Brise-Soleil - issue 1 - EXPIRING

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Cities featured in this issue

BARCELONA

41.3857° N, 2.1699° E

GUIYANG

26.5831° N, 106.7167° E

BRISTOL

51.4600° N, 2.6000° W

CARDIFF

51.4780° N, 3.1771° W

PARIS

48.8742° N, 2.3470° E

BOLOGNA

44.5000° N, 11.3500° E

LONDON

51.5171° N, 0.1062° W

BERLIN

52.5233° N, 13.4127° E

brise-soleil.tumblr.com/magazine

editorial

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“She was speaking with the voice of a non-architect about how a new medium [...] and a new sensibility -postfeminist cer tainly, but more acutely one of intense affect- could simply and with devastating generosity slip itself on and over the old medium of architecture and its even older sensibilities of authority and autonomous intellection, thereby enveloping the increasingly archaic figure of the architect in an entirely new cultural project.”

(S. Lavin, Kissing Architecture, 2011)

drawings Kristian Fletcher p.2-3 p.130

Architecture is a delicate issue. Swinging between imagination and restraint, its balance is precarious, its grace slowed by ways of reason and rules, air y wishes and a pretence of permanence. To our untrained eyes, its intimate struggle is a poetic plea. To this day, our appreciation of architecture remains touristy, and filled with wonder.

From this unguarded point of view, we have wished to photograph.

With what Sylvia Lavin calls “the voice of a non-architect” when she describes Pipilotti Rist ’s projection Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters) on the walls of the MoMA, in order to record and offer aspects of architecture often overlooked, that mostly move us. Themes of fragility and softness, of ordinar y beauty and transience and cherished memor y of a personal rather than collective kind.

With Brise Soleil we hope to suggest, both through our subjects and mediums of choice, a different perspective to the masculine sensitivity that still seems to prevail in architecture photography. To a logic of glossy huge scales and vaunted immor tality, we aim to respond with a more soothing and pliant, emotional and ar tless one, that we feel would resonate more gently with our modern awareness of the tender, fleeting nature of man and the manmade.

In our first issue Expiring we’ve discovered the bittersweet pleasures of analogue photography, the disposable value of snapshots, the tactile quality of Polaroid. We’ve visited aging buildings draped in memories, and temporar y sites where future dreams grow. We’ve hoped this way to share a bit of the finite, hence so precious, nature of all human creation.

SILVIA BOMBARDINI

1 st floor

poetry

MY LOVE IS BUILDING A BUILDING by E.E. Cummings

2 nd floor

city tales

BERLIN BABYLON

3 rd floor

city tales

ALL PALACES ARE TEMPORARY PALACES: BERLIN

6 22 28

4 th floor

sights

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5 th floor

sights

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SILHOUETTES AND SHADOWS

WENDY HOUSE

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6 th floor

sights

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7 th floor

sights

94

8 th floor

interview

103

9 th floor

collection

113

10 th floor

poetry

SATURATED VIEWS

CELEBRATIONS

THE QUALTY OF PRESENCE: CHELSEA HOTEL an interview with Dmitry Komis

PALE SOUVENIRS

MORNING IN THE BURNED HOUSE by M. Atwood

poetry

BRISE SOLEIL

1st floor

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MY BUILDING

LOV E A

IS BUILDING

poem by E.E. C u mmings photography by A bigail Yue Wang & S ilvia bombardini & UNKNOWN

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poetry

My love is building a building around you, a frail slippery

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poetry

house, a strong fragile house.

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(beginning at the singular beginning of your smile)

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a skilful uncouth prison,

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poetry

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a precise clumsy prison (building thatandthis into

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Thus,

Around the reckless

magic of your mouth)

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poetry

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my love is building a magic, a discrete tower of magic and (as i guess)

1st floor

poetry

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poetry

when Farmer Death (whom fairies hate) shall crumble the mouth-flower fleet,

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He’ll not my tower,

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poetry

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poetry

laborious, casual

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poetry

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where the surrounded smile hangs breathless.

