Spatial City: An Architecture of Idealism

Spatial City: An Architecture of Idealism

First Exhibition of the Frac Collections in the United States – 2010

Institute of Visual Arts (Inova), Milwaukee, February 5 – April 18; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, May 23 – August 8; Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit, September 10 – December 26

http://www.frac-platform.com

Spatial City is an art exhibition inspired by the theoretical architecture of Yona Friedman. Friedman’s ideas, disseminated in the aftermath of World War II, have influenced subsequent generations. French thinkers and conceptual artists have responded to his designs as philosophical constructs worthy of exploration, explication and confrontation. While Yona Friedman’s “utopia réalisable” informed the framework of the show, the selection of artwork reflects the cycling and recycling of optimism and cynicism in postwar culture. Artists in the exhibition are responding to society’s complex problems: the failed utopian social experiments that resulted in the dehumanizing conditions of Brutalist architecture, the rise and fall of totalitarian states, the tensions resulting from post-colonial immigration, and the destruction of the environment in the name of progress.

Don’t Stare So Romantically*

* Bertolt Brecht, early banner for a theatre play: Glotzt nicht so romantisch!

Image: Eileen Gray’s E1027, France (Sarah Browne, 2009)

Unofficial Culture (Istanbul)

This visit to Istanbul coincided with the Istanbul Bienal and was funded through the European Commission project, Rhyzom, with partners Agency (UK), aaa (France), Public Works (UK), PS2 (Northern Ireland/Republic of Ireland). The field trip was to visit our Turkish partners, the Cultural Agencies project, curated by Nikolaus Hirsch, Philip Misselwitz and Oda Projesi:

The project fosters an intensive exchange between international students, artists, curators, architects, and Istanbul’s cultural institutions as well as local communities in order to mutually develop initiatives for the future of these peripheries.

An interdisciplinary project by artists, architects, and students on the topics of city planning and public space in Istanbul’s peripheries. An initiative of the Allianz Cultural Foundation in cooperation with the Platform Garanti & Garanti Gallery (Istanbul), the Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts (Istanbul), and the Städelschule (Frankfurt).

Tattered Outlaws of History

Dan Dubowitz & Fearghus O’Conchuir at Martello Tower, Skerries
Public art commission by Fingal County Council

The Martello tower at Skerries, all of the dozen on the Dublin coast in fact, are remarkable buildings: highly idiosyncratic now, and quickly anachronistic even when they were built first  in the nineteenth century.

The collaboration between Dubowitz and O’Conchuir – visual artist and dancer/ choreographer – over the last two years departed from this initial curiosity. The resultant work manifests in the Skerries tower as a 12 screen video installation, to be regarded from a single point of view on a platform built for visitors. Each screen shows a single slow panning shot from the canon position in each of the twelve towers, coolly surveying the remains of each tower’s interior architecture and the view beyond, from chic inhabitation to rugged folly. Ah, Portmarnock golf course, says a visitor at my shoulder.

Artificial Paradise

New work in the public realm by students of the National college of Art and Design:

Niamh Moriarty; Oonagh Comerford; Emily McFarland; Hilary O’Mahony; Siobhán Carroll.

The Artificial Paradise project tries to analyse how we approach each other and our surroundings in such a rapidly changing and evolving city-scape often in a whimsical and entertaining way.  Five third year NCAD students have made unique and engaging pieces of art reflecting their thoughts about this regeneration.  A wide range of research and experimentation has been undertaken by these students since the project began late in 2008.  The works presented include community interactions, sculptural performance, intervention and large-scale public constructions.

Artifical Paradise Website

Image: Niamh Moriarty

A Romantic Interlude*

 

A Romantic Interlude is the title given to a work that exists at different times as a structure, object, event and super 8mm film (all images here). This work is a response to my research into representations of the Leitrim landscape and emotional attachments to it, my own included. These representations, visual and textual, ranged from the Lovely Leitrim tourist board films of the 1980s to more current journalistic texts in papers such as The Irish Times. I’ve been particularly interested in recent migrations to the county: ‘Leitrim’ is a place, but becomes a kind of ideal when spoken about from afar. 

 

Fracture

 

After a good three weeks, the rainbow finally submitted to the heavy rain and winds of this uniquely cruel Irish ‘summer’ and fallen. The fall has also broken it.

I had thought to gather the team again (or another team) to carry out repairs – I welcomed the idea of the structure as something vulnerable that was in need of attention and care. However in the end I decided not to pursue this: aside from safety concerns, I was won over by a plea for ‘non revival and non permanence’. So the rainbow will most likely by rescued and removed… perhaps with something left in its place as a very, very modest monument.

 

A Gathering Place

 

Scotland’s contribution to the 11th architecture biennale in Venice is shown in these photos by Gareth Kennedy. Titled A Gathering Place, it’s just that. Located close to the train station it receives lots of non-biennale visitors, and through careful siting, it functions both as a lookout and a shelter spot where discussions are held. Despite the ‘stairs to nowhere’ effect, it struck me as a very optimistic structure… and I really enjoy seeing such elegant use of sterling board.

After the Party

 

At this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, Belgium commemorated the 100th anniversary of its pavilion by building a facade around it; the viewer entered this steel structure towards the rear and walked through the building before exiting at the front and viewing the original facade.

This worked neatly to exhibit the building itself, the interior filled with confetti. (The title and tone of the work, After the Party, was uncannily reminiscent of the tone of various relational art projects). Curator Moritz Kung had assigned the following brief:

Give the existing building, as part of its immediate surroundings, an architectural use and function that can be experience on a scale of 1:1 with regard to its location (a public park), status (cultural embassy), history (of the Giardini) and/or context (an international platform for architecture). 

 

This was one of the most conceptually and visually elegant projects I saw at the Biennale.

Pavilion website

 

Model Becomes Form

Above: Plan of rainbow with colour charts and notes for construction. Studio photograph, August 2008

Sunday August 24th: seven volunteers, two child helpers and two dogs gather on a deforested site in North Co. Leitrim to errect a wooden rainbow; a roadside hoarding that advertises nothing.

Where rainbows occur naturally and by chance, this event was planned and engineered in detail, and involved a good deal of physical work – drilling, sawing, hammering, lifting.

Part barn-raising, part folly, part idiosyncratic architecture, the rainbow is a sincere (if kitschy) expression of collective labour: huge thanks to Gordon, Craig, Bryonie, Anna, Ciara, Gareth, Peter, Ruth, Leander and Celia who made this possible.

The rainbow is built near Lurganboy, and is visible leaving Manorhamilton on the Kinlough Road. It will remain until the end of October – if it doesn’t collapse first.

 

 

This work is part of the New Sites, New Fields project at Leitrim Sculpture Centre that will open on October 4 2008. A super 8mm film has been shot to document the process of building the rainbow which will be screened later in 2008/9.