brussels sprout curatorial magazine fall 2010
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Brusselssprout 2, Fall 2010 Dubai Manifesto 2/3: “Reading Plays Backwards” Issue edited by This Cloud is Fake Editor in Chief Ignacio Gomez-Gonzalez Executive Editor Cesar Bustos Editorial Team Blanca Lopez-Serentill Chun Hei Hwangpo Eugenia Laprida Art Director Hinrik Laxness Graphic Design Anne-Laure Freixes Pauli Roca-Sarrabayrouse This Cloud is Fake Editorial Assistant Angela Negroni Proofreading Daniel Goberna Translator Aodh O’Byrne Printed by Πprint, Belgium Published by Brusselssprout brusselssprout.org ISBN 978-84-609-8200-9
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Brusselssprout is a free curatorial magazine on contemporary thinking and emergent art. Brusselssprout aims to become the first open, independent and alternative platform offering content related to the artistic and cultural world. It strives, with the help of the curatorial endeavours of artists and projects that can contribute a different layer to the ever more monopolized artistic scene. Brusselssprout is a luxury for those of us doing it and hopefully for those who consume it. Adapted for the latest electronic devices (Ipad, Kindle, etc), Brusselssprout can be downloaded quarterly in ePub and PDF format from brusselssprout.org. © 2010 Brusselssprout & This Cloud is Fake and the Artists. Part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, including in the context of reviews. All images courtesy of the authors
“Andy” she asks, “the Canadian government spokesman said that your art could not be described as original sculpture. Would you agree with that?”Warhol answers, “Yes.” “Why do you agree?” “Well, because it's not original.” “You have just then copied a common item?” “Yes.” The interviewer gets exasperated. “Why have you bothered to do that? Why not create something new?” “Because it's easier to do.” “Well, isn't this sort of a joke then that you're playing on the public?” “No. It gives me something to do.”
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CONTENTS Vii Acknowledgements 11 Preface 15 CHAPTER 1 Destituo Nam Appello 21 CHAPTER 2 History Rising Again 37 CHAPTER 3 A Travelling Shot Over Ten Years 43 CHAPTER 4 Dots, Lines, Characters, Frames 47 CHAPTER 5 Architecture R.I.P. (Stone Age – 1960) 53 CHAPTER 6 Where Are You? 63 CHAPTER 7 The “Fern Andra” Of Dubai 69 CHAPTER 8 Display Version 0.07 1/5/88 75 CHAPTER 9 Visual Representation Based Upon Curiosity 83 CHAPTER 10 Empire II 91 CHAPTER 11 The OPM Formula 101 CHAPTER 12 Empire II
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Acknowledgements Vii
Acnlowledgements are due to the following people and institutions for permissions to reproduce photographs used as illustrations: Abbas Abindah, Domnita Petrov, Shailesh Misra, Shin Pells, Chris Still, Tai Woo, David Connor, Rashid Mohtaleb, Mohamed Mohtaleb, Iouri Hendrickson, Thomas Falco, Bill Cox, Paul Peterson, Tim Howe, Irina Stanliskwaya, Julieanne Moll, Tom Watanabe, Kosisho Itsushima, Arabella Rocca, Marie Claire Penn, Steve Mostovl, Todor Georgiev, Andreiev Svakhin, Steve Cohen, Adriana O’Reilly, Xin Mo, Theo Apealby, Setharaman Ahlmayan, Antoin Bustells, Andres Taradajian, Rajani Manjar, Virgilio Percaz, Tsu won, Celina Svenarova, Cyrill Busquets, Hayoa Miyazaki, Mitsuyo Wada, Gregg Rickmann, Augusto Bressino, Timothy Mass, Kynji Fakasaku, Xavier Luisanne, Jacinda Nickson, Horace Carelli, Svetlana Kinestva, Ann Gourett. This Cloud is Fake would like to thanks to all those who have helped with the production of this work.
