http://www.k-w-y.org kwy Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:01:46 +0000 http://www.k-w-y.org en http://www.k-w-y.org/548217/Veil-of-Ignorance http://www.k-w-y.org/548217/Veil-of-Ignorance Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:01:46 +0000 kwy 548217 Previous&nbsp;/&nbsp;Next image&nbsp;(1 of 4)<img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/548217/Call for Future - Veil of ignorance 001.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/548217/Call for Future - Veil of ignorance 002.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/548217/Call for Future - Veil of ignorance 003.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/548217/Call for Future - Veil of ignorance 004.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> Ben Allen James Bae Jan Bünnig Ricardo Gomes Felix Meyer Anders Hellsten Nissen Veil of Ignorance The proposal is to hold a weekly discourse on the site of the now demolished Stadtschloß and Palast der Republik. The chosen site is heavily charged with history, having been the seat of the Brandenburg Electors, Prussian Kings, and German Emperors, as well as the site where the first German communist republic was declared in 1919. In contemporary history, it was the seat of the East German parliament between 1976 and 1989. The site is now a flat grass field and will remain as such for the foreseeable future since the planned rebuilding of the Stadtschloß has been postponed. Based on the Speakers Corner in London, and other such places of informal public forums found elsewhere globally, the idea of these ersatz sites is simple: speakers find a space and talk on a subject of their choice to an audience of whoever may be passing by. We will keep rules to a minimum; we propose no time limits. Cameras and recording equipment are a secondary concern; the raison d’être of these discussions is meant to be heard in its purest form, live and neither mediated, nor meant to be interpreted beyond the timing of the event. We propose to curate the first months of discussions – whilst always keeping the floor open. We envisage the direction of discussion to be anything from sociopolitical to philosophical, from debating basic rites to utopian aspirations, and the curatorship will lead it in this direction. It is –purposefully– an open-ended proposition. If a person or an entity has an idea within the merits of the project, we will actively encourage organisational partnerships. Our long-term goal is to create a programme of a self-perpetuating public forum, where people can express their convictions to an audience without the hassles of normative, bureaucratic planning. This is a discussion in the round, and en plein air: it will be free, and open to the public. Deriving from the quality of the thinkers we bring in, we see each speaker as a cell, splitting and leading to another. It is a growth cycle that will run its own course. On its basic premise, we are utilizing philosopher John Rawls theorem of the veil of ignorance from his classic study, Theory of Justice (1971). Rawls’ conjecture is simple: if a person from any class were to speak behind a shrouding veil without anyone knowing who she/he were, what would their true intentions be: would a person’s public speech be the same as their inward, and private thoughts? In our interpretation, as a twist to the veil of ignorance theory, we would suggest that speakers’ hold forum in a simple –if any– staging: the “veil” would be their unadulterated, commonplace position amongst other people in a public, casual setting. Instead of placing the speaker on a pedestal, and thus minimizing her/his place in the dialogue as an “expert”, this staging will induce a truer dialogue between the speaker and the audience, serving to question matters central to our proposal: the utopian vs the dystopic, the optimistic vs. the pessimistic. By reactivating this central location in the tourist heartland of Berlin, we hope to achieve a balance between Berlin-based speakers and thinkers from abroad. This space is currently a neutral one. By filling it with activity centring on global concerns, we can add to the experience of living in contemporary Berlin, as a central axis that represents multiple viewpoints of its citizens, both indigenous and naturalized. This programme is not about envisioning utopia, but about informing people about realities of experience that is not necessarily exposed in Berliners’ daily lives. We would like this to be seen as a way for Berliners to hear thinkers that are actively engaged in social criticism, but do not adhere specifically to a narrow focus of interpretation. Hence, our project will not only be about political discussions, but also about things that approximates the human conditions through peripheral means of expression. This could lead to programming that incorporates music or literary events. For example, one idea we are exploring is a staging of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, a play which emphasizes one man’s isolation from the human world. We believe it is important to investigate the nature of debate and question the status quo of existing democratic principals in the 21st century, and to discover if there is still room in a mature democracy such as Germany for open public discourse and heated discussion. Design We have considered a number of ways in which Schlossplatz park, our proposed site, could be organised and envisaged as the ideal physical manifestation of the forum. We want to create an environment that will inspire lively and inclusive discussion, and attract passersby to listen and participate. One design approach is ephemeral, utilising makeshift elements from simple, inexpensive materials or everyday objects which could be changed from week to week. The other approach would be more permanent and should be designed to remain on the site as a sculptural reminder of the activity that regularly takes place there. There are three main design strategies which may either be considered independently, in conjunction with one another, or as a sequential development realized fully over time. At present these ideas are still suggestions, but they give an indication of the routes we wish to explore if the project would move closer towards fruition. Line Perhaps the purest idea is to draw a simple line drawn on the ground, possibly a circle, which defines the speakers area. Each forum starts with a number of preselected speakers who give with their speeches, or partake in discussions. Subsequent invitees and audience members who wish to participate are then invited into this area in order to talk. The line also offers the easiest means by which to experiment with the spatial organisation – the space for talking could be defined as a semicircle, a horseshoe or as two halves- the line representing the symbolic division of opinions. Object We considered using a series of containers with different props to suit different types of forums, sizes of audience, and weather conditions. For example, this could be as simple as a shopping trolley (for use as a lectern), a few storage crates (for sitting / standing), and umbrellas (for rain / sun protection). We subsequently considered ways that a purpose-made container could serve a number of different functions, such as: chair, lectern, soapbox (plinth) or sculpture. If there were a number of these they could be jointed to form a larger plinth or a stepped seating area. The next development of this idea was to remove the functionality of the container and simply propose one or more objects which fulfil the functions of seat, lectern and plinth by a more sculptural means and which could even take on a different use if, for example, they were laid on there side or turned upside down. These objects or forms would both serve as an announcer of future forms and reminder of those past. Landscape In the longer term, we would like to investigate the construction of a permanent speakers plinth or more ambitiously, a series of stepped platforms (maybe a modular system) that could be used by talkers and audience members alike to discuss, debate, stand and/or sit on. The form of this “landscape” could be informed by the spatial “line” experiments described previously. These ideas would be the subject of later design studies. An initial idea was for a small informal circular or semicircular amphitheatre. In the end, we considered how the function of the forum might inform the long term urban design for the site and it's surroundings, reflecting on how it might be a unifying element for the park, which is currently divided into four quadrants, or the adjacent Schloßplatz site, or even the plinth of the Kainser Wilhelm Nationaldenkmal (and future Einheitsdenkmal). Regardless of all other considerations, this “monument” which we propose must in essence be a reflection on the necessity of the human form –living and thinking– on a place once devoid of categorical dissent. Previous / Next project http://www.k-w-y.org/548217/Veil-of-Ignorance http://www.k-w-y.org/342248/We-Pictured-You-Reading-This http://www.k-w-y.org/342248/We-Pictured-You-Reading-This Sun, 18 Apr 2010 00:56:22 +0000 kwy 342248 Previous&nbsp;/&nbsp;Next image&nbsp;(1 of 21)<img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/342248/f000 WPYRT 03.