BODY TALKS: Lorenzo Romito The Body’s Mind: Behavioral Urbanism and Gestural Architecture MONDAY NIGHT 30 OCTOBER AT THE
Sabina Tanovic: The Predicament of Designing a Memorial: commemorating the Siege of Sarajevo- Skype Talk
Sabina Tanović_Architect, independent researcher specialized in commemorative architecture. Sabina holds a PhD from Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, with a thesis entitled Memory in Architecture: Contemporary memorial projects and their predecessors (2015). Her current research focuses on contemporary European memory and the construction of architectural commemorative projects. In an interdisciplinary approach, she investigates the relations between psychological aspects of bereavement and their integration into a memorial-making process. Sabina is actively engaged with issues concerning commemoration of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992 – 1996), with a focus on the siege of Sarajevo and gross human rights violation in other areas within the country. She is a partner in the research/advice/design practice ‘Experiencing Architecture’, where she is a project leader of ‘Designing Memory’ which deals with design, adaptation and remodeling of memorial sites.
From Fake Mountains to Faith (Hungarian Trilogy)
This is the second edition for OFF-Biennale Budapest, and this platform provides an excellent model for alternative, protest, and subversive artistic and curatorial practices in the age of heightened nationalism…PtL
Artwork in Focus – OFF-Biennale Budapest special edition
OFF-Biennale Budapest is a grassroots, civil initiative, the largest contemporary art project of the art scene in Hungary in the last few years which is realized without applying for funding to the Hungarian state and without using state-run art institutions. After its first edition in 2015, the second OFF-Biennale Budapest is currently taking place, from September 29 to November 5, 2017, in various venues across the city.
tranzit.hu contributes with a program to OFF-Biennale this year too and its online magazine platforms tranzitblog.hu (in Hungarian) and mezosfera.org serve as media partners of OFF-Biennale.
mezosfera.org dedicates its series of articles “Artwork in Focus” to works and projects presented at OFF-Biennale. The series looks at one artwork at a time, and it discusses the topics the particular pieces bring up.
Ágnes Patakfalvi-Czirják, anthropologist, researcher at the HAS Centre for Social Sciences Institute for Minority Studies, discusses the ongoing research project by artist Szabolcs KissPál, which draws parallels between Hungary’s official memory politics since 2010 and fascist-nationalist Horthy-era (1920-1944), pointing to close connections between the “Trianon” trauma after World War I and Hungary’s contribution to the Holocaust.
Pelin Tan @ Konsthall C
Pelin Tan at Konsthall C. Cigarrvägen 14, Hökarängen,
Title: Autonomous Infrastructure: Forms of Decay
Click on the LINK to see Pelin Tan’s talk at the Konsthall C, 10 October 2017.
Part 1: Scan of Audience: – http://www.kkh.se/rlab-open/100_0145.mp4
Part 2: Intro and Talk: – http://www.kkh.se/rlab-open/100_0146.mp4
KKH, Concluding questions end of battery – http://www.kkh.se/rlab-open/100_0147.mp4
Theme: How autonomous infrastructures can become a process, a tool, a methodology of decolonizing design strategies? What are the spatial and local conditions that can be initiated beyond trans-local structures? These questions relate to our current times of nomadic dwelling and sustaining decolonized infrastructure, cities and living conditions in contested territories. Process such as rebuilding destructed towns after battles, cities under sieged where destruction is a potentialities of building practice of architecture, or both temporary and urbanized refugee camps.
Pelin Tan’s presentation will focus on migration, labor and architectural pedagogy through cases of recent research ranging from Southeast of Turkey of Syrian borderline to Pearl River Delta/China territorial borderlines. The discussion will focus on the conceptual framework of decay, autonomy, infrastructure and decolonization.
