Apr 30 2009
May 7 2009
May 13 2009
Films and videos on modernist architecture
Curated by Hajnalka Somogyi
With films by:
Bernd Behr, Johanna Billing, Michael Blum, Josef Dabernig, Domènec, Miklós Erhardt, Terence Gower, Pierre Huyghe, Lars Laumann, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Caitlin Masley, Ursula Mayer, Anna Molska, Sadie Murdoch, Pia Rönicke, Anri Sala, Caspar Stracke and Judi Werthein
Modernist architecture has been a strong, recurring theme in contemporary art. Way after its rise and fall, it still seems to bug artists, both as art and as social program: it provokes mixed feelings of fascination, nostalgia, rejection and disillusionment. Gets Under the Skin offers a selection of critical responses to the ideas and products of modernist architecture that neither buy the recent “grand narrative” of its wholesale failure nor join the uncritical celebration and fetishization of its masterpieces.
Taking prime and more obscure examples of the Euro-American modernist architectural canon from the Bauhaus school in Dessau or the Goldfinger House in London through Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation and the Crown Hall at the IIT campus to the Expo ’67 in Montreal and Eastern European housing projects among many others, these works recast various threads that led from the originally informative ideas of pure reason and universal emancipation to the wildly divergent realities and myths that make up for their current context. Demolished and in ruins or polished and musealized, modernist architecture appears in these works as an unshakable legacy that continues to inspire and irritate.
Gets Under the Skin is a thesis project curated by Hajnalka Somogyi as part of the requirements for the Master of Arts degree at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.
April 24, 7pm
Location: in the Spacebuster (by Raumlabor)
under the High Line at 508 W25 St at 10th Ave
Anna Molska
Perspective, 2003
1’ 31”, video, color, sound
Courtesy of the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw
Judi Werthein
This Functional Family, 2007
15’, video, color, English
Courtesy of the artist
Johanna Billing
Where She Is At, 2001
07’ 35”, video, color, sound
Courtesy of the artist and Hollybush Gardens, London
Ursula Mayer
Interiors, 2006
3’ 11”, 16 mm transferred to DVD, b/w and color, sound
Courtesy of the artist and Monitor, Rome
Bernd Behr
House Without a Door, 2006
16’ 32”, HD video, color, sound
Courtesy of the artist
Sadie Murdoch
Eileen.Gray, 2004
6’ 45”, video, color
Courtesy of the artist
Domènec
Unité Mobile (roads are also places), 2005
9’ 35”, video, color, sound (French)
Courtesy of the artist
Terence Gower
Ciudad Moderna, 2004
8’, digital video, b/w, color, Spanish with English subtitles
Courtesy of the artist
Pia Rönicke
Somewhere Out There, 1998
9’ 18”, digital animation, color, sound
Courtesy of the artist and gb agency, Paris
Total around 77 min
April 30, 7pm
Location: Storefront for Art and Architecture
Terence Gower
Wilderness Utopia, 2008
3’, HD video, color, English
Animation and design: Sticky Pictures, Brooklyn
Funded by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Courtesy of the artist
Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle
Always After (The Glass House), 2006
9’ 41”, super 16 mm film digitized to HD and compressed for HD-DVD
Courtesy of the artist and Max Protetch Gallery
Lars Laumann
Berlinmuren, 2008
23’ 56”, video, color, English
Courtesy of the artist and Maureen Paley, London
Pierre Huyghe
This Is No Time for Dreaming, 2004
24’, live puppet play and super 16 mm film, transferred to digibeta, color, English
Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman, New York
Caspar Stracke
No Damage, 2002
13’, digital video, color, sound
Courtesy of the artist
Total around 74 min
May 7, 7pm
Location: Storefront for Art and Architecture
With a conversation between the curator and Tirdad Zolghadr, thesis adviser.