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/342248/f001 Matthew Brannon - Soap and Water (Grey-Red)- 2008.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/342248/f001 Matthew Brannon - Soap and Water (Red-Red)- 2008.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/342248/f002 Kerstin Bratsch WPYRT installation 12.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/342248/f003 Munro Galloway - Nirvana- 2006.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/342248/f003 Munro Galloway WPYRT installation 18.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="/media_temp/1/0/8813/342248/f004 Elín Hansdottir - Peripheral- 2007 BIG.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/342248/f005 Hilary Harnischfeger - The Road East- 2007.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/342248/f005 Hilary Harnischfeger WPYRT installation 23.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/342248/f006 Dana Hoey - THAW- Julia- 2006 BIG.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/342248/f007 James Howard WPYRT installation 03.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/342248/f008 David Kearns WPYRT installation 04.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/342248/f009 Alex Klein.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/342248/f011 Dushko Petrovich WPYRT installation 05.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/342248/f014 Corinna Schnitt - Von einer Welt- 2007 BIG.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/342248/f015 Jessica Slaven WPYRT installation 02.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/342248/f016 Dan Torop - After Failure with Bird- 2002.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/342248/f017 Amanda Trager WPYRT installation 06.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/342248/f017 Amanda Trager WPYRT installation 07.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/342248/f018 Roger White - Yellow Sun- 2009.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/342248/f020 WPYRT 09.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> Matthew Brannon Kerstin Brätsch Munro Galloway Elín Hansdóttir Hilary Harnischfeger Dana Hoey James Howard David Kearns Alex Klein Jessie LeBaron Dushko Petrovich Jon Pylypchuk Lara Schnitger and My Barbarian Corinna Schnitt Jessica Slaven Dan Torop Amanda Trager Roger White download pdf We Pictured You Reading This Organized by Paper Monument, curated by James Bae March - May 2010 Redux Contemporary Art Center, Charleston Matthew Brannon Soap and Water (Grey-Red), 2008 Letterpress print on paper, 24" x 30" Soap and Water (Red-Red), 2008 Letterpress print on paper, 24" x 30" The most worldly man I knew once attempted suicide, after a divorce. For weeks, he researched methods that would be the least taxing on others. He drank three bottles of brandy, tossed the keys to his bmw into the hedges, and placed a plastic bag over his head. His student found him the next morning, in his gray suit, quietly sleeping. There was a leak in the bag. In his obituary 27 years later, a colleague wrote that he never cared about his career, as far as I could tell. Kerstin Brätsch I spy, 2009 Artist’s books in bronzed box, 17" x 11" x 6" The basic principles of “stuff” since Lascaux have been: objectification, containability, conservability, registry, classification, and documentation - all concepts enabling the assignment of values to products. You’re in good shape as long as you package what you have. Munro Galloway Green River, 2006 Acrylic and oil on paper, 20" x 26" Nirvana, 2006 Acrylic and oil on paper, 20" x 26" Cold Roses, 2006 Acrylic and oil on paper, 20" x 26" A lost band, region, or state of mind. Buried in the foggy history of color, one group preceding another, more famous one, with harmony from a killer who egged on the inner-competitiveness of Ted Bundy. Elín Hansdóttir Peripheral, 2007 Halogen lights and colored gels, dimensions variable The all in one is the here, the you, and the there. Hilary Harnischfeger The Road East, 2007 Mixed media, 9" x 12" What tells you more about people than what they leave behind? The Byzantines laid tiles in coded mementos, painters made still-lives of a moment that never wanted to end. This is all about those things, plus a violence that completes. Dana Hoey THAW - Julia, 2006 Archival inkjet print, 20" x 16" A world of fugues—ash, freeze, thaw, flood, drought. With a befuddled gaze into kenoma, the subject makes her way into Civilization from the State of Nature: the only real reward of citizenship, as Hobbes observed, is the contractual right to sue one another at will. James Howard He Say Terrible Thing, 2010 Inkjet print, 24" x 36" The Option, 2010 Inkjet print, 36" x 24" The world is afflicted with billions of offers per day promising wealth, prosperity, reunion with lost loved ones, biological tumescence, and the enhancement of life experience through wire transactions. The Ice Age is introduced by the third-world wolves at your door. David Kearns D.P.’s Studio, 2010 Acrylic on paper, 30" x 22" Untitled 1-2-3, 2010 Acrylic on paper, 6 3/4" x 6 1/2", 9" x 7", 11 1/2" x 9" A writer recently said during an otherwise unexceptional reading in West Hollywood that an arsonist “paints” a religious experience - like Fra Angelico - when he sets the mountains on fire. But nothing in his paintings or his write-up in the Lives of the Artists have lead me to believe that the Dominican actually destroyed property, for divine gain, in a beatific reverie. Alex Klein Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, 2008 C-print, 22" x 26" We are inhabiting a refractory period that began with the last performance of Throbbing Gristle on May 29, 1981, at the Kezar Stadium in San Francisco, California. All the misprisions of the world are clarified in one gaze, granting everything. Jessie LeBaron Orchard, 2004 Oil on board, 12" x 12" The coastline of the New World: Air hanging from upper atmosphere Crops rushing forth from the deep A babe rushing forth from the womb. Dushko Petrovich Father Tongue, 2010 Oil on canvas, 11" x 14" It’s a memory, or mythopoeia. Early ancestors, pre-salvation men and their entourages, crossed landbridges in the arctic ice, scraping out life, and then eating it. The jaw that made fat less obstinate to the palate, the gnashing teeth that left tissue more pliant. Jon Pylypchuk Vietnam Vet, 2009 Mixed media, 24" x 24" x 8" This one makes me feel like 1) crying and 2) quitting my job. Brother, can you spare? “Vintage” means the availability of tourist visas to places your nation had once criminally bombed. Lara Schnitger and My Barbarian The Only One, 2010 Digital video Like some fearless voyeur, the work observes the contours of our inner prudes or deviants - whether our resident Emily Dickinson or the arched-brow piece of shit in all of us. Corinna Schnitt Von einer Welt, 2007 35mm film on DVD “Tape: …The way they went down, sighing, before the stem! (Pause.) I lay down across her with my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side to side. Pause. Krapp’s lips move. No sound Past midnight. Never knew such silence. The earth might be uninhabited.” Jessica Slaven Bernhard 2, 2009 Watercolor on paper, 16" x 12" German tourism to Egypt doubled in the 1950s. Beyond the glamour, travelers noted the prevalence of poverty, rabid dogs, indigestible street food, pickpockets, and an overwhelming civic stench. Decades later, Kentucky Fried Chicken is available ten minutes from Cheops. Dan Torop After Failure with Bird, 2002 C-print, 20" x 16" The self’s continuity with nature, in acts of transport and momentary digressions, captured in the frame as if by a chance witness. Amanda Trager My Failing Father, 2002 Mixed media, 28" x 48" x 10 ½" She found her husband —a straitlaced, bone-straight, banker husband—at the local Maypole of the liberally well-to-do: a farmers market. Their’s was a world, I imagined, where shrimp were gamberetti and cars decidedly anti-Semitic. Now divorced, she had moved back to Los Angeles to be near her family with a child ready to enter kindergarten, the alimony check covering what would be $7,000 a quarter for a five-year old. “You know… we had it pretty well. And then he just kind of fucked it all up.” Roger White Green Sun, 2010 Acrylic on paper, 22" x 15" Red Sun, 2010 Acrylic on paper, 21" x 14 1/2" The promise of agency means reconciling what we think and feel to what we intend to say. Physics reminds us color isn’t material, but eidetic property. In March, with a horizon before six, a palaver between green skies and purple flares: wake up see the sun/what’s done is done Previous / Next project http://www.k-w-y.org/342248/We-Pictured-You-Reading-This http://www.k-w-y.org/344221/now http://www.k-w-y.org/344221/now Mon, 05 Apr 2010 17:24:01 +0000 kwy 344221 <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/344221/anders hellsten nissen brandenburg flyer1 800px.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/344221/felix meyer para_o_297 800px.