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Preface
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RENOVATING DREAMLANDS Dubai Manifesto 2/3 Brusselssprout presents a film and a book, the sequels to Andy Warhol’s Empire (1964) and Rem Koolhaas’s Delirious New York (1978) respectively. Works that are essential to understanding the complexity of the twentieth century and its impact on the formation of the Cloud1 in which we’ve been immersed since the beginning of the XXI century (2001-2008). This Cloud is Fake is the guest editor on this issue and presents us (through the use of obsolete media, object Book and object Film), two tools of fantasy and myth, capable of regenerating the beaten prairies of Dreamlands and Ghotic Malibu. Sprinklers don’t sound the same any more. The tools used by Galaxy Gutenberg2 and Galaxy Lumiere as lighthouses to make out shadows in the Cloud, which won’t let us choose where to stop because, from now on we can stop anywhere, everywhere and nowhere, and because to create our own images we lack forms, values and distances. EMPIRE II (2010) Empire II is the sequel to the film Empire, shot in 1964 by Andy Warhol and Jonas Mekas. Empire is a silent, black and white, 8 hour and 5 minute long film that lacks a traditional narrative or characters. The passage from daylight to darkness becomes the film’s narrative, while the protagonist is the iconic building that was (and is again) the tallest in New York City, The Empire State Building, built in 1931. Empire II is the continuation of the Andy Warhol work: creation of non-media as media, film as non-film. The film was shot on July 27th, 2010 by Andre Orione, David Payton and Lohra Ydna and presents Burj Khalifa (aka Burj Dubai) from 6.35 pm till 12.02 pm that very day. Just as in the 1964 film, the film’s narrative becomes the daylight segued into darkness, while the protagonist is the tallest building in the World. Insignificant details such as blinking light mark the passage of time. 5 hours and 45 minutes of film in colour and sound.
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DELIRIOUS BACKWARDS (2010) Delirious New York is a retroactive manifesto for Manhattan. Published in 1978, it presents a mythical island where the collective unconscious of a new metropolitan lifestyle comes true, a factory where all that is natural and real no longer exists. Koolhaas, in a metaphorical way, carries out the same exercise that Philippe Petit3 did four years earlier, when he joined the Twin Towers in a way that they’ll never be joined again. In his “Delirious”, Koolhaas, as a great high wire artist, walks between the tower of the real and the tower of the fantastic over and over again. Delirious Backwards should be considered an exercise in building the tower of fantasy. The book’s eleven chapters present the works of many other artists that form a base where the cable can be anchored, thus allowing us to walk between fantasy and real life yet again. The scale has nothing to do with the one before, Dubai is to the world what Coney Island was to Manhattan.
1_ Cloud computing is a paradigm shift following the shift from mainframe to client–server in the early 1980s. Details are abstracted from the users, who no longer have need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure “in the cloud” that supports them. Cloud computing describes a new supplement, consumption, and delivery model for IT services based on the Internet, and it typically involves over-the-Internet provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources 2_It is possible to estimate a hypothetical size of the Gutenberg Galaxy. In 2004/2005, the British Library claimed it held more than 97 million items, including 13.3 million monographs and the Library of Congress, approximately 130 million items, including “more than 29 million books”. Given an estimated average book size of 6 MB for a purely textual book containing 1 million words, the Library of Congress in this case would take up 174 TB of text. Assuming the same book size of the monographs in the British Library (13.3 million), the result is 79.8 TB. Ignoring duplicate holdings (probably high, in the order of 25–50%), the combined size of the Gutenberg Galaxy by this method would be around 0.25 PB, or around 250 hard disks of 1 TB each. One potential criticism of these calculations is that the definition of “book” is open to debate. 3_Philippe Petit (born 13 August 1949 in Nemours, Seine-et-Marne) is a French high wire artist who gained fame for his highwire walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City on 7 August 1974.