Caitlin Masley
Expo ’67, 2008
11’ 14”, super 8 mm film transferred to DVD, b/w and color, sound (French)
Courtesy of the artist
Josef Dabernig
WARS, 2001
10’, 16 mm film transferred to DVD, b/w, sound
Courtesy of the artist and Andreas Huber Gallery, Vienna
Miklós Erhardt
Havanna, 2006
15’ 11”, video, color, English
Courtesy of the artist
Anri Sala
Dammi I Colori, 2003
16’, video, color, Albanian with English subtitles
Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman, New York
Michael Blum
The Three Failures, 2006
22’ 04”, video, color, English
Courtesy of the artist
Total around 75 min
May 13, 6 pm
Location: Preston Theatre, Bard College Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Anna Molska
Perspective, 2003
1’ 31”, video, color, sound
Courtesy of the artist and
Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw
Judi Werthein
This Functional Family, 2007
15’, video, color, English
Courtesy of the artist
Sadie Murdoch
Eileen. Gray, 2004
6’ 45”, video, color
Courtesy of the artist
Terence Gower
Ciudad Moderna, 2004
8’, digital video, b/w, color
Spanish with English subtitles
Courtesy of the artist
Pia Rönicke
Somewhere Out There, 1998
9’ 13”, digital animation, color, sound
Courtesy of the artist and gb agency, Paris
Pierre Huyghe
This Is No Time for Dreaming, 2004
24’, 16 mm film transferred to HD DVD
color, English
Courtesy of the artist and
Marian Goodman, New York
Caitlin Masley
Expo ’67, 2008
11’ 14”, super 8 mm film transferred to DVD
b/w and color, sound (French)
Courtesy of the artist
Josef Dabernig
WARS, 2001
10’, 16 mm film transferred to DVD, b/w, sound
Courtesy of the artist and
Andreas Huber Gallery, Vienna
Anri Sala
Dammi I Colori, 2003
16’, video, color
Albanian with English subtitles
Courtesy of the artist and
Marian Goodman, New York
Gets Under the Skin
Films and videos on modernist architecture
“CHANCE TO SMASH GLASS AT CROWN HALL GOES FOR $2705 ON eBAY. A winning bid of $2705 was placed on eBay for the opportunity to shatter the first pane of glass removed from S.R. Crown Hall as part of the May 17, 2005 “Smash Bash,” the kick off for the historic renovation of the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe-designed National Historic Landmark at IIT. The renovation coincides with the 50th anniversary celebration of this Modernist architecture icon. The auction, which ended Friday, received 55 bids on the auction web site.”
One great thing about researching contemporary artistic responses to modernist architecture is that you keep stumbling upon curious stories. About why Ian Fleming named his infamous villain after architect Erno Goldfinger; about Erich Mendelsohn and the Hollywood studio RKO building ‘German Village’ on a US military weapons testing area in 1943; about how the Hirschhorn Museum almost ended up in the wilderness of Canada; about a woman who married the Berlin Wall; about an artist-mayor who made socialist housing blocks in Tirana painted in all colors of the rainbow. Stories which are never easy to unpack, to relate to one another, to make clear sense of. The one in the above quote is also bursting with ambiguity.
First of all, destroying something as a way to celebrate it seems an unusual idea – who would want to get bashed on his 50th birthday? Moreover, who would pay for performing such job? The accounts tell us that it was van der Rohe’s architect grandson, Dirk Lohan who placed the highest bid. He said: “As a longtime IIT supporter, this means very much to me. But, it means even more on a personal level.” I wonder what he meant. Surely, there would have been other ways to donate.
This act of violence, one could say the “desecration” of this landmark piece of modernist architecture, even if justified by a benevolent motive (alibi?), points to controversial emotions driving modernism’s posterity. Crown Hall is a landmark, its preservation has been a top priority for the Institute; its anniversary was a celebratory event. It houses the College of Architecture at IIT, the alma mater of generations of architects. It is so much worshiped it actually might be no surprise that the replacement of its window panes turned out to be a euphoric “smash bash”, as if the offspring had been waiting for this miraculous moment when smashing grumpy grandpa’s window goes unpunished. Which is of course not about any family issues Mr. Lohan might have had, but more about a currently prevailing attitude in which admiration and rejection of the modernist legacy – one could say also some sort of frustration induced by it – are strongly intertwined.
What is it about modernist architecture that makes you want to smash it with a huge steel hammer? What is it about modernist architecture that you would want to preserve and leave behind for the next generation? (Importantly, we should set aside the question begging to be asked: What is modernist architecture? – simply because answering it in any “objective” way, overruns the ambitions of this text or project by far.)
So why do we still bother so much? One obvious answer is that because it is still around. At least in most cities in Europe and North America, the areas on which this project focuses, it still has a defining presence: it shapes the ways one moves, perceives, creates relations with others, it unavoidably influences feelings and thoughts. It is motion and emotion, form and information. It is not only what one perceives, it is also what one knows about it: the initial ideas of early modernism that shaped its formal vocabulary, that imbued it with social programs based on the rationalization of human needs and duties, on solidarity; and the innumerable critical assessments by architecture and art historical, sociological, psychoanalytical, semiotic, postmodernist, post-colonialist and post-socialist studies, among others, which countered the modernist canon with their own alternating/alternative narratives. For lack of a clearer definition, this is modernist architecture today: a maze of narratives – from accounts of academic discourses to rumors, anecdotes, and urban myths.
Part of them is about modernist architecture’s doom, wholesale failure; about its arrogance, its complicity with the ruling order; the dreadful social situations it has created/contributed to, or its lack of power to create the society on the vision of which it was based. Another part of the stories (and this is not necessarily in full opposition with the former) has established modernist architecture as untouchable legacy, icon, fetish, cult.