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/344221/jan buennig fountain of youth 800px.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="502" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/344221/labelle_8234_label_cover 800px_8.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/344221/jan buennig fountain of youth.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/344221/jan buennig der fall der form.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/344221/jan buennig fireside.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/344221/jan buennig mother father child.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/344221/Pages from English Department Newsletter 2005.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="867" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/344221/office.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="511" align="left" /> http://www.k-w-y.org/344221/now http://www.k-w-y.org/298356/Teaser http://www.k-w-y.org/298356/Teaser Mon, 29 Mar 2010 23:36:37 +0000 kwy 298356 Previous&nbsp;/&nbsp;Next image&nbsp;(1 of 10)<img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/298356/images with titles7.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/298356/images with titles3.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/298356/images with titles6.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/298356/images with titles.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/298356/images with titles2.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/298356/images with titles8.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/298356/images with titles5.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/298356/images with titles4.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/298356/images with titles9.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/298356/images with titles 0B.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> Jan Bünnig Teaser December 2009 - March 2010 Akira Ikeda Gallery, Berlin Jan Bünnig‘s first gallery retrospective in his native Berlin, Teaser comprises works produced by the artist between 2006 and 2009. The title of the show alludes to a much larger body of work produced over this period, much of it being performative works shown in the public domain in group actions instigated by the artist himself. The titles of the works are purposely incidental and offer no easy path to the consumption of the ideas therein embodied. In order to understand the works, a sensory perception of forms - be they hard, soft, rough, smooth, broken, dented or polished - must be stimulated in order to gain a deeper sense of the order of the world in which these objects exist. Upon first entry into the space, the viewer encounters Spent time with Olafur (2007), a sculpture consisting of a Siberian birch hat placed upon a simple steel geometric frame, the latter a product of Bünnig’s time spent working in the studio of Olafur Eliasson. The accompanying text reads “Wo ein Körper ist kann kein anderer sein”, an axiom of classical physics stating the impossibility for two bodies to exist at the same point in space simultaneously. It expounds on origination of mechanics that can’t fully be made clear. Bünnig describes this work as a reflection on the conflicts he faces as a young artist: the aesthetic moment as clouded in such Heisenbergian uncertainty. Although this work visually stands apart from his others it nevertheless embodies some of the main themes implicit in Bünnig's art. The representation of an intentionally non-symbiotic relationship between nature and science belies an ongoing struggle to rectify matter - or nature - with its interpretation by scientific means. The concept of the body or a body is central to the understanding of this, the works Leg (2006) and Kuh Muschi (2007) emboyding this specific interest: the impact of one body in concert with another. The resultant object appears frozen, its impacted form a visible memory of the passed event. Typically these are not violent occurrences but more often serene collisions, such as a soft clay object falling on a concrete floor or in the case of Four Flames (2007), the crystalline emergence of four concrete pillars. A number of these pieces, by nature of their formation, contain voids within. These mysterious hollows are celebrated and displayed in a manner which gives sense of their form taking shape through the discourse of their physics which preternaturally dictates them: aesthetic by due natural order. The theme of science versus nature is revisited in the work Untitled (2008) in which a root, found growing on the street and contorted between two cobble stones, is displayed as a diagram with directional arrows pointing to the forces which once impacted upon it. Upon this theme of neutered forces, the work Skipping Rope (2005), Bünnig presents a length of chain too short to be used for the titular game, the ends of which are cast into two resin handles in static repose. Like many of his works the scale is perplexing as is the use of a material usually cast to fulfill a specific function or rational application, challenging normative idea of what these, at times humorous objects, might actually represent. The work Tiger Snake (2007) takes Bünnig's tropes with malleable materials in an alternate direction, in this case with the use of polyurethane foam, cast in the form of a dozen sausages. The visibility of the indentations made by the plastic sausage skins on the surface reveals another of Bünnig’s preoccupation, with mass produced inexpensive materials, many of which are commonly found in domestic environments. It is another duck-rabbit, or duck-rabbit sausage, proposition. The sausages are displayed on a thin white wrapping paper – a statement of packaging, subtly inferred, that this piece as the rest of the show itself, are matters fit for consumption. Previous / Next project http://www.k-w-y.org/298356/Teaser http://www.k-w-y.org/227462/Sutton-Scarsdale-Hall http://www.k-w-y.org/227462/Sutton-Scarsdale-Hall Sun, 17 Jan 2010 21:42:19 +0000 kwy 227462 Previous&nbsp;/&nbsp;Next image&nbsp;(1 of 28)<img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH rev a.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH2_1.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH3_1.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH4_1.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH5_1.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH6_1.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH7_1.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH8_1.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH9_1.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH10_1.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH11.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH12.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH13.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH14.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH15.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH16.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH17.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH18.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH19.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH20.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH21.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH22.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH23.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH24.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH25.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH26.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH27.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/227462/SSH28.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> Ben Allen James Bae Jan Bünnig Ricardo Gomes Jeff Schwartz Daniel Valente download pdf Sutton Scarsdale Hall The pavilion of postcontemporary curating January 2010 If the Sun and Moon Should Doubt/They’d immediately go out William Blake This proposal will be based around three successive phases of projects: infrastructural / experimental / intervention. The ethic in which we approached our proposal was this: conversations, dialogues, and exchanges of chats. It is most of all, a narrative. The following texts highlighted in italics were our discussion notes, and gives a personal definition and a peripheral view of how we came to our decisions. We view these, in some ways, as notes towards future curatorial possibilities. The beauty of the Sutton Scardsale Hall ruins lies uniquely in the present stasis it finds itself, as it weathers in irony: a destitute place of some former, middling significance. It speaks as a flume to the past – even, if so, a vaguely provincial one. Architecture has a way of keeping itself pertinent by the advantage of time. If not successful in its own era, given enough years for immediate critics to die, thoughts, manners, and social mores are wont to be seen with a nostalgic light, through the comforting opacity of recollection. History is partly propelled by such allegiances to the romanticism; and romanticism to ruined architecture