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History Rising Again
or Broadening the Field of Struggle CHAPTER 2
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2. History Rising Again
PLAN The Building is legend. It was, and still is a testament to fortitude and ingenuity. How did this gigantic icon get built? Two men had a dream to build the tallest building in the world. It started with a race to the sky. The Building’s construction and tenancy, its visionaries declared, would see a new day dawning—for the city, the country and for the world What would justify the huge investment in land and building necessary to turn a profit? It would have to be an edifice that was truly glorious and inspiring yet practical and moneymaking. When the owners announced their ambitions, Fortune magazine declared, “If the owners are right, they may fix the center of the Metropolis. If they are wrong, they will have the hooting of the experts in their ears for the rest of their lives.” Consumer spending reflected the boom times. Higher salaries, plus the willingness to purchase on credit, meant more of everything, particularly for the middle class. Cars, refrigerators, radios, telephones, and all manner of consumer goods were “forced” on willing buyers through massive advertising. To own a skyscraper, especially if it could be the tallest ever, would promise not only a strong financial return but powerful bragging rights as well. There is an “economic height” to a skyscraper—a point at which, if more floors are added, the financial gain will turn negative. That, however, did not mean that such buildings would not arise. In the new era self-glorification would often trump economics. After deciding on and obtaining a site for the skyscraper, it was needed a plan. “How high can you make it so that it won’t fall down?” DESIGN The architects got started planning right away. It took sixteen different versions of the design of the Building before they finally gained approval from people involved in the project. The owners wanted a building of modern skyscraper design, demanded a building where form would follow function. Such buildings were said to be appealingly honest. They were simple and functional—and, of equal importance, they were practical and commercially viable.
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What makes the design so great is that for all its simplicity and sheer bulk it has a perfect composition and massing, giving the building a certain grandeur. The building program was clear and concise: a fixed budget, no space more than 28 feet from window to corridor, as many stories of such space as possible, an Exterior of limestone, which meant a year and six months from the beginning of sketches. The first three of these requirements produced the mass of the building and the latter two the characteristics of its design. The plan that evolved was simple and logical: “The logic of the plan is very simple. A certain amount of space in the center, arranged as compactly as possible, contains the vertical circulation, mail chutes, toilets, shafts and corridors. Surrounding this is a perimeter of office space 28 feet deep. The sizes of the floors diminish as the elevators decrease in number. In essence, there is a pyramid of non-rentable space surrounded by a greater pyramid of rentable space.” SPEED Of even greater consideration would be the need for speed: the demand to get the structure up and open for rent-paying tenants as quickly as possible. To make it happen as fast as they could, a team approach to design and construction was essential. No one entity—architect, builder, or developer—could possibly do it alone. The owners, architects, and builder worked in committee to develop the building’s program. This method avoided mistakes in design and costly delays in construction. The constructor would write later, in praise of the committee approach: “I doubt that there was ever a more harmonious combination than that which existed between owners, architects, and builders. We were in constant consultation with both of the others; all details of the building were gone over in advance and decided upon before incorporation in the plans.” The best part about the designs was that the Building could be built both quickly and easily. The materials were brought in, in the order that they were needed to quicken the process. The delivery of the parts followed a schedule so that the workers could build the Building as if it were a toy. Before the construction started, a model of the building made out of plaster had to be made. The model of the Building was 7 feet tall and weighed 525 pounds.
