www.akbild.ac.at/ika
INSTITUT FÜR KUNST UND ARCHITEKTUR
INSTITUTE FOR ART AND ARCHITECTURE
REVIEW SUMMER 2017 ANALOGUE DIGITAL PRODUCTION CONSTRUCTION MATERIAL TECHNOLOGY ECOLOGY SUSTAINABILITY CULTURAL HERITAGE HISTORY THEORY CRITICISM GEOGRAPHY LANDSCAPES CITIES
ADP ESC GLC
BArch2 The Synthesizer
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BArch4 Vorgriff
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BArch6 Unlocking the Commons
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ADP CMT HTC
MArch //// Em’Bassy /
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MArch Tread Softly
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MArch Nordseekrabben
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Thesis project 14 Image of Fragile Traces / Reflection of Fragile Traces Thesis project A Virtual Cultivation
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Research Intra-Space
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The Synthesizer, rendering of the installation, 2017
The Synthesizer, installation detail, 2017
The Synthesizer, construction detail, 2017
REVIEW SUMMER 2017
Advisors: Kathrin Aste Damjan Minovski
The Synthesizer, video of the installation and the live performance, 2017 vimeo.com/250430675
The Synthesizer, installation and live performance, June 2017, photo: Anna Valentiny
The Synthesizer, exploded drawing of the installation, 2017
Students: Pia Bauer Daniel Binder Ana Maria Chiriac Daron Chiu Iulia Cristian Diana Cuc Leah Dorner Katharina Eder Felix Eibl Ida Frรถhlich Leonie Link Nikolaus Podlaha Lucas Reisigl Hans Schmidt Sophia Stemshorn Ilinca-Rona Urziceanu
REVIEW SUMMER 2017
Kathrin Aste Damjan Minovski
Design Studio BArch 2
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ADP ANALOGUE DIGITAL PRODUCTION
Architecture and m usic exhibit a sort of kinship that is expressed primarily in the categories of space and time. In Ancient Greece, it was believed that the entire cosmos is permeated by a numerical order of rhythm and harmony. From Plato to Aristotle, this notion was developed in the sense that to them, only those arts that relied on numbers, measurements and proportions could create beauty. Both philosophers considered architecture the highest art, as it is capable of reproducing cosmic harmony on a smaller scale by means of the proper use of numbers. Similarly, an interesting passage can be found in the writings of Vitruvius: He recommends that architects study harmonics first, before designing buildings later. This mutual conditionality spans all of Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, persisting into the modern era. Iannis Xenakis, for instance, an a rchitect and composer who worked on projects with Le Corbusier, introduced the theory of proportion from architecture into new music in his composition “Metastasis”.
A further similarity between architecture and music becomes apparent upon closer consideration of two technical terms from the two disciplines: instrumentation and tectonics. In music, “instrumentation” is used to describe the process of assigning the voices of a musical composition to individual instruments; in architecture, “tectonics” describes the process of composing a structure from individual components. The two terms refer to something similar: the process of arranging individual elements in a structure or texture. Consequently, instrumentation and tectonics are comparable structural principles of artistic expression and creation. Both disciplines are experiencing the impact of the digital revolution. Digital technologies have fundamentally changed the fields of music and architecture, opening up new room for potential and development. Computer programmes enable us to create virtual spaces and explore new sounds (e.g. Noise); they cast a new light on both instrumentation and tectonics. Our nine-member orchestra Trauriges Tropen Orchester (TTO) cooperated with the ADP design studio during the summer term. TTO’s works can be seen as positioned at the interfaces between music, performance art, installation art, architecture and theory. Equipped with laptops, analogue and digital synthesizers, effect devices and drum machines, the “Sad Tropics” deconstruct musical compositions and reassemble them in new works, in a permanent interplay of disassembly and reassembly. In a variation on these methods, the students disassembled analogue musical instruments and assembled their elements as a new object – a form of architecture. This synthetic interplay of instrumentation and tectonics was jointly performed at the closing event. Text: Marco Russo Trauriges Tropen Orchester: Jakob Breitlechner, Jonathan Hanni, Fabian Lanzmaier, Lino Lanzmaier, Maurizio Nardo, Ekehardt Rainalter, Marco Russo, Lukas Umek, Andreas Zißler.