seems to be under a predominant stewardship of the British spirit. Chaucer spoke of the Romans in Canterbury; Hardy snuffed a number of his characters in old manors and land sites; the Poets wrote of figures that erected monuments to their undying (and long dead) selves. The aristocratic heritage of Scarsdale Hall falls under the category of such things to be honoured for maintaining partial verticality. In a sense, the ruins are a perfect staging ground for a contemporary discourse for it not being a particularly well-known heritage site. Its history resides in written tracts of passing deeds and changing of estates, though not much more than that. Most buildings that have lasted centuries aren’t necessarily great: in such light, most things that are still standing and not demolished are recipients, in some way, of a lifetime achievement award. Utilizing the Sutton ruins as a venue for artistic programmes will give it a meaningful rebirth. We see there are two important elements to any proposal for the reinvention of Sutton. First is to maintain the history of the Hall for its structural appearance in its current state, particularly the façade of the manor. It is our preference to keep the design of the Hall essentially en plein air, and in effect, highlight this remarkable attribute to a certain extent. The second is to approach the ruins as a reoccupation of the interior spaces, with a fully detailed programme of actions. Instead of restrained insertions we plan to make a series of more significant interventions following a period of investigation by means of a number of “projects” working with others to understand better how the spaces can be occupied, utilised, and how visitors interact with these approaches. Most of all, the design will be open-ended as to its purpose and its meaning. Not one thing we propose is dictating permanence per se, but are meant to be added to, reduced from, and ultimately collected as an ongoing narrative in the collective history of the Hall, through differing means of cultural engagement and dissemination. BA: I also thought about the idea of narrative. As in seeing our use of these structures as something on-going. Continuous re-use. It is also striking that this particular structure is actually a false ruin in some ways. Although it is more than a couple of centuries old is was made into a ruin in a very purposeful way - and then even restored as a ruin. We are continuing this purposeful narrative - by making a series of stories each somehow (possibly indirectly referencing one another). I was thinking and talking with Ricardo of a series of proposals each becoming more concrete and permanent - that could each relate to one of these themes that we are discussing - but together tell a very invented continuation of the storey of the building. DV: By being able to consider all of the ruined spaces as a whole we can create a better harmony between exterior and interior. In doing this we risk loosing an understanding of the original architecture - but by carrying out these alterations purely on, say the floor and at high level and the occasional obvious realignment of an interior opening, we are also open about the game that is being played - and adding an additional layer to the fabric itself (as opposed to making architectural interventions that can be removed). We could see it as an all or nothing approach. First we experiment with the spaces with temporary devises and then we intervene in a more permanent manner. By making the interventions public projects it is a very open dialogue - intended to challenge people and also be informed by how people use the spaces during the course of the several projects. RG: Other interesting themes to consider in this vein is the consideration of older structures as actually more dynamic spaces than those that are of, say, our generation - historically speaking. It is also interesting to consider what is the difference, if any, between a ruin which is 300 years old and a warehouse which is 40 years old? Is it the lack of obvious purpose that draws us to these structures - the tactility of the materials, the proportion and scale, the dilapidation or the connection to the past. On the last note I wonder if it can be slightly schizophrenic. Perhaps for some an existence surrounded by old buildings enables a sheltering from the present. I find that it may allow a more open embrace of the future. It is perhaps no coincidence that many films that consider the future do so from a (usually dilapidated) historical setting. DV: I wonder if the success of these projects will lie not only in the investigation of what activities will be best suited to this building, and indeed the spaces themselves, but in a deeper understanding of what exactly is the attraction of historical buildings to us and in particular what is the attraction of this building. I think that the wider question goes far beyond the nostalgia of the past to which these buildings act as wormholes. The exploration of this theme could perhaps be a curatorial driving force as well as an architectural one in the investigation and reuse of the spaces. BA: On another note, it would be fascinating to involve someone such as Julian Harrap - a restoration expert (worked on the Neue Museum in Berlin) - who has increasingly radical views on dealing with historical buildings to join this dialogue. There could also be an interesting link here with some of the younger generation of Berlin artists, who have grown up in a city that was once almost totally ruined and have witnessed the witnessed the wholesale refurbishment, restoration and rebuilding of their city in the last 20 years and many of whom are critical of the way in which this has been carried out. State of Nature, revisited The fact that the Hall has no weather protection is not lost upon us. It is in some ways Hobbes’ inescapable nightmare in the Leviathan, of what polite society desperately tries to hide (and not necessarily very well): only a non-leaking roof separates society from becoming a self-serving beast in the state of nature. Considering the roof was pilfered by American businessmen in 1919 -1920, we want to remain faithful to the history of the structure by imagining an equally absurdist proposition as a temporary quick-fix: an aeriform roof. The main central and easterly spaces are covered with a series of translucent, inflatable balloons. In order to add functionality and shelter for the subsequent projects, we propose to construct a roof over a number of the principal spaces. This membrane will create an hermetic component to the structure, and serve as an inference of the organic. The exact shape or form and materiality of these is the first project. They are the first step in the process of the re-imagining of the building volumetrically. We imagine this as a way to limn both the social and the natural elements that the Hall. Though the balloon will create coverage from the physical elements of precipitation, its clear skin will reflect the course of light as it rises and falls throughout the day. We can design the balloons as either a singular bladder which exactly fits the space over which it spans, or a modular system of smaller inflatables. They might be movable so that the volumes (and acoustics) of the spaces can be altered according to need. They could protrude out of the top of the building or bulge out of the first floor windows, in excess. We consider it important that the spaces (for now) remain exposed. We intend for the scale and form of these structures to act as a precursor to later projects, which may consider constructing a permanent roof over some of the spaces. In this way the balloons will form part of the future narrative of the building long after they are gone. This first step in the proposal is a general intervention, a simple one utilizing elementary means. As such, the inflatable’s/balloons are transient solutions – or a clear statement of non-permanence. Following the creation of a roof structure, we see the reworking of the flooring plan as the second most crucial undertaking in the success or failure of the earliest stages of the Hall’s replanning. The basis for this project is a series of permanent interconnected paths and floors connecting all the Hall’s spaces - one, when accomplished, will create a unifying platform for various art practices to take place. Various concepts that could be explored would be the implementation of a central, possibly radial, geometry that would envisage the paving of the whole building with one pattern but only be visible in the elements of the path (as fixing the viewer in a plein air maze or the focal point of a tessellation). Another possibility is to study the falling aspect of the sun and its shadow through the windows, and using this physical actuality to orient the organizational “flow” of the floor’s geometry. Our design follows a central axis fundamental to one of math’s great questions, the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture: every elliptical curve has a modular form. Whether it is the person enacting the space by navigating through it, or by using the sun to proscribe the area