COLLABORATIVE EXHIBITION

Aexperiments In Entropy

EXPERIMENTS IN ENTROPY IS AN EXHIBITION THAT COMBINES THE COLLABORATIVE EFFORTS OF 11 ARCHITECTS WHO FIRST CROSSED PATHS AT UNIVERSITY, 10 YEARS AGO.

Whilst their practices differ, Maria Azzopardi, Andrew Borg Wirth, Isaac Buttigieg, Lucia Calleja, Jean Ebejer, Suzi Mifsud, Tracey Sammut, Feliċ Micallef, Matthew Scerri, Nick Theuma, and Mike Zerafa investigate their role as architects and how they are forging the future of their careers during a time when construction, climate adaptation, planning, real estate, and monument-making have taken centre stage.

As described by Borg Wirth—who is also the curator of this exhibition—entropy is most commonly associated with chaos, uncertainty, decay, waste, and a state of disorder. To put this into the context of this exhibition, we see how the role of the architect is challenged and how it is juxtaposed in an art space such as the one where it is being held—Valletta Contemporary.

Although all architects taking part in this exhibition have presented individual works, they are intertwined. Spectators are instantly transported into the architects’ minds whilst they interpret their reactions and personal experiences with entropy through media works, installations, everyday objects, flat works, design experimentation, datascapes, as well as a soundscape.

Experiments in Entropy is divided into five sections; Prologue: Notes on Entropy, Elsewhere, On Our Gaze, An All-Encompassing Sameness, Artifice and Edifice, and A Cosmic Opera. I felt that each artwork displays a deeply personal experience that the architects witness on the job. Some of these include the dilemmas and choices they dwell on, how our values have shapeshifted over time, our heritage, how the sounds from construction sites have become part of our lives, the loss of time, and how the world is constantly manipulated by man.

From the eyes of a spectator, I feel I am able to relate to most of the work that is presented by the architects. For starters, you cannot ignore Maria Azzopardi’s soundscape which most certainly makes its presence known throughout the whole duration of the tour. The noise only gets louder and louder as time goes by, thus showing how impactful the chaos is.

I was also quite intrigued by Isaac Buttigieg’s Reveal your Modus operandi, Perit! comic strip. Here the dilemmas mentioned previously are presented in such a way that allows us—the spectators—to question the choices architects have to make. In turn, this leads to an even bigger discussion regarding the anxieties they are faced with due to their values and the complexity that comes with this practice. This is somewhat echoed in Borg Wirth’s exhibit; Monuments to Sleep On. The red glass pane and the words “This is not a nightmare” detail Borg Wirth’s experiences, his blocked vision, and how he often finds himself in a helpless position.

Lucia Calleja’s Postcards of Progress is both a documentative and performative piece that enacts her thoughts about preservation and depletion. The postcards present architectural fragments; the beautiful, the problematic, and the ever-changing, creating a juxtaposition.

Alongside Calleja, Mike Zerafa’s installation dwells on the loss of time. As its title suggests, Everything not saved will be lost, outlines thoughts of the discomfort of the responsibility that comes with the role and how our heritage’s legacy is either built or left behind.

Moving on to the next sections of the exhibition, Suzi Mifsud’s Vessels showcases four plastic containers that have now been concealed with a new exoskeleton of pigmented limestone dust, gypsum cement and acrylic binder. Through this exhibit, Mifsud raises the point of how plastic continues to negatively affect our environment. By concealing the plastic in the chosen media, Mifsud gives them a new life, whilst hig hlighting a society’s cultural development.

In A RKA , Feliċ Micallef not only pays homage to the triumphal arch but also to Malta’s infancy as a nation. Through the chisel marks inscribed on the exhibit, he explores how the stone was once such an important substance, that has now been reduced to a layer of cladding.

Spectators are also invited to dwell on the subject of taste and the fundamentals of beauty. In Edifice, Jean Ebejer’s mirror allows room for discussion on the aforementioned topic and its role in today’s ever-changing culture. Stories are framed within the walls of the gold aluminium. In this respect, the architect is interested in the way spectators react to them, and in turn proposes an exploration of the self through the mirror. Similarly, Nick Theuma’s Training Data, World System creates a space that explores how as humans, we generate so much data through our biases.

Finally, the Cosmic Opera room presents “the tale of two acts.” As I step on Matthew Scerri’s exhibit of sifted dust in Synthetics 3/3, Borg Wirth explains how the architect’s intention was to showcase how as spectators, we take it elsewhere and how we play an important role in its repositioning. Scerri’s work sharply contrasts that of Tracey Sammut. Her Excavations from Our Well explores the soul gaze in being human. Through the clutter unearthed from an excavation in Żabbar, Sammut makes an important point on how we are also creating a new landscape through our manipulation. Bearing this in mind she wants to reposition us and in turn, separate the two worlds.

The individual thoughts unpacked in this body of work, present the architects’ mutual understanding of “where and how entropy persists - and when and why architecture needs to perform”.

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WORDS MONIQUE CHAMBERS