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city tales

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city tales

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BRISE SOLEIL

ust like sandcastles on a tender ground, there seems to be a muted promise of impermanence in Berlin’s architecture, caressed as it is by its tidal flow of reason and hope, and delicately laid on hypersensitive soil. As the Wall comes down in 1989, in the centre of the capital unfolds a newly emptied space: a tempting sliver of naked land flanked on the one side by the austere buildings of Soviet modernism and on the other by democratic glass facades.

Huber tus Sieger t ’s documentar y follows through the 90s the actors of the new architecture as it rises there, in their wish to unify the city, their wish to remember and their wish to move on, the natural pride that defines their discipline and a self-conscious, German wariness of any seed of hubris. And while renowned architects the likes of Rem Koolhaas, Helmut Jahn or Renzo Piano discuss their views on site, it ’s still the patient, tireless murmur of a healing city in the background that we’re really listening to. Upon its ruins, once more Berlin grows.

tex t

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SILVIA

image

BERLIN

Stock footage of post-W WII demolitions proves that it ’s far from its first time. I ts pace is attentive, organic, ever so careful: nowhere is as much attention paid as in the German capital to the hidden metaphors of concrete. But Berlin licks its wounds, and Sieger t por trays a city where memories are given space, but so are dreams. From Potsdamer Platz to Lehr ter Stadtbahnhof, to the Jewish Museum and the Academy of Ar ts, the camera glides all over the city in lulling aerial sweeps, as an incredible soundtrack composed and per formed by Einstürzende Neubauten (Collapsing New Buildings) guides us through the unexpected, methodical elegance of its many construction sites.

To one of these, captured in time -lapse photography, a female voice whispers, softly, Walter Benjamin’s 1940 vision of The Angel of Histor y. “ The phenomenon that we call progress” she says, as the camera looks up to the veiled sky “is this mighty storm”.

BOMBARDINI by

HUBERTUS

SIEGERT

BA BYLO N

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2nd floor

city tales

2nd floor

city tales

Restore the building.

What it houses is something else.

--- Karsten Klingbeil , former building contractor

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BERLIN d

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director Hubertus music Einstürzende

(2001) t

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Siegert Neubauten

3rd floor

city tales

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S ilvia

A bigail Yue B ombardini

BRISE SOLEIL

photography Wang &

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ALL PA L A C E S ARE TEMPORARY PA L A C E S : B E R L I N

3rd floor

city tales

3rd floor

city tales

BRISE SOLEIL

C

ities are, and that is well-k nown, rather layered beings.

Usually unhurried and a bit rigid at times, but their growth is precise, and unrelenting nonetheless, of a cer tain reassuring botanical k ind. Ring after ring, they dilate above their suburbs with promises of infinity, guarding a tender, antique hear t at their core. This isn’t true of course, for Berlin. Berlin was split open and laid bare, its layers fractured along with the Wall, scattered across the ground in a constellation of ruins. Berlin grows urgently, intuitively, passionately. I ts hear t beats impossibly close to the sur face, its facades are clear, pellucid. Berlin reveals and relishes in its ephemeral nature, just like love does: it ’s a city built of feeling and instants, and we’ve wished to por tray it accordingly.

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All Palaces Are Temporar y Palaces, installation by Rober t Montgomer y at C/O Berlin 19.01.2013 - 08.03.2013.

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city tales

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II . glass

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III . i n s t a n t

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th floor 4th 4floor

sights photos

BRISE SOLEIL

silhouettes and shadows

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photography

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S ilvia

B ombardini

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sights

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sights

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W E N DY

HOUSE

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BOMBAR DINI

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C E L E B R A T I O N S

photography & S ilvia

by A bigail Yue Wang B ombardini & Unknown

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I . N ew Ye a r ’ s guiy an g.

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Eve.

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II . C hristmas. L ondon.