for us, the floor will be vivified by the necessity of equal pairing. Preferably, we would link the geometry to that of one of the later phases of the built elements we hope to achieve. The floor, in the beginning stages of construction, can be seen simply as a visual palimpsest – a geometric base for a future, central pivot to the Hall. JB: The way I see it, the space of the ruins is dead air. Historically, as well as socially. This proposal is not so much about curating and repurposing an unused relic as it is about figuring out what to do with a troublingly sedentary remnant of western history. This is dealing with a cousin you don’t quite remember after not seeing him for decades. In this way, the absurdity of our concept and the absurdity of the ruins history is what should be highlighted – or the immediate facts. The ruins, at one time, was a seat of provincial power. But somehow, I am inclined to see this project will do best thought as creating a disco in a morgue. RG: It reminds me Mendes da Rocha’s idea that architecture only appears when its function has ceased. Or maybe they’re contradictory - I appreciate structures that have no inherent function, that is, their qualities are indeed spacial in a more abstract manner (from the viewer’s perspective). That also means they are more concrete. In any case, our difficulty in working with heritage is probably a very recent thing... look at Portugal - nearly every building, including monuments, were either recovered, rebuilt and even extended during the dictatorship (in the 40s). BA: I very much like the idea that only redundant structures or those that have been re-appropriated have this (secondary or more in depth) level of meaning. It is a theme that is hugely challenging to contemporary Europeans - since we are increasingly re-appropriating all of our built environment. It was something that was also very much on my mind in Lisbon. We almost have a guilt about our love of living in the ruins that surround us (which is almost everything) and if we were to conceptualise the idea of the reuse of these structures - or better identify what draws us to them perhaps it will become more relevant outside of Europe. It also can be a way of connecting what we are proposing here to a wider context. Studio visit (Beehive) Our second intervention envisages an artists in residence programme, between mid Spring and early Autumn each year, inviting artists to work on the grounds of the Hall. We are firm believers in placing the Hall as a place for study and engagement with other artists, but also as place where architects, artists, and curators can potentially participate in the ongoing design of the Hall, in a way a bee relates to its central hive – the organic process of cross-referencing varying ideas will lead to the continued vitality of the ruins. We see the residency as one of hymenopteran activity. This structure will give each resident the option to add their own chapter in the continuing narrative of the Hall: the residency programme is not only an artistic platform but a very real opportunity to undertake, as social theorists like John Searle, would deem, the “construction of social reality” – a socially edifying experience. As part of our proposal, we also would like to implement a two year project in conjunction with journal Paper Monument documenting the residency programme and its creative output, in the possible form of Paper Monument’s stand-alone “pamphlet” series. It is our hope that not only visual artists, but also varying artists –writers, architects, and musicians to name a few– can be candidates for the residency programme. We imagine the residency to be akin to that of fellowship positions at organizations like the Getty Research and Open Society Institutes, where each fellow is accorded two interns to assist in their work-stay. Resident housing will be designed in the Hall. Into the western spaces of the building, we would like to implement several prefabricated cabins that exist either on stilts or beams. Temporary scaffold stairs and gantries would grant access and connect the dorms through the existing door openings at the first floor level. The cabins (customised with roof lights and windows matching the buildings) would act as live/work spaces and the remaining parts of the building would also be utilized as a work space/gallery for the artists to use. We also suggest placing temporary banked seating in the central space thus giving the option of turning it into a performance space, a lecture hall, or a general communal area. This further adds to the idea of filling the Hall with structures that promote activity – music, lectures, dramatic staging’s, or a place for communal dinner are some possibilities. A more ambitious proposal would be to design the cabins as studio spaces only, and the living accommodation for each artist would be a trailer in the car park adjacent to each cabin. A separate stair will connect each artist’s trailer to their assigned studio space. This slightly futuristic/off-kilter arrangement of this set up is purposeful. The visual busyness of artists moving from ruins to studio to shelter is an advertisement, an outward sign, of the creative activity taking place within. We cannot help to view the first residents as but settlers, in the early founding of a small community at Sutton Scarsdale Hall. The living arrangements will be sparse, but with basic comforts. The rawness of the space necessarily will reflect the artistic temperaments of those wishing to gain residency at the Hall. We suggest to keep the residency programme inline with the general rough-hewn appearance of the buildings – artists who will want to come to Sutton Scarsdale Hall will be ones who know exactly what it means to be here. In essence, this idea is a creative rethinking of Friedman’s ideas on infrastructure and social mobility, restricted to the scale and sociological history of the Hall – utopia resides only in the agent’s urge to find such places in the present world around them. In wanting to find the Edenic, we will rely on the handsome dishabille of the Hall to help cipher these empathetic minds towards it. RG: Can you imagine the rush of masons (or art students) climbing around and occupying the spaces, building a new world… Maybe a school, or some sort of seminar over a period of time, with lecturers and a squatting community. One could see this arrangement as a street, a village, a movie set, or a construction site. Undoubtedly, artists will be playing the role of experiencing the spaces and reinterpreting their own needs from it, potentially intervening at an architectural level if need be. The artists and their needs –as well as the programming- will define the resident units and their design. What I imagine in some ways is a shanty town of sorts, generated by profusion of ideas about self-organised social structures. An alternative society. BA: Resident housing reminds me about similar re-appropriation of historic structures such as the Colosseum in Rome which for hundreds of years had people living within it’s walls - also the idea of streets in the sky. This is the most experimental phase – seeing what and how the building works best. The artist in residence part has a utopian attitude... Scaffold stairs and gantries that all interconnect to another’s. JB: I was thinking about the different residency programmes that I’m aware of, and how disparate they all were. They border on super-luxe, like the Getty, where you’re on a hillside fortress overlooking the ocean, or Schloss Solitude where you’re in a Rococo castle. This strategy won’t work for Sutton – and I think that’s the interesting part. It’s close, in some respect, to the Chinati Foundation residency in Marfa, Texas, where you stay in a reclaimed barrack of a reclaimed military base during your stay. The Sutton will have such Spartan appeal. Like Chinati, which is in the middle of the Sonoran desert (an isotropic environment if there ever was one), this sort of environment will recruit certain sensibilities: those that aren’t necessarily there purely for art, but to simply be in an alien locale, and revelling in solitude; a solitude that necessarily isn’t about isolation. Not Ideas About the Thing, But the Thing Itself The final phase in our reenvisaging of Sutton Scarsdale Hall is an evolution of the previous interventions. The temporary cabins, enclosures, stairs and ramps, would be transformed into elements of a larger structure, part of an ongoing densification of the space. Literally, the result could be a mass of structures emerging from the central spaces and growing from the activities within. Though we began by examining the usual examples of classic western architecture akin to the Hall, our thoughts would eventually find their way to those architecture/ architects operating at the edges of what we can only describe as transcendental irreality: the unfinished monastery of Batalha, Portugal, Cedric Price’s unrealized Fun PalaceHouse, Yona Friedman’s Villa Spatiale, the metaphysical architecture of Étienne-Louis Boullée, to name only but a few. None of these mentioned projects or theories were fully achieved in