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Poetic Influence – when it involves two strong, authentic poets, – always proceeds by a misreading of the prior poet, an act of creative correction that is actually and necessarily a misinterpretation. The history of fruitful poetic influence, which is to say the main tradition of Western poetry since the Renaissance, is a history of anxiety and self-saving caricature, of distortion, of perverse, wilful revisionism without which modern poetry as such could not exist. Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence, 1973
As a novelist, I am a cork on the ocean of story, a leaf on a windy day. Pretty soon I’ll be blown away. For the moment I’m grateful to be making a living, and so must ask that for a limited time you please respect my small, treasured usemonopolies. Don’t pirate my editions; do plunder my visions. The name of the game is Give All. You reader are welcome to my stories. They were never mine in the first place, but I gave them to you. If you have the inclination to pick them up, take them with my blessing. Jonathan Lethem, The Ecstasy of Influence, 2007
Advisors: Hannes Stiefel Luciano Parodi Students: Marcella Brunner Marie Eham Christina Ehrmann Nathaniel Loretz Teodora Marta Prima Mathawabhan Madina Mussayeva Maximilian Pertl Ruben Stadler Patricia Tibu
Precedents: Konstantin Melnikov Garage for 1000 cars Paris 1925 Frederick Kiesler Endless Theatre 1924–26 Oscar Niemeyer Museum of Modern Art Caracas 1955 Louis Kahn Anne Tyng Philadelphia City Tower 1952-57 Jørn Utzon Museum of Silkeborg 1963 Günther Domenig Eilfried Huth FLORASKIN 1971 Hans Hollein Museum in the Mönchsberg Salzburg, 1989 Morphosis/ Coop Himmelb(l)au Arts Park Los Angeles 1989 Peter Eisenman Max Reinhardt House Berlin 1992 Lebbeus Woods The wall of the Bosnia Free State 1993
Marie Eham, Absorbatory – a critical inscription of Frederick Kiesler’s “Endless Theatre (New York)” into contemporary Manhattan, 2017
This second-year studio’s work settled between two extremes: on the one hand, it dealt with re visionist translations of our predecessors’ legacies into different temporal, spatial and societal contexts – in the sense of both those anxious endeavours described by literary scholar Harold Bloom1 and the audacious and joyful transcriptions in the style of literary poacher Jonathan Lethem2. On the other hand, it was informed by what we have learned from Joseph Jacotot3 (by way of Jacques Rancière)4: that education cannot be awarded, but must instead be seized.
According to his Confessions5, Jean-Jacques Rousseau methodically accepted everything he read as truth in his formative years – to the point of sheer madness in the face of all the accumulated verities: truths that more often than not opposed each other. This state of confusion forced him to ultimately take a stand, to argue, to reject, to finally formulate his own positions. The studio repeatedly applied this method. Its results derive from a concept of true appropriation of a particular architectural culture’s heritage and its simultaneous radical questioning. It constitutes bold translations of once seminal work. Text: Hannes Stiefel, Luciano Parodi
REVIEW SUMMER 2017
Hannes Stiefel Luciano Parodi
Design Studio BArch 4
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ESC
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Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence – A Theory of Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973) Jonathan Lethem, “The Ecstasy of Influence – A Plagiarism,” Harper’s Magazine, February 2007 Joseph Jacotot (1770-1840) was a teacher and educational philosopher Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster – Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1991) Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Les Confessions De J[ean] J[acques] Rousseau (A Genève, 1782)
Friedrich Kiesler, Endless Theater (New York), 1924-26
ECOLOGY SUSTAINABILITY CULTURAL HERITAGE
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Stimulus of Porosity, Christopher Gruber, 2017
REVIEW SUMMER 2017
“But the city changes all the time, so it cannot be a frozen word: it would have to be a word in permanent mutation. (…) Cities exist for citizens, and if they don’t work for citizens they die,” claimed the British architect Cedric Price. In projects like the ‘Fun Palace’ (1960-1961) and the ‘Potteries Thinkbelt’ (1964), Price foreshadowed a future city in which citizens live in ‘open forms’ and are no longer considered as passive subjects that live in environments designed by experts, but rather as ‘creative operators’ that organize their common spatial resources.