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III . C a m e U p o n

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I V . T i me o f R i t u a l s

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8th floor

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inter view

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T he of C helsea

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M ig u el

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B ombardini

V illalobos

Q uality P resence : H otel

An Interview with Dmitry Komis

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From April 27 to April 29 2012, The Quality of Presence was tak ing place -quite literally, quite rebelliously so- at the Chelsea Hotel, New York, Suite 302. Dmitr y Komis, its brilliant curator and a former resident of the Chelsea, told me about space and literature, closets and bathtubs, the way memories can glue like wallpaper to cer tain rooms and what to project on the ruins.

The obsession with new is not particularly interesting; neither is nostalgia.

Change is on a continuum.

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“In its countless alveoli space contains compressed time. That is what space is for.” wrote Gaston Bachelard in his The Poetics of Space, in 1958. And if there’s anywhere time and poetry would come to rest or shelter, hiding out in dusty corners or lingering in shadows, it couldn’t be but the Chelsea Hotel. In which ways do you believe its history and presence, its domesticity and mysteries affected the ar tists you invited to your suite?

I’m glad you mention Poetics of Space, as it is a huge influence on this show and my prior work, par ticularly in look ing at so-called marginalized spaces and exploring the ways in which lived-in spaces affect the viewer experience.

The ar tists all responded to the space in their own ways. Alan Ruiz and Desi Santiago are both par ticularly interested in subliminal and somewhat illegible spaces, each transforming storage/closet spaces for the show. Alan built an inver ted mirror structure to bring attention to the expanding potential of a socalled static space, whereas Desi highlighted the cocoon-like feeling of being inside a closet by creating an other worldly and spiritual object that ver y much inhabited and metamorphosed the space.

8th floor

interview

Colette was drawn to the intimacy and sense of displacement of the bedroom; she wanted to fill that void and evoke her Living Environments from the 70’s. She manipulated the original fabrics from the 70’s for her installation, and I was blown away by the result.

Was your choice of ar tists influenced as well by these surroundings? How did you know they would fit so well in the space, and together?

Absolutely. Although the show came together rather quick ly under the weight of my own misfor tunate evacuation, many of the ar tists and I have had ongoing discussions about the space and its potential. Most of the ar tists deal with issues of identity and domestics in their own practice and we spent a great deal of time nur turing site -specific installations.

I did not want to re -create anything for the show or to force a nostalgic retrospective, but rather to evoke a cer tain mood and allow the historic and borrowed pieces – by Paul Thek, Rober t Mapplethorpe, Francesca Woodman, Alvin Baltrop, Tennessee Williams – to shape the context of the show and inform the work of younger ar tists.

Jen DeNike’s bathtub projection, Cold Cold Hear t, is an example of a piece that seamlessly marries ar t and architecture and encapsulates the unsettling spirit of

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the show. That same bathtub was also the site of many photoshoots for Miguel Villalobos, whose image of Mattias Lauridsen is installed alongside a por trait of an ex, which has incidentally been installed in the bathroom since 2005.

You will notice that most of the figures in the show are veiled, submerged, abstracted, bisected, or hidden; I did not want the viewer to identify with anyone or anything in par ticular.

There is also a decadent squalor feeling that only the Chelsea can evoke. Job Piston was interested in the architecture and the so-called ghosts of the Chelsea; his video meditates on the interior and presence that the staircase conjures. His androgynous figure could be seen as the wandering ghost of Candy Darling, or as I prefer to look it, a more fleeting representation of youth and glamour a la Tadzio from Death in Venice. Projecting his video onto the decaying Chelsea walls amplified this disjointed feeling.

Walter Benjamin’s theories on the vanishing “aura” of an ar twork in our present time were your point of depar ture, and found their most per fect architectural metaphor in the decadent appeal and uncer tain destiny of the Chelsea. However,

8th floor

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the very title of your exhibition, The Quality of Presence, seems to allude to new values, new possibilities perhaps to be found and projected -quite literally in Jen DeNike’s case - in our coming future. What’s left then, once the “aura” is gone?