Bio: Pelin Tan is a researcher in sociology, urbanism and architecture. Her practice is about research-based artistic and architectural pedagogy, territorial conflict, commonning practices and urban justice. Tan was a postdoctoral fellow the School of Architecture and Planning, ACT Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. Tan worked in several institutions such as Architecture&Art History, Berlin TU, MA in Architecture and Urban Studies (adbk – Nürenberg) and was recently Research Professor of Design Strategies at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, School of Design (2016). Phd scholar at Berlin Humboldt Univ. (DAAD, 2006-2007). In 2013 – 2017, Tan was Associate Prof and Vice-Dean of the Architecture Faculty of Mardin Artuklu University (nomination for MiesAward 2017).
She was a Japan Foundation research fellow at Osaka Urban Research Plaza, where she researched alternative collectives and urban justice in Japan (2012). As a Hong Kong Design Trust fellow she conducting a research about Threshold Infrastructure on the Pearl River Delta Sea (2016). Tan is a part of the pedagogical consortium on Refugee Heritage, Campus in Camps, Dheisheh Palestinian Refugee Camp.
Tan is and a lead author of Towards an Urban Society, the International Panel on Social Progress (IPSP, edited by Saskia Sassen and Edgar Pieterse, 2015–2017). She contributed recently to publications on architecture, urbanism, and art such as: 2000+: Urgencies of Architectural Theories (GSAPP, 2015), and The Silent University: Toward Transversal Pedagogy (Sternberg Press, 2016), Autonomous Archiving (2016), Camp as Trans-local Practice (Refugee Heritage, e-flux architecture, 2017). She participated in Istanbul Biennial (2007), Istanbul Biennial (2015), Montreal Biennial (2014), Lisbon Architecture Triennial (2013), Oslo Architecture Triennial (2016). She is one of the curator of 1.Wuzhen Architecture Biennial, China (2018). Tan co-directed three episodes of films titled 2084; about the future of art and society with artist Anton Vidokle.
Documentary: Sarajevogänget
this Documentary is for Swedish audiences, but most everyone speaks in English.
Sarajevo’s bob sled olympic track
A summer luge may look like a plastic tray on wheels. But at full speed it hurtles around the concrete banking of Sarajevo’s Olympic bobsleigh track with the roar of a Star Wars TIE fighter swooping in for the kill.
There are no barriers to prevent encroachment on the track, but standing clear is essential. Flat out, the flimsy vehicle careers down the course at almost 140km/h (87mph).
There is an undeniable irony about a Winter Olympic luge track that comes to life in the summer but has to close when the temperatures drop. A cursory inspection of the course reveals why high-speed action on ice is currently impossible.
Coronation Park, Venice Biennale Giardini, ‘All the World’s Futures’
Raqs Media Collective, “the way power works itself out, plays itself out…” “something not yet built or something that has already been destroyed…” “has been, not yet…”
Coronation Park. 2015
Nine fiberglass sculptures on bitumen coated wooden pedestals, with acrylic polymer plaques
Reference to the site in Delhi that hosted the coronation of King George and Queen Mary as emperor and empress of India in 1911.
Thanks to Professor Peter Geschwind for the reference to this work by RAQS.
General Robert E. Lee, Charlottesville, Virginia. NOTES
Should a confederate statue of General Robert E. Lee be removed, or left standing? Should one consider opening a debate on the Confederate icons that are to be found over vast territories across the south, to open ‘civil’ debates on the history and evolution of iconoclasm, as well as alternative possibilities, or counter-responses, like covering or masking controversial monuments, or inventing new forms of responses set within the same public spaces… to directly engage instead of render invisible these long running political feuds.
“The Statue at the Center of Charlottesville’s Storm”
New York Times.
Since white nationalists marched Friday in Charlottesville, Va., the quiet college town has seen a nighttime brawl lit up by torches and smartphones, and worse violence that left one person dead and dozens injured.
At the center of the chaos is a statue memorializing Robert E. Lee. It depicts the Confederacy’s top general, larger than life, astride a horse, both green with oxidation.