Advisors: Tom Avermaete Daniela Herold
Students: Marija Katrina Dambe Iklim Dogan Elisabeth Fölsche Burak Genc Christopher Gruber Simon Hirtz Jakob Jakubowski
Jean Makhlouta Madeleine Victoria Malle Brina Meze Petric Tobias Römer Lukas Strigl Aysen Sulmaz Alberte Hyttel Reddersen Julie Timm Vejleaa
Tom Avermaete Daniela Herold
REVIEW SUMMER 2017
Design Studio BArch 6
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GLC GEOGRAPHY LANDSCAPES CITIES
THE STUDIO ON/AS COMMONS In the spring of 2017, the Studio ‘Unlocking the Commons’ tried to position itself along Cedric Price’s line of thinking. With its focus on common resources, codes and practices, it attempted to offer a fresh way to conceive of and design the architecture of the city. The studio pursued two main objectives: first, to develop a set of tools to analyze and understand the commons, and second, to reflect upon a new articulation of what an architectural project is when we conceive of it from the perspective of ‘common urban resources’ and practices of urban commoning. The studio organization followed the theme of the commons in that the studio explicitly aimed to act as a ‘common laboratory’, in which students and tutors created and managed common resources, established common codes and conventions, and cultivated common practices. A REFERENCE LIBRARY In a first phase, the ambition of creating a ‘common laboratory’ was understood as the creation of a common knowledge base that served as a resource for all those involved in the studio. This common resource took the form of a ‘reference library’ of texts and projects that was produced and appropriated collectively. The reference library was composed of fanfold leaflets consisting of images and texts, which were stored in the library as little booklets, but could also be used as exhibition devices. During discussions and presentations in the studio, the library literally functioned as a horizon of reference points for theories and projects. In the first phase of the studio, students were asked to explore a text and a historical project each week, which became part of the common reference library after they had been presented to the group. The format of the reference library in fanfold leaflets makes explicit the idea that this knowledge is constructed, managed and consulted collectively – it suggests a different way
A second part of the studio was dedicated to the study of urban commons of the distant and recent past. Next to its renowned history of municipal planning, the city of Vienna also has a long pedigree of commons. A variety of urban actors, beyond municipal planners, have made contributions to the city’s development and articulated alternative definitions of the commons. In the contemporary city, practices and places of commoning are part of the everyday. The citizens of Vienna recognize common resources, use and manage them. In this part, we probed into the city and analyzed the common pool resources (green space, open space, water, materials, typologies etc.), and the way in which the citizens of Vienna engage with them. Starting from the ‘Urban Commons Vienna’ map, we investigated, drew and understood these resources as elements of an ‘ecology’ (cf. Reyner Banham’s study of LA) of human and non-human actors. Special attention was paid to the role that the built environment plays in articulating, defining and unlocking these common pool resources. Students posed questions such as: What are the commons of the city? What role does architecture play in this commons ecology? And how can we draw and represent these commons? The result was a drawing of the ‘commons ecology’.
By means of the fanfold leaflets, the students were able to construct a different knowledge base of theories and projects. Through close study, they revealed that it is possible to start thinking of the various dimensions of the city’s architecture as collectively held matters. During the studio, students identified a great set of common resources in Vienna, which ranged from abandoned shop spaces to places of silence and craft practices. Mappings were produced in which all of these emerged as crucial assets for the contemporary city. In the last part of the studio, students illustrated that conceiving a project for the commons often requires that we go beyond our preconceptions of what an architectural design is. Intervening in the urban commons of Vienna implied the need to develop new architectural strategies that were sometimes grand and blunt, but more often small and nuanced. This is probably one of the most important outcomes of the studio: architectural design for the commons does not imply the prescription of a new reality, but rather the unlocking, accommodation, caretaking and amplification of what already exists. A set of design attitudes that was explored in the ‘Unlocking the Commons’ studio, but might also inspire others in the future. Text: Tom Avermaete, Daniela Herold
A PROJECT A third part of the studio started with the study of emerging projects for the commons in the Dutch city of Amsterdam. In recent years, Amsterdam has experimented with new ways of developing the city’s architecture and allowed its citizens to collectively formulate projects for the city’s development. Through site visits and discussions with major protagonists, we studied the norms and forms of these new approaches. Subsequently, students explored what a ‘design project’ for the commons in Vienna can be, beyond a simple plan for a building. Starting from the information that was assembled by the entire group in the previous phases, students were asked to reflect upon how they could act – with architectural means – within the ecologies they had mapped. How can a project for the commons be articulated? With which instruments and approaches can they intervene in this commons ecology, or even create a new one? Which material or immaterial interventions are needed to unlock the common pool resources in a new fashion and for a wider group of citizens?
Leporello, Christopher Gruber, Jean Makhlouta and Aysen Sulmaz, photo: Ludwig Löckinger, 2017
Common Map of Vacant Spaces, 2017
AN ARCHAEOLOGY
A NEW SET OF DESIGN ATTITUDES
Stimulus of Porosity, Christopher Gruber, 2017
of engaging with architectural knowledge, the authorship of architecture and the complexity of architecture.