The title is purposefully ambiguous and can be read in multiple ways. In fact I came up with the title before I k new the Benjamin reference. The Benjamin essay has been pretty much referenced to death so I wanted to take it in a different direction a bit and think about how we navigate space.

I’m not ver y optimistic by nature, I guess it is a cultural value I was not born with, I do not see it as a great agent of transformation. The obsession with new is not par ticularly interesting; neither is nostalgia. Change is on a continuum, so I guess I am more comfor table somewhere in the middle. In the case of Job’s haunting video, we wanted to literally project it onto the decaying walls, onto the ruins so to speak. Not to erect anything new or to whitewash the past, but to build on it.

Another reference of yours was Anthony Vidler’s The Architectural Uncanny.

How much do you reckon our emotional response to a cer tain space, our mix of tensed curiosity and slight disquiet while we climb up the grand staircase at the Chelsea Hotel, could affect our perception and sensitivity to a work of ar t? How did it affect your visitors’?

People talk about the Chelsea as if it has an anthropomorphized presence. For me it is obviously a ver y personal space, having lived in it for years with my boyfriend.

I t is where I fell in love and will forever be etched in my memor y. At the same time it is a ver y public space, one that is beloved and visited by strangers ever yday.

Living there was awkward as I never quite felt at “home”; it is that feeling of estrangement that I took away from The Architectural Uncanny.

The other context of the show is the constant presence of ar t at the Chelsea, which is how residents and visitors all remember it – the lobby, staircase and hallways were completely covered with ar t. The feeling there now is ver y different. Walk ing around and seeing empty walls, and the trace of where ar t once hung is ver y odd and moving. In a galler y or museum, when am exhibition comes down, you paint over the wall or build a new wall, and with it the presence of ar t disappears and for

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the most par t you don’t miss it. I t doesn’t work the same way in a lived-in space, as the personal memories stay with you longer. At the Chelsea it became so bleak because there was nothing to replace the ar t, the energy, and the memor y ; so ever y day and ever y hour you pass, you continually think of what used to be there, not what will be.

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A few months ago, all of the many ar tworks that adorned the Hotel’s halls and lobby have in fact been suspiciously removed from its walls, and visitors and residents were left behind, staring perplexed at their empty spaces. And yet in ar t, empty spaces could sometimes be all there needs to be: the Mona Lisa herself gained much more audience when it was stolen in 1911 and there was nothing to look at. They seem to brim both with memories and potential and appeal to our emotions, resolution and imagination. What do you think, what do you hope will happen next, at the Chelsea Hotel?

Exactly. I hope the owners realize that it is the ar tists and writers who made the Chelsea the stuff of legend in the first place, they should work with and not against them, but there is a sensitivity that is missing there so I’m not sure they ’ll ever get the message. Most of the residents I was close with do not want to stay there under the current conditions. Is that the goal of the new landlord, to make people unwelcome in their own homes to the point where ever yone wants to leave?

The Quality of Presence, with: Alvin Baltrop, Carol Bove, K athe Burk har t, Tom Burr, Colette, Anne -Lise Coste, Jen DeNike, Graham Dur ward, R yan Foerster, Scott Hug, Veruschk a von Lehndor ff, Rober t Mapplethorpe, Megan Marrin, Thomas Øvlisen, Walter Pfeiffer, Michael Rouillard, Job Piston, Alan Ruiz, Desi Santiago, Marc Scrivo, Joshua Seidner, Paul Thek, Panos Tsagaris, Johanna Unzueta, Ricardo Valentim, Miguel Villalobos, Christian Wassmann, Tennessee Williams, Francesca Woodman, Zaldy, Diego Singh and Rober t Wilson.

All photos by Miguel Villalobos.

Inter view first published on asvof.com on 11th May, 2012

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hotography and architecture both were born longing for eternity, with valiant promises to shield and preser ve. There is something impossibly tender, somehow reassuring, in the inevitable failure of their ambitions. A new k ind of emotional investment, a maudlin, romantic quality which is acquired by the building or image when dragged back into the course of time. We come to feel for it, we almost identify. I ts aura is restored, and we wish to take it home: a tiny piece of the Berlin Wall, a fading negative from far away and ver y long ago.

photography

PA L E

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UNKNOWN

SOUVENIRS

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collection

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( Part of the garden, not very tidy, with the washing and the rubish.