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ELEVATORS Elevators were a main problem, though not because they would compromise structural integrity. Have you ever stood waiting in a ten - or even a six - story building for an elevator that seemed to take forever? Or have you ever gotten into an elevator and it took forever to get to your floor because the elevator had to stop at every floor to let someone on or off? The Building was going to have 102 floors and expected to have 15,000 people. How would people get to the top floors without waiting hours for the elevator or climbing the stairs? Elevators required a great deal of time and took up gobs of space. Of course, tall buildings need elevators; the higher the buildings, the more elevators are required. Elevators, too, are space intensive. In a traditional skyscraper, where all elevators start at the lobby floor, the elevator banks occupy the lion’s share of the lower floors, and valuable space is sacrificed that could otherwise be rented. The higher the tower goes, the more space is sacrificed. To help with this problem, the architects created seven banks of elevators, with each servicing a portion of the floors. For instance, Bank A serviced the third through seventh floors while Bank B serviced the seventh through 18th floors. This way, if you needed to get to the 65th floor, for example, you could take an elevator from Bank F and only have possible stops from the 55th floor to the 67th floor, rather than from the first floor to the 102nd. Making the elevators faster was another solution. The Otis Elevator Company installed 58 passenger elevators and eight service elevators in the Building. Though these elevators could travel up to 1,200 feet per minute, the building code restricted the speed to only 700 feet per minute based on older models of elevators. The builders took a chance, installed the faster (and more expensive) elevators (running them at the slower speed) and hoped that the building code would soon change. A month after the Building was opened, the building code was changed to 1,200 feet per minute and the elevators were sped up. CONSTRUCTION Planning the tallest building in the world was only half the battle; they still had to build the towering structure and the quicker the better. For the sooner the building was completed, the sooner it could bring in income.
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Who would actually build the Building, in retrospect, seemed an easy choice. The firm was the premier skyscraper builder in the city. They specialized in large-scale projects, bringing them in under budget and, just as important, ahead of schedule. To get the Building contract, however, the firm would have to compete for it. They would have to sell themselves and present their case. The construction company was the last of five to make its pitch at a meeting to decide who would win the lucrative deal. “Contrary to popular conception, the principal function of the general contractor is not to erect steel, brick, or concrete, but to provide a skillful, centralized management for coordinating the various trades, timing their installations, and synchronizing their work according to a predetermined plan, a highly specialized function the success of which depends on the personal skill and direction of capable executives.” As part of their bid to get the job, builders told that they could get the job done in eighteen months. When asked during the interview how much equipment they had on hand, they replied, “Not a blank. Not even a pick and shovel.” The company was sure that other builders trying to get the job had assured that they had plenty of equipment and what they didn’t have they would rent. Yet they explained his statement: “Gentlemen, this building of yours is going to represent unusual problems. Ordinary building equipment won’t be worth a damn on it. We’ll buy new stuff, fitted for the job, and at the end sell it and credit you with the difference. That’s what we do on every big project. It costs less than renting secondhand stuff, and it’s more efficient.” Their honesty, quality, and swiftness won them the bid. With such an extremely tight schedule, the constructors started planning immediately. Over sixty different trades would need to be hired, supplies would need to be ordered (much of it to specifications because it was such a large job), and time needed to be minutely planned. The companies they hired had to be dependable and be able to follow through with quality work within the allotted timetable. The supplies had to be made at the plants with as little work as possible needed at the site. Time was scheduled so that each section of the building process overlapped timing was essential. Not a minute, an hour, or a day was to be wasted. The construction of the building was a model of efficiency. A railway was built at the construction site to move materials quickly. Since each railway car (a cart pushed by people) held eight times more than a wheelbarrow, the materials were moved with less effort. The builders created various innovations that saved time, money, and man-power. Instead of having the ten million bricks needed for construction dumped in the