practice in their respective times: in the extreme case of Boullée, it would most likely have been a violation of his ideals to remotely consider construction. If this were the hypothetical case, the paradoxical nature of Boullée’s architecture, (and in some fashion, also Friedman and Price’s works), then, is tantamount to this: the most meaningful and ideal architecture is about it not being real architecture at all. For the last stage of the Hall’s reorganization, we want to create a structure that reflects upon these architectural concerns - one that brings into tangibility Boullée’s notion of the impossible form, while managing to bridge it with a design of pre-existing functionality. We propose a structural reimagining of the Hall by addition of a vast central structure – a pyramid conflated with the inverted design of the classic Indian step well – a compound element that simultaneously exposes as much as it encloses, and provides a means by which one can navigate to the summit of the building, or even above it. Starting at the entrances and circumnavigating towards the roof, the path will end at the finality of the unimpeded sky above; the step well design would create a visual spiral from the periphery towards the centre space, in the manner of Corbusier’s Infinite Museum. Its outer dimensions will be integrated against the ruin’s walls, and perhaps might even extend below existing floor level and provide access to the cellars below. The functions of the building could either float as cloud like boxes above or be embedded within this form. Its outer dimensions will be integrated against the ruin’s walls. This landscape could be contained within the central space or extend into other spaces. The geometry of this might be a generator for the path/floor that would be initiated as part of the earlier project. Part of the reason we chose the pyramid design was for the immediate visual effect the shape would eidetically create. An equally important consideration was for what the notion of a pyramid represents: its shape is universally totemic, as it is monumentally vague – a glimpse, or a further embellishment of possible utopia. The pyramid, for transcendental purposes, was one Boullée designed but never accomplished in real life; it was not meant for physical actuality. Factoring in the years when Boullée accomplished his most visionary designs happened alongside the footfalls of the French Revolution, his pyramid stands as a marker of hope on the edges of uncertainty. All or nothing. Our pyramid for Boullée, in essence, is a purposeful violation of his admirable principles; but this violation can be a sense of completion, for our current society to interpret its own readings of utopia. Exit The opportunity to reimagine Sutton Scarsdale Hall will not happen over night. With our proposal, we at least hope to give it a clean start by utilizing a temporary roof and define the floor plan, which we believe will allow stability for our other programmes (like the artist residency) to find beginnings. The unique setting of Sutton dictates so much of what we can do; the history of the place, however parts of it lost and forgotten, is what has managed to help preserve it. However, in the light of our own age, we would be remiss in simply celebrating history for history’s sake. Our design is in its own way a conflation of the past and present, of making what happened then and what we can do now equal partners. The pyramid form, then, is a cipher that bridges this distance for us, without being indebted to either age. The iconicity of its shape precedes us all. For our purposes, it was also our main narrative device in our proposal, in a crescendo of Borgesian simplicity: a dénouement without a practical dénouement. This proposal tells a narrative with no fixed ending, a story that itself is modular. Sequences can be altered, changed, modified, reduced. This is the ethic –however rough- we hope to instil in the future livelihood and fruition of Sutton Scarsdale Hall. Previous / Next project http://www.k-w-y.org/227462/Sutton-Scarsdale-Hall http://www.k-w-y.org/84432/about http://www.k-w-y.org/84432/about Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:22:35 +0000 kwy 84432 kwy is a multidisciplinary platform investigating the nature of collaboration within the context of specific projects. info@k-w-y.org people Ben Allen Born in Brighton, England in 1976 and studied architecture in Brighton and Glasgow between 1993 and 1999. Lived and worked in London between 1999 and 2004. Currently lives in Berlin. www.ben-allen.net James Bae Born in Tokyo in 1975. Contributing Editor of Paper Monument, a journal based in New York. He was previously a linguist at the University of California at Berkeley. Currently lives in Los Angeles. www.papermonument.com Jan Bünnig Born in Berlin in 1972. From 1997 studied art at the University of Art and Design Burg Giebichenstein, Halle. In 2003 received his diploma in Fine Art at the UdK in Berlin. Attended the Meisterschüler of Tony Cragg in 2004. Lives in Berlin. www.janbuennig.com Ricardo Gomes Born in Coimbra, Portugal in 1978 and studied architecture in Lisbon between 1995 and 2001. Lived and worked in Marfa between 2002 and 2004. Currently lives in Berlin. www.ricardo-gomes.net Felix Meyer Born in Dresden in 1975. Works as an artist in Berlin. He studied art, aesthetics and architecture in Weimar and Halle. www.felixmeyer.info Anders Hellsten Nissen Born in Esbjerg, Denmark in 1972. He studied art in Odense and Berlin. Currently lives in Berlin. www.andershellstennissen.com Daniel Valente Born in Lisbon in 1976, and studied Architecture and Urban planning in Lisbon and Milan between 1994 and 2000. Since 2000 he works as an architect, urban planner and artist. He lives in Lisbon. www.myspaceflickrtwitterfacebook.blogspot.com http://www.k-w-y.org/84432/about http://www.k-w-y.org/126804/Mirror-Ball http://www.k-w-y.org/126804/Mirror-Ball Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:04:03 +0000 kwy 126804 Previous&nbsp;/&nbsp;Next image&nbsp;(1 of 3)<img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/126804/107D1499.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/126804/107D1484.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/126804/107D1498.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> Jan Bünnig Previous / Next project http://www.k-w-y.org/126804/Mirror-Ball http://www.k-w-y.org/126785/Full-Nocturnal-Illumination http://www.k-w-y.org/126785/Full-Nocturnal-Illumination Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:44:28 +0000 kwy 126785 Full Nocturnal Illumination James Bae Paper Monument In Los Angeles, summer comes not with a rush of waking vigor but as a post-mortem to spring. In June, the city is covered by morning fog, extruded by the ocean in the maw of night. Running against our conventional belief in the fixed palette of the sky, which maintains an interminably robin’s-egg disposition for most of the year, June—that particular state of June endemic to Los Angeles, when car wash lots from the sea to the valley fall eerily silent—casts an unfamiliar fugue over the city: melancholy-lite. The sun makes a belated, partial appearance by late afternoon, like a mottled blotch floating in an understirred fondue pot. Its weak light shows Los Angeles as a civic tectonic expanding without discipline, often directly against normative writs of social planning. This is a city precisely built for the vector of a car. Dead ends, deadly neighborhoods, and the deathly shallow rich constitute the spiritual radius of Los Angeles, a gargantuan, disordered spill buttressed by the DDT-laced waters of the South Bay, the Angeles Crest mountains to the north, the overpriced, bulging disk of beach communities to the west, and the pothole-like, misshaped terminus of San Gabriel Valley in the east. These four imaginary corners spin on the semi-central axis of Hollywood, though it is hard to determine where this phantasm ends, or begins, if you’re actually in the city. In-between neighborhoods exist more in name than as actual communities; no one knows just where exactly anyone else lives except in accordance with an over there by or an I think, or through data gleaned by telemetry: more safe / less dangerous geographical distinctions generated by the paranoid blasts of the local news. For all its natural riches (and industrious Angelenos attempt to parlay this into higher land values), the fact that cars are the dominant shapers of psychology in Los Angeles exemplifies the city’s continued, subliminal contempt for nature. The Los Angeles sublime is this: its chaparral-covered hills and mountains exploding in a fiery maelstrom every year or two, threatening heinously large homes by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. We can easily drive away from this in a cavalcade of inefficient hybrid vehicles, but, once safe somewhere, a glass of Syrah in hand, an instinctive routine is triggered: we giddily wait for our crackpot, our fecund loner, that restless, night-meandering Los Angeles untermensch most likely eating at a Circle-K right now, to start another fire far enough away from the first to finally, fatally