evans interventions – mostly based on light fixtures and luminous sculptures – are aesthetic (autonomous), abstract, and relational (sometimes textural, or sign based).