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street as was usual for construction, the constructor had trucks dump the bricks down a chute which led to a hopper (a container that tapers at the bottom for controlled release of its contents) in the basement. When needed, the bricks would be released from the hopper, thus dropped into carts which were hoisted up to the appropriate floor. This process eliminated the need to close down streets for brick storage as well as eliminated much back-breaking labor of moving the bricks from the pile to the brick layer via wheelbarrows. While the outside of the building was being constructed, electricians and plumbers began installing the internal necessities of the building. Timing for each trade to start working was finely tuned. As Richmond Shreve described: “When we were in full swing going up the main tower, things clicked with such precision that once we erected fourteen and a half floors in ten working days steel, concrete, stone and all. We always thought of it as a parade in which each marcher kept pace and the parade marched out of the top of the building, still in perfect step. Sometimes we thought of it as a great assembly line - only the assembly line did the moving; the finished product stayed in place.” Watching the construction of the massive building quickly became an attraction – and a free one at that – for tourists and even hard-edged locals. Passersby never intending to stop were hypnotically drawn to the construction site, while construction workers moved materials and equipment around with the precision and synchrony of a perfectly choreographed ballet. At one point during construction of the massive new building there were 3,500 construction workers performing 60 different tasks every day to get the building completed on schedule. Unfortunately, the U.S. stock market crashed in October, less than one month after the opening construction ceremony, and the Depression started. Construction workers who had jobs working on the giant project were very fortunate to have a good job while tens of thousands of others around the country could not find work. The work was about never forgetting to remember. “If an office worker sitting at his desk happens to lose himself for a few moments in a dreamy reverie, it’s no great matter,” Jim Rasenberger, author of High Steel, observed. “No one dies. Ironwork isn’t like that. The construction site of a steel-frame building is a threedimensional field of hazards. Hazards come from above, from below, from every
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side, and a man up there has to stay alert to these hazards many hours a day. Spacing out can be lethal.” Steelworkers, mostly immigrants, had to be physically and mentally disciplined in order to work at great heights. Laboring night and day, more than 3,000 men managed to construct four-and-a-half floors each week until the Building was completed. OPENNING The entire Building was constructed in just one year and 45 days - an amazing feat! The Building came in on time and under budget. On the cool, slightly hazy opening day, two children cut the red ribbon at the Building’s entrance. The children were there as reported in the New York Times, because the building had been built “for generations to come down through the ages, and the two small children, with scarcely the proper understanding of just what was going on, were there to symbolize for all time to come that this building is to be a monument for generations to come.” Two months ahead of time, the Building was ready to receive tenants. The world was still gripped by the Depression when the world’s tallest building was completed. There were only a few businesses that could afford to rent space in the new building when it opened. It opened with an occupancy rate of only 23 percent— less than half of what would have been expected during normal times. It was a rough start. One bright spot was the observation decks. Although the Building initially had trouble filling its commercial space, the observation deck at the top of the structure became a reliable source of income. Visitors paid a small fee to enjoy panoramic views of the city. On a clear day, they could see as far as 80 miles out. There was no elevator service from the forty-fifth to the eightieth floor. With only two exceptions, the building was completely empty of tenants from the forty-first floor up. The upper floors were bare, without partitions, unfinished, and untenanted. At night, however, one would never guess the void that prevailed in the upper half of the Building. Management decided to keep lights burning on the upper floors, to prevent the tower from looking as if it was floating.
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The Empire State Building was officially inaugurated on May 1, 1931 in the presence of governor Franklin D. Roosevelt. Since 1931 until 1972, it has been the tallest building of the world and was beaten just by the Twin Towers but, after the 9/11/2001 the Empire State Building has become again the tallest building, but only in New York City because, more recently, other skyscrapers in the world have beaten it in height. At the end, the Empire State Building is an architectural marvel, and one of the most striking attractions in the world.
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Where are you?
成為黃昏
or Introducing Geolocation on the afterwold by Sho Ching CHAPTER 6
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6. Where are you Burj Dubai?
Where are you Burj Dubai? Words and names that are passing by. Language holds the power of training and life. Reality is constantly being pushed by endless progress. Words and names are caught up in the movement of its content’s metamorphosis. Burj Dubai ended up without anyone. It wanders alone, like a lost soul. Its name turns off and its body doesn’t belong to itself, it vanishes. It’s neither dream nor ghost. But what kind of reality is it? The search is a curious one, one of a face that simply wants to find a means of adapting to the present, to things as they are. The becoming produces nothing but itself. But Burj Dubai has been stripped of its becoming even before it existed. It vanishes into the noise of the world. But also, given that its end only exists as part of another becoming... Burj Dubai disappears twofold.