overtax our beleaguered firemen. He restores our faith in the fait accompli. Granted, if we kept a scorecard, and if the past few fire seasons are any indication, he has a fairly admirable record against us. Et tu, Haussmann? During an otherwise unexceptional reading in West Hollywood, a writer said that this mythical arsonist “paints” a religious experience – like Fra Angelico – when he sets the mountains on fire. But nothing in his paintings or his write-up in the Lives of the Artists has lead me to believe that he destroyed property for divine gain, let alone reverie. Eschatology has no place in Los Angeles. Making religious deontics the crux of Los Angelean spirituality is just as specious as, in the example that a social theorist once ruefully flung at me, Christ showing up in Los Angeles and trying to save the souls of starving actors. “Nobody will follow him, not when these people straight from a bus all want to be something else, apart from themselves,” he said, “and I don’t know why anybody would follow him any way, and for what for? That hippie.” Along this line, I visited an old friend who vowed an authentic disinterest in nearly everything in life, with a sort of Swiftian malaise. “I don’t give a fuck about giving a single fuck about this,” he affirmed, and once told me that whenever a stripper asked him where he was from, he’d tell her “Compton Hills.” He, too, was something else – a non-actor. On my final day working at Cedars-Sinai, he told me in no uncertain terms what it meant to give a Mont Blanc pen to someone in South Central Los Angeles. It is a thoroughly undiscoverable city, in the end, possessed of the untenable phenomenologies that mesmerized the philosopher Henry Sidgwick over a century ago. Personalities and geographies shift without anyone noticing. The metaphysical vagaries of the city would be a lodestone for the philosopher, who held the post of Knightsbridge professor at Cambridge during the late Victorian era and turned the department into a front for his Society for Psychical Research. Holed up in his office, tracking down signs of phenomena beyond our ken, how often must he have sat listening to gypsies and cottage maidens convinced of their ability to perceive what others couldn’t; how often must he have been disappointed. Debunking spiritualist creeds, or conversely proving them, would be a full-time affair in Los Angeles, much of it involving needless hellos and goodbyes. For example, I visited an Armenian psychic in an over-bright Reseda strip mall in hopes of making contact with a departed friend, possibly even finding out how he’s doing. In the psychic’s waiting room, remarkably like that of a dentist’s office but for its sibylline, red-velour walls, I sat with a severe-looking Russian who rested his tuba case between us. After offering him a cigarette, we talked haltingly of state orchestras, and then I asked him about his instrument. After a torturous pause, he said “In Rossha, play b-flat tuba only” and blew his lung’s contents in my face. I could hear him say da,… da! in rising increments when he was called into the psychic’s chamber. Their séance was taking too long, so I gave up waiting and hurried back to my car. There was an opening in Downtown I had to go to. Finding my way through the cramped space, I fell upon a coupled drawing by a gifted young artist, Eduardo Consuegra, showing an impossible square gliding in multiple dimensions across separate pieces of quadrille paper. Whether it was the interminable crush of the crowd, or the stifling heat of the room, causing everyone’s conversations to sound like a code of ghosts, this particular work felt like an emblem of Los Angeles: a form, a figment, or a general fuck you to the Poincaré conjecture, the work somehow encapsulated a city whose gentle inability to understand itself can now and then expose something truthful. Buoyed, I went to mid-Wilshire to see Chris Burden’s installation of 202 lightposts at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in full nocturnal illumination. It is the city’s new night-haunt, where you can go for no reason except to see beautiful shadows of ugly things. Amidst the Japanese tourists, graphic designers, and moths in hymenopteran captivity, there was a Portuguese woman singing a strain of fado to no one in particular – not least to me. She didn’t even ask for change. Now that’s entertainment. Previous / Next project http://www.k-w-y.org/126785/Full-Nocturnal-Illumination http://www.k-w-y.org/88111/You-Are-Someone-Special http://www.k-w-y.org/88111/You-Are-Someone-Special Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:43:15 +0000 kwy 88111 You Are Someone Special James Bae Paper Monument, Issue 3, Fall 2009 No matter how closely you watch them, nothing really happens in the short films of Corinna Schnitt. A distillation of her already very condensed practice can be seen in 18.8.2005 (2005) the artist sits immobile on the edge of a cliff in the Grand Canyon, a stalagmite in tourist’s clothes, on the film’s titular day. The tableau, recalling countless captured moments in perfunctory American vacations, is broken intermittently by the ominous presence of birds of prey circling over the calciform figure. Somewhere between a slide and a postcard, the image is also a signifier, recalling a vanitas allegory from an Old Master painting—a testament to the meretricious will of the human spirit. The film’s panorama is beautiful, and its protagonist’s need to leave her mark on it is maddeningly absurd –it is not the image here that is important, but the act of image-making- a fleeting Kodak moment without teleological egress. Such hermeneutical absurdity is central to this long-time Cologne, now Berlin-based artist, who, since the early 1990s, has been making short films that depict the task of living as a desperate reckoning with tedium, a calculus of boring acts. A dozen or so in total, her works first seem like straightforward documentations of daily occurrences, stripped of emotional resonance, generating all the titillation of a public service announcement. For an artist who pointedly adheres to the traditional medium of film, her avoidance of the filmic is conspicuous: we never seem to arrive at a plot, much less a climax, or resolution. Nevertheless, in the Schnittian universe, precisely because it exists in film, time must somehow be filled. Leaving paranoid phone messages, daydreaming in parks, obsessively cleaning, and wandering aimlessly are some of the artist’s suggestions. In Living a Beautiful Life (2003), a Los Angeles couple, as gilded as their environment (a hillside home, an exotic parrot), talk about themselves with canned self-satisfaction. Their well-aligned teeth shimmer like their pool as they list off accomplishments, hopes, and, rather gauchely, their further expectations. The husband speaks freely and with jarring candor: Every once in a while, I like to be surrounded by beautiful and sexy women. Put together well. Because… because it’s nice to have a change. Oh, it’s nothing very serious. My wife, she’s very sexy… and she works very hard at it. So… I can’t complain. I enjoy having a mistress, a hot mistress every few months. And then it’s over. It’s important to have something important to look forward to every day. But, I like to keep my routine consistent. I’m very successful person and I know I’m contributing to the world. Living exemplifies Schnitt’s emphatically passive style of direction. Rather than plumbing the quizzically shallow depths of her characters’ psychologies, the artist keeps her focus on the surface, allowing the subjects plenty of time to speak, room to breathe, (and possibly rope to hang themselves) while suppressing any hint of ethical judgment. Watching Living induces the same emotional dislocation that affects its protagonists. So, it comes as a small relief to learn that their near-pathological lack of self-consciousness is, in a sense, a special effect: all dialogue for the film was derived from the answers given by a group of middle school children to a questionnaire about their expectations of a purposeful life. The structure of Living apes that of an excruciatingly flat-footed documentary; at other times Schnitt deploys a measure of visual charm, characterized by the strategic use of floating pans and exceedingly slow zoom-outs, as a visual analogue to the desultory monologues of the films’ actor-narrators. In Die Schlafende Mädchen (The Sleeping Girl) (2001), the camera languidly follows a small model yacht floating along a stream in a suburban park, and arrives at a porthole view of Jan Vermeer’s A Girl Asleep in an empty room, where an answering machine sounds the paranoid gusto of an insurance salesman’s voice: Richards from Bamberg Insurance. Good afternoon, Ms. Schnitt. I came to see you some time last year, and I seem to remember we spoke about a disability insurance. I even sent you some information, if I remember rightly, and asked you on that occasion if you could return my ballpoint to me… It’s really very important to me. I can come and collect it myself, I’d just like it back. And it doesn’t really matter if you’ve decided against the insurance… My