Did I tell you that I had a roundabout for my washing. )

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From the start, to keep this thought in view and to weight its constructive value: the refuse- and decayphenomena as precursors, in some degree mirages, of the great syntheses that follow.

--- W. Benjamin, The Arcades Project 1999

collection

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As weathered as the time they once stood in, these negatives and slide found in second-hand markets, or taken by the untraceable individuals, still keep the vibrance of time intact.

See our positive B&W scans from the previous page.

collection

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poe m by ph otography WA NG &

poetry

MAR GAR E T AT WO O D by ABI GA IL Y U E S I LVI A BO M B A RD INI

M orning B urned

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the H ouse

The spoon which was melted scrapes against the bowl which was melted also.

No one else is around.

In the burned house I am eating breakfast.

You understand: there is no house, there is no breakfast, yet here I am.

Where have they gone to, brother and sister, mother and father?

Off along the shore, perhaps.

Their clothes are still on the hangers,

their dishes piled beside the sink, which is beside the woodstove with its grate and sooty kettle,

every detail clear, tin cup and rippled mirror.

The day is bright and songless,

the lake is blue, the forest watchful.

In the east a bank of cloud rises up silently like dark bread.

I can’t see my own arms and legs or know if this is a trap or blessing, finding myself back here, where everything

I can see the swirls in the oilcloth, I can see the flaws in the glass, those flares where the sun hits them.

more

films:

b r i s e - s o l e i l . t u m b l r . c o m / m a g a z i n e

in this house has long been over, kettle and mirror, spoon and bowl, including my own body,

including the body I had then, including the body I have now as I sit at this morning table, alone and happy,

bare child’s feet on the scorched floorboards (I can almost see) in my burning clothes, the thin green shorts

Spring / Summer 2013

and grubby yellow T-shirt holding my cindery, non-existent, radiant flesh.

Incandescent.

Issue 1

editor Silvia Bombardini

cover image Silvia Bombardini

co-editor Abigail Yue Wang

table of contents image Abigail Yue Wang

design / art direction Abigail Yue Wang

fonts Code 3x R Yuji Adachi 9031.com/fonts

photography Abigail Yue Wang Silvia Bombardini Hubertus Siegert Miguel Villalobos Unknown (found photos) writer Silvia Bombardini chinese calligraphy Yidi Cao featured drawings on p.2-3 & p.130 Kristian Fletcher printing assistant Akma Shadilla printing Print Centre, UWE newspaper club binding ALFRED HARRIS BOOKBINDING cameras used Polaroid 660 FUJIFILM Instax 100 Pentax MX FUJIFILM X10 Canon 7D iPhone

Thank you to Alistair Oldham Judith Aston Mark Barton Dominic Grant KAREN LAW Zander Mavor Kristian Fletcher Monica Giunchi Hubertus Siegert Dmitry Komis Miguel Villalobos Suzanne Mooney Marc Kremes

Orator, 1987-2001 John Scheppler Linotype Myriad Pro, 2000 Christopher Slye & Fred Brady fontshop

Thank you to Margaret Atwood and the Random House of Canada for Morning in the Burned House.

paper Papercutz White Card 160GSM

Thank you to Edward Estlin Cummings and the Liveright Publishing Corporation for my love is building a building.

Papercutz White Card 240gsm Paper Crafter Marble Transluscent Blue 100gsm

And many many thanks to all the participants and contributors for the development of the magazine and the complete Brise Soleil project.

Paper Crafter White Vellum 100gsm Newspaper Club Acetate Film 100gsm contact s.brisesoleil@gmail.com y.brisesoleil@gmail.com

Digital version available AT / For the complete project: brise-soleil.tumblr.com/magazine

brise-soleil.tumblr.com/magazine