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It always suffers the same inability to cross the line, to go to the other side ... so that its form can at least be sketched, it’s vital that its strengths form a relationship with outside forces, those already banished to oblivion. It becomes invisible and immobile on an underground journey. Nothing can happen now nor has happened, and nobody can do anything for it or against it. its territories are out of reach. The big and small wars have ended. Having lost face, it no longer has any secrets. It’s no longer an abstract name, crossing the void. Complete deterritorialization. It has turned into imperceptible becomings. A real break-up is something that can’t be gone back on, it’s irreversible, the past no longer exists. We broke up Burj Dubai. It stands, at sunset, abandoned in a field. No problem to be solved. Just the silence and its own breathing as the only sound.
6. Where are you Burj Dubai?
純淨透明
6. Where are you Burj Dubai?
6. Where are you Burj Dubai?
失去重力
鬼魂是真實的
6. Where are you Burj Dubai?
6. Where are you Burj Dubai?
石地平線
6. Where are you Burj Dubai?
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1. 成為黃昏 (Becoming dusk) 2. 純淨透明 (Pure transparency) 3. 鬼魂是真實的 (Ghost is real) 4. 失去重力 (Losing gravity) 5. 石地平線 (Stone horizon)
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6. Where are you Burj Dubai?
Without becoming one doesn’t exist. Sho Ching whispers its name, sees the fading of a Burj Dubai that is real and possible, but confined to a future that no longer exists. He portrays its struggle against its own demise. The appearances are the shadows and reflections produced by real things. Burj Dubai was truth and myth. But it becomes fantasy, remains in the organs of the senses and resembles the sensations. At times it appears in the dust, between flashes of Burj Khalifa, or between the cement, on turning the corner of Fifth Avenue and 34th.
sary tuning between two becomings, which thus manage to converge in their expiry. Two lines, each with its own image, which interfere, each of them acting on the other, creating a new line of flight, a new reality for each other. A wall has been crossed, there is still no form, but a new becoming has been created ... It has been painted grey on grey. Like a dream that’s difficult to evoke, which is lost upon awaking. The last portrait of Burj Dubai, by Sho Ching.
The expiry of the Polaroid picture endows Sho Ching’s camera with the ability required to portray the search for a possible becoming for the Burj Dubai. A difficult task to portray on a spectrum or an obake. It would appear that the expiry of the very medium used favours the neces-
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Empire II
or continuing Andy Warhol’s Empire CHAPTER 12
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On Saturday 25 July 1964 (46 years ago) Andy Warhol and Jonas Mekas filmed the movie Empire. Empire is a silent, black and white film that lacks a traditional narrative or characters. The passage from daylight to darkness becomes the film’s narrative, while the protagonist is the iconic building that was (and is again) the tallest in New York City. Non-events such as a blinking light at the top of a neighboring building mark the passage of time. It was filmed from 8:06p.m to 2:42a.m from the 41st floor of the Time-Life Buildiing, from the offices of the Rockefeller Foundation. The film was shot at 24 frames per second but is projected at 16 fps, so that, even though only about 6 hours and 36 minutes of film was made, the film when screened is about 8 hours and 5 minutes long. Empire II is the continuation of Andy Warhol’s Empire
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Idea: This Cloud is Fake Original Idea: Andy Warhol Production: Brusselssprout 2010 Š Director: David Payton Lohra Ydna Andre Orione Audio & Audio Edition: Barry Balmaceda Camera: Reynaldo Morgan Edition: Henry Lemond Photography: Antonio Gadiano Runtime: 327 min. Aspect Ratio: 1200x720 Editing mode: HDV 720p Timebase: 29.97fps Frame size: 1280h 720v (1.0000) Frame rate: 29.97 frames/second Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square Pixels (1.0) Fields: No Fields (Progressive Scan)
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brussels sprout curatorial magazine fall 2010
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