colleague has just given me a note to say that you called at 12:15 and that you do still have some questions about the pension scheme and the life insurance. I’m not sure what you would like to know, so we should get together, in which case you won’t have to send me my pen. I can pick it up myself. This audio-visual pairing reappears in Raus aus seinen Kleidern (Out of Your Clothes) (2003), where a woman (played by the artist) repetitiously flap-dries a red dress on a high-rise balcony while a disembodied female voice (presumably hers) talks about laundry and her past relationships. The frame slowly widens to reveal a pristine but depopulated cityscape. The significance of the speaker’s words is astonishingly lost on her: I do find it extremely important that you feel good in your clothes. That’s why I only wear them once unless it’s been a really nice day that I remember in which case I keep them on. But after two days, at the latest, I’ll put on something fresh. The narrator goes on to provide a personal inventory: she has a computer, a scanner, and a printer; a big apartment with a terrace that she can barely afford; a father, who disapproves of her sleeping on a futon, comparing it to his days in World War II. She then matter-of-factly relates her wish to find a rich husband, so as to afford a nanny, so that she may have more time for herself. So it is no surprise her …specialty, so to speak, is weekend relationships. It stays more exciting and you keep enough distance. You keep your head clear and you don’t get too attached. At first glance, Schnitt appears to be suggesting that the analogy of a preference in sexual relationships to one for line-dried clothing (“That’s also a rule of mine that I don’t want to have a man who tumble dries his laundry”) over machine dried (“In a dryer, all kind of stuff gets mixed in and you feel it right away”) is revelatory of the person who can make such distinctions, but not of the society that makes such distinctions possible. The film suggest a rueful extrapolation of modernity, as fixed through Hobbes’ negative lens: probable safety, not happiness, is the primary goal of agency moving from individuality into the steps of civilization. And more engaged we are with civilization, more disengaged Schnitt’s characters become from their interior selves. But this distinction —between the autonomous subject beloved of bourgeois thought, and the social determinants that make her speech inevitably scripted before the fact—is parlayed only as suggestions. Our dissatisfaction with the limits of intimacy with the characters set by the artist, and our subsequent meting out of social judgments, are both anticipated and constitute the latent content of the films. This is a far cry from the ego-driven artistic ingenuity that, for better or worse, makes an art film an art film, and makes most of them unbearable. Instead, Schnitt’s films pan back from the subjectivism we’d expect, pulling us towards a dispassionate, but darkly humorous, survey of a systemic social problem. Repeated viewing of these films reveals their shared subject: the inward parlor games of a society unable to reach a deeper, emotional accord with the world around it. For Schnitt’s people, who have no real reason to speak and arguably not much left to achieve, language becomes a self-recursive value. This is furhter evoked by the indeterminate genre of the films, positioned as they are in the studiedly awkward space between experimentation and narrative cinema. If the filmmaker seems ambivalent about what to do with the rudimentary stories she proposes (flesh them out into more substantial plots, unmask them as ideological constructs, or explode them altogether into pure formalism?) this reflects their protagonists’ similar impasse with respect to their own language games. Schnitt’s characters speak only in order to maintain continued pertinence as emotive and emotional figures. In the participatory roundabout of their daily routines, they simply endure. This longing for agency’s relevance is at the core of one of Schnitt’s more ornate films, Schloss Solitude (2003). Filmed on location on the grounds of a Rococo palace in Stuttgart, it begins with a child dressed in 18th-century wardrobe observing a robust lady of the court (a class ancestor of Schnitt’s more contemporary characters) in the grand room of the castle. Her powdered face is visible only in her vanity mirror, which blocks her view of the village below. It is a tragedy of classically Grecian proportions: vanitas blinding over psyche. As she begins singing hollowly—I am someone special—the camera moves out to reveal a remarkably white and empty room, a desolate antechamber, and finally the castle’s exterior, where members of the real-life local policemen’s choir have assembled to intone the response to her refrain: Yes, yes, yes, we all love you. But, love what, really? There is a threadbare, Learian emptiness in Von einer Welt (Of a World) (2007), where, in a grassy landscape, the nude and prostrate bodies of a dozen women lay. A clothed man walks through the field and approaches each one, attempting to spark a conversation, and at times making erotic overtures, to no avail. Foregrounded by passages from Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action (given in voice-over), the emancipatory possibilities of dialogue are reduced to the emblematic failure of social reality: roundabout chit-chat. Denuded, warped, and reified to wits’ end, Von einer Welt posits a society repeatedly hurtling toward its own bleak and self-manufactured stasis. One step, then another. It is painful to watch. Previous / Next project http://www.k-w-y.org/88111/You-Are-Someone-Special http://www.k-w-y.org/84934/Shelters-and-kiosk http://www.k-w-y.org/84934/Shelters-and-kiosk Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:02:34 +0000 kwy 84934 Previous&nbsp;/&nbsp;Next image&nbsp;(1 of 6)<img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/84934/view 1.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/84934/view 2.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/84934/view 3.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/84934/view 4.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/84934/view 5.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> <img src="http://c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/8813/84934/090808_pages_bexhill montage 2.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" align="left" /> Ben Allen Jens Gehrcken Ricardo Gomes Shelters and kiosk The shelters and kiosk are a family of structures each one distinctive yet unified by a basic programme of forms, intended to create intrigue from within, nearby and afar. The design plays with the curves of the De La Warr Pavilion and draws form from the sound mirrors at Dungeness.   The shelters comprise of curved or domed steel shells enclosed in a glass envelope with either barrel vaulted or pitched roofs. Envisaged as a means of enhancing the visual and aural connection of users with their natural and urban surroundings, polished concave surfaces reflect shapes and colours of the neighbouring architecture and seascape whilst their parabolic forms mimic the acoustic qualities of the sound mirrors. Instead of withdrawing the user, the shelter offers an alternative, enhanced experience of the environment throughout the seasons.   The intimacy, volume and proportion of the spaces is central to their appeal. The semi-circular plan creates an equal degree of peripheral exposure and physical enclosure. A solid wooden bench provides a tactile interface for the rester. Its simple shape allows for alternate sitting positions and facilitates multiple uses for the shelters.   In differing light conditions and from various perspectives the shelters appear either ethereal and elusive or as primary archetypes. This duality is enhanced by the reflectivity of the glass. The negative space in between glass and steel shells will be lit to define their shapes by night while the seating areas will remain subtly lit. This lighting gradually alters in colour defining the shelters after dark and adding to the night-time ambiance of the seafront.   The design of the kiosk follows the basic premise of the shelters, materially and visually and provides an architectural bookend to the sequence of structures. Like the shelters it gives equal importance to the beach as to the town by opening to both sides, allowing additional flexibility in different seasons and weather conditions. Opening panels on both elevations act as dual sunshade and counter.   The kiosk and shelter's main structure is high grade stainless steel, resistant to the effects of the maritime environment and easily re-polished if defaced. The shelter's envelope is solar reflective glass which provides additional shading. This glass, toughened and laminated with protected edges, can be easily replaced if damaged. The lighting can be supported by means of solar cells integrated into the high level glazing. All materials are robust and can stand up well to the tough natural and urban environment.   Previous / Next project http://www.k-w-y.org/84934/Shelters-and-kiosk