Where does contemporary art stand then when addressing modernist architecture? Obviously, there is no correct answer to this question: artistic reactions are as various as the responses from other cultural fields. Certainly, the former is influenced by the latter, as artists who today deal with modernist architecture see and select from the narratives modernist architecture constitutes, both from the academic and the popular kinds; but how does artistic knowledge production, with its own stories, concepts and fantasies contribute to the broader re-thinking of this legacy?
There are so many artworks today that plunge into this vast field; and there have been so many curatorial projects, exhibitions, conferences and the like, trying to frame and interpret this production. Video and film works are just a part of it; I had to forgo sculptural, photographic and installation works or multichannel projections, among others, when compiling this project and, needless to say, the present selection is far from being representative or comprehensive in any sense. Still, a screening program provides one of the easiest ways to overview a large amount of works, which is important when one is interested in the diversity of possible approaches.
The selected films and videos all address the European and North-American heritage of modernist architecture (with one exception venturing into the Mexican context); beyond this criterion, they are rather different. The artists all “talk” about modernist architecture: about a building, an interior, an architect, a grounding idea; but it is probably more interesting to ask what does modernist architecture stand for in their eyes? Why does it keep bugging them?
Indeed, in these works, there are no hammers (although there is a broom and a lot of shattered glass) and there is no celebration, either. Most of them are peaceful, contemplative, atmospheric, some even nostalgic; in others there is less longing and more disapproval. Their standpoint is mostly elusive: inconclusive, enigmatic pieces, often operating with irony or emotions, never even trying to seem detached or comprehensive in their approach. Mostly focusing on “case studies” instead of addressing the large picture. It is interesting that in most of them, modernist architecture appears as plans, drawings, models, photographs, found footage or musealized environments: thus, already as representation. Not only as physical environment, but also, as a legacy. The works not only deal with the past, but also with the present; however, this present is articulated as “aftermath”.
Some, like Andreas Huyssen, would call these works memory practices; others, like Svetlana Boym, would talk about nostalgia; and many, like Boris Buden would see in these works acts of cultural translation. The common question is: what is to be remembered, what is to be saved, to be translated so as to secure its afterlife?
Is it the formal simplicity and the aesthetic beauty arising from it? While in most of the works, there is a clear appreciation of these values, they seem equally aware of the vulnerability of modernist forms vis-a-vis downright opposing ideologies that have made use of them. Is it the idea of solidarity, of modernization that would make life fair, the Euro-American leftist tradition that influenced the formative ideas of modernist architecture? It is certainly evoked in many of the pieces – along with colonial exploitation and the possible horrors of nationalism, competition, and of concepts of a homogeneous society, among other dark shadows and blind spots behind the bright ideas. Is it the boldness of the architects and their sense of responsibility when they set out to change the world? One definitely has to admire their spirit when watching some of these works; nevertheless, the same works might make one aware of the architects’ frailty, naïveté, complicity or powerlessness.
Is it possible that, besides articulating and reflecting on the accumulated critique, convictions and fantasies related to modernist architecture, some of these artists are also taking personal issues with a legacy that was framed as art with clear social programs and with practitioners – the architects – who did not (as architects cannot) shy away from intervening into the social fabric Is modernist architecture of special importance to artists, a continuous source of inspiration and irritation, for it is posing the question of how it is possible to make art and to have a social impact at the same time? This can be confirmed (or denied) only by the artists; till then, the works in which the figure of the artist appears (either as him- or herself or as alter ego and effigy) can make us think of possible reasons why they put themselves on spot.
The videos and films will be presented through three evenings at Storefront. Instead of trying to come up with three subthemes (which were not considered through the selection process) and thereby creating three “blocks” of the works, they have been ordered chronologically, according to the date of the building or interior featured in them. This twice-interrupted flow of para-history (which, with regards to the works’ contents and sensibilities creates rather haphazard connections) is intended to cast light on the specificity of artistic knowledge production precisely by proving itself to be a total nonsense as the logic of ordering.
For whatever their reasons for engaging in these issues may be, the question still remains: why should we ask artists about modernist architecture? How do they contribute to the already complex and cacophonic discourse on it? I would say that it is exactly the works’ elusiveness, their openly subjective viewpoints, the interweaved facts and fiction, their abandoning all research and disciplinary protocols, the contradictions and discrepancies created and left unresolved, the incongruent elements put together as if indifferent to their differences –all this is what makes them indispensable when thinking of the past and its effects on the present. They reveal how slippery the field of constructing history really is while actively doing it in their own “shredder-pulper” ways (as Sarat Maharaj put it) and enjoying the slips and slides, the shreds and pulp of the myths and histories of modernist architecture that we are indeed left with.
Hajnalka Somogyi
, Venice, California