The white nationalists were in Charlottesville to protest the city’s plan to remove that statue, and counterdemonstrators were there to oppose them. The statue — begun by Henry Merwin Shrady, a New York sculptor, and finished after his death by an Italian, Leo Lentelli — had stood in the city since 1924. But over the past couple of years some residents and city officials, along with organizations like the N.A.A.C.P., had called for it to come down.
One local official made a similar suggestion as early as 2012 and quickly discovered that emotions surrounding the issue run deep.
‘Ugly stuff bubbled up’
It was during the Virginia Festival of the Book, a series of readings and events held every year in Albemarle County, which includes Charlottesville.
“Greece asks EU for return of Parthenon Marbles as part of Brexit…”
“European Parliament member Stelios Kouloglou has called on the Commission to include the thorny issue in Brexit talks. “Brexit negotiators must take into account the need to protect European cultural heritage… The Parthenon Marbles are considered as the greatest symbol of European culture. Therefore, reuniting the marbles would be both a sign of respect and civilised relationship between Great Britain and the EU, and much more [than] a legal necessity.”
In response, a European Commission spokesperson said he believed that the Brexit team is not legally obliged to address the issue, citing Articles 3, 50 and 167. “The Parthenon Marbles were removed long before this date, and the EU has no competence in the matter,” Tibor Navracsics, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport said, referring to a directive on the return of unlawfully removed cultural objects which applies to items removed after January 1, 1993.
For over three decades, Greece has repeatedly called on the British Museum to return the 2,500-year-old marble sculptures that once adorned the Parthenon and have been the subject of dispute since they were illegally removed and sold by Lord Elgin to the British Museum in 1817.
Read more at https://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2017/08/greece-asks-eu-for-return-of-parthenon.html#fJTzYbSmzAeU7dzK.99
Vandals Decapitate Nicole Eisenman’s Celebrated Artwork for Skulptur Projekte Münster Overnight
Already the second decapitation reported in this blog for r-Lab. PTL
As reported by ARTNET news: Hili Perlson, July 20, 2017
“Nicole Eisenman‘s site-specific work for Skulptur Projekte Münster, Sketch for a Fountain, has been “seriously damaged” by vandals in the night between Wednesday, July 19, and Thursday, July 20.
One of the artwork’s plaster figures has been targeted by vandalism but details describing the extent of the damage beyond a reference to its severity have not been specified. The organizers announced that they are “discussing further steps with the artist right now.” A decision as to whether or not the piece would be repaired will follow.
Eisenman’s artwork for the important sculpture show in Münster is a fountain installed in the grassy meadows alongside a well-frequented public promenade.
The piece, which became a favorite among visitors, includes a square metal basin filled with water, with one bronze figure standing inside it, water streams cascading from unlikely parts of its body. Four additional figures, reclining or seated, are installed around the basin, with only one of them rendered in bronze. The other figures—all of which are slightly larger than life-size, voluminous, and genderless—are cast in plaster, and thus subjected to the elements. This material detail was meant as a conceptual contemplation on the nature of public art, but may have also rendered the piece particularly vulnerable to vandalism.
Skulptur Projekte Münster takes place once every ten years in the North Rhine-Westphalian city, and is considered one of the world’s most important exhibition dedicated to sculpture and public art. It was launched in 1977, and its artistic director since the very first edition has always been Kasper König, who works on each iteration with rotating curatorial teams. This year, the co-curators are Britta Peters and Marianne Wagner.
Works in the exhibition are temporarily installed in different locations around the city, and are meant to be removed at the end of the 100-day show. Some sculptures, however, are bought by the city and remain on permanent display.
UPDATE: artnet News has received a statement specifying that the head of the reclining plaster figure leaning back on its elbows has been violently removed, and is missing.
Eisenman and the curatorial team have decided that the head will not be remade, and that the ensemble will remain as is. Other small necessary repairs to the area around it will be completed this afternoon.”
r-Lab/arch/arte/sign 