Dear Publisher, I am writing to suggest your perusal of my latest writings on the emerging curatorial landscape for Chinese contemporary architecture and design practice, which incorporates a phenomenological approach based on thing theory into the critical study on the current curating architecture, taking the “Investigate It” design research workshop (Nanjing, July 4–11, 2015) and its circulation through exhibition (OCAT Shanghai, March 13 – May 15, 2016) as a case study. Taking Hualugang (花露岗), the southern part of the old city in Nanjing, as a historical worksite, the “Investigate It” design research workshop projects an site-specific collaborative learning process constituting ten parallel researches into architecture by ten Chinese practitioners (mainly architects) from a variety of backgrounds including history, theory, criticism and practice, most of whom are the backbone for architecture education in China. Moderated by two of the practitioners and one initial convener/curator, the model of the workshop highly resembles the Venetian School led by Manfredo Tafuri since the 1970s, meanwhile embracing the idea of “Learning” defined by Robert Venturi in his book Learning from Las Vegas and “Retroactive Manifesto” by Rem Koolhaas in Delirious New York. However, when entering the gallery space in a contemporary art terminal owned by a state-owned property development company, the practitioners are rather introduced as artists other than architects besides the representation of their work. By charting the differences between the output – the exhibition of “Investigate It”, and the outcome – a modus operandi for the acquisition of things by the architecture of place originated from the workshop, the writing project intends to reveal how contemporary Chinese architects have begun to engage themselves in curatorial practices by relating traditional thinking in Chinese philosophy to its western counterpart, rendering a cultural identity upon such a relation and fusing the relation into the modern and contemporary experience in western architecture and urban design. It assumes that this sort of practice aiming towards the circulation of architecture and design via exhibition is evoked by exhibitionism as a manifestation of the emerging curatorial landscape for visual art in general on account of the continuous booming of museum and gallery space in today’s China, especially in its highly globalised metropolis like Shanghai. Have not yet considerably expanded in the realm of Chinese contemporary architecture and design practices though, it is witnessing a curatorial turn which signifies the entanglement of art and architecture not only being consumed as a prominent element of museum culture itself but turning sites in to museums as part of the urban culture in contemporary cities . As Hal Foster applied the word ‘complex’ to criticise that ‘expansion can harden into constriction’ when art and architecture encounter by pointing out the trajectory of how art and architecture have been invading each other since the modern period, the current situation in China that architects are involved with multiple authorship is also inevitable. The writing project is targeting at a wide range of audiences who are not necessarily involved in the architectural expertise but rather who have an interdisciplinary interest in curatorial, visual and material culture. Thanks for your consideration. Look forward to your thoughts on my writing project. Sincerely yours, Evonne Jiawei Yuan
Primary literature: Ding, Yao. “Archeology of Space.” World Architecture, no. 307 (January 2016): 101. Dou, Pingping. “The ‘Investigate It’ Design Research Workshop.” World Architecture, no. 307 (January 2016): 100. Feng, Jiang. “Ladder: Thing | Beyond Thing.” World Architecture, no. 307 (January 2016): 102. Feng, Lu. “After ‘Investigate It.’” World Architecture, no. 307 (January 2016): 111–13. ———. “Transclucency.” World Architecture, no. 307 (January 2016): 103. Guo, Yimin. “Modernology.” World Architecture, no. 307 (January 2016): 104. Li, Xinggang. “Instant Garden.” World Architecture, no. 307 (January 2016): 106. Lu, Andong. “Cloud Wall.” World Architecture, no. 307 (January 2016): 105. Tang, Keyang. “Objego.” World Architecture, no. 307 (January 2016): 107. Zhang, Bin. “Urban Farm Reclusion.” World Architecture, no. 307 (January 2016): 108. Zhang, Li. “Playfulness.” World Architecture, no. 307 (January 2016): 109. Zhou, Ling. “Boundary Mapping.” World Architecture, no. 307 (January 2016): 110. OCAT Shanghai, eds. “Investigate It” Exhibition Programme. Shanghai: OCAT Shanghai, 2016. Secondary literature: Di Carlo, Tina. “Exhibitionism.” Log, no. 20 (2010): 151–58. Ferguson, Bruce W., Reesa Greenberg, and Sandy Nairne, eds. Thinking About Exhibitions. London and New York: Routledge, 2005. Groys. Boris. “Multiple Authorship.” In The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Exhibitions and Biennials. Edited by Barbara Vanderlinden and Elena Filipovic, 93-99. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2005. Heidegger, Martin. “Art and Space.” Translated by Charles H. Seibert. Man and World (6)1 (1973): 3–8. ———. Poetry, Language, Thought. Translated by Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. ———. Basic Writings: Second Edition, Revised and Expanded. Edited by David Farrell Krell. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. ———. Being and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. Albany, NY: 1996. Huang, Chun-Chieh, and Erik Zürcher, eds. Time and Space in Chinese Culture. Leiden; New York; Köln: E.J. Brill, 1995. Hunt, Andrew. “Curator, Curation, Curationism.” Art Monthly, no. 390 (October 2015): 13–16. Koolhaas, Rem. Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. Monacelli Press, 1994. Kossmann, Herman, Suzanne Mulder, and Frank den Oudsten. Narrative Spaces: On the Art of Exhibiting. 010 Publishers, 2012. Norberg-Schulz, Christian. Existence, Space & Architecture. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 1971. ———. The Concept of Dwelling: On the Way to Figurative Architecture. New York: Rizzoli, 1985. O’Neill, Paul. The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s). Cambridge, Mass.; London: MIT Press, 2012. Rossi, Aldo. The Architecture of the City. London: The MIT Press, 1984. Smith, Terry E. Thinking Contemporary Curating. New York: Independent Curators International, 2012. Steeds, Lucy, ed. Exhibition. London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 2014. Tafuri, Manfredo. Theories and History of Architecture. London: Granada, 1980. Venturi, Robert, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1977.
Instant Garden by Li Xinggang
Exhibition Poster of “Investigate It”