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Project credits: Production New-Territories / IKA 2017 Cast Manuel Bonell Mika Tamori Scenario Hannah Jöchl Dialogue Rebecca Merlic Director Arianna Mondin Cinematography Andreas Zißler Camera & light Hannah Jöchl Sound & sensors Christian Baumgarten Manuel Bonell Svetlana Starygina Props Silvano Patton Suna Petersen Fabrication & concrete Christian Baumgarten Silvano Patton Suna Petersen Robot & computing Vongsawat Wonkijjalerd Kristyna Sevcikova Pre-editing & post-production Arianna Mondin Andreas Zißler Final editing Georgios Hussen (newT) Supported by IKA Academy of Fine Arts Vienna Werner Skvara New-Territories François Roche
REVIEW SUMMER 2017
s/he_ personal secretary FR/WS
Design Studio MArch
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ADP ANALOGUE DIGITAL PRODUCTION
ME & SCHRÖDINGER
All images: NewT/IKA/2017
I have to tell you … a story from long ago … I was an intern, dedicated to a young nerd’s lab, obsessed with playing the “Schrödinger paradox”… I had doubts … my voice strangled by shyness … fear … the “time after time”1 … corrupting his mind and his body … my status shifted, drifted in a perverse situation … I lost my “voyeur” position, placing me as the observer … the more he was trapped in his absolute research, the more I was the one validating the whole experiment by my presence … the paradox became mine … as he was sinking into a psychotic reaction, I became in charge of his dead-alive status … inoculating the venom of his quantum euthanasia, drop after drop, in the continuous secretion of the machine … computing … lines of script … organizing its own discovery … of contingencies … in the solitude of bits … … was submerged by compulsive anaemia … checking the numbers and data of his physiological evolution … he was alive, I promise … was clinically alive … a heartbeat … his brain signals regular and deep … it is a sign … no? Don’t you think so?
Me & Schrödinger, video (04:50), 2017 https://vimeo.com/240462683
1 Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment, sometimes described as a paradox, devised by A ustrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. It illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday objects. The scenario presents a cat that may be simultaneously both alive and dead, a state known as a quantum super position, as a result of being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur. The thought experiment is also often featured in theoretical discussions of the interpretations of quantum mecha nics. Schrödinger coined the term Verschränkung (entanglement) in the course of developing the thought experiment.
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AEDH WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN W. B. Yeats, 1899
In the last three years, the CMT platform has explored a proposal by Gottfried Semper, where he argued that the once distinguished and now extinguished wall-fitter or weaver of mats, whose skills have migrated to the most disparate cultures, has a most important role to play in the history of art. He argued that architecture should be like a garment: “The German word Wand [wall], paries, acknowledges its origin. The terms Wand and Gewand [garment] derive from a single root. They indicate the woven material that formed the wall.” (The Four Elements of Architecture)
How to construct alternatives to the ever more compelling status quo, which sees strength and exclusion as synonymous with good governance? We created three small projects called devices, receptive to their environments, serendipitous and stronger though interaction.
Barricades designed by Semper for the revolution of Dresden in 1849, State Archive of Saxony
GOTTFRIED SEMPER, MIGRANT ARCHITECT Semper grew up in a Germany that did not yet exist. In 1825, at the age of 22, after several arrests for gambling, drinking and duelling, he fled the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich for Regensburg and from there to Paris. The July Revolution of 1830 in France, which deposed King Charles X, enflamed him, and for the next three years, he travelled through Italy and Greece, themselves in the throes of revolution. Conscripted into the Bavarian diplomatic corps to negotiate a truce, he narrowly escaped assassination and an armed showdown with pirates off the Greek coast. In 1834 he accepted a professorship for architecture in Dresden, where in 1841 he built the opera house that made him famous. It burned down in 1869, was rebuilt by him in 1878 and then firebombed in 1945. In 1849, he and Richard Wagner built barricades against the Prussian king, and so he fled again to Paris and then London. In 1855 he assumed the new chair for architecture at ETH Zurich. Granted political immunity in Germany in 1871, he spent the last 8 years of his life in Dresden and then Vienna, where he designed the Semper Depot, the home of our first device.
A collaborative exhibition between students of Bard College, Berlin and the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna May 11-13, 2017 Berlin Wall Memorial International conference “The Impossible Order: Europe, Power, and the Search for a New Migration Regime” There has always been migration. It is not migration itself but how it is framed that makes it costly, violent, and subject to exploitation. In an ever more complex environment, we must experiment at the interstices, seeking possibilities between manifold limitations and restrictions. Bidding farewell to simplistic “grand” solutions, we insist on the freedom to be mindful, to build new connections, establish new practices and opportunities. “Tread softly because you tread on my dreams” reminds us that the limitations of human mobility trespass on the realm of ideas, of memories and hopes. Physical borders infringe on prospects and expectations; space precipitates into time.
A FIRST DEVICE / TREAD SEMPER SOFTLY The first device was provoked by a discussion about the modus operandi of the entrance exams for Fine Arts at the Academy. Currently every applicant must turn up in person on a specific day in the year with a portfolio, and return some three days later to collect it. This renders it very difficult for applicants from far away who need visas and are not rich. Applicants may not send their portfolio, because there is no storage space for their work. The room where the aptitude tests take place is part of the Semper Depot built in 1874-77 for the Royal Court Theatre. Situated on the second floor, it is huge, 830 square metres in area with a height of 13 metres. It has proven itself capable of absorbing the most diverse and challenging range of uses over time. We looked closely at this room and proposed devices that would enable it to absorb this new function without compromising its current usage.
First device, collage, Clara Fung, 2017
Set against a background of world migration, where people fleeing war, economic struggles and prejudice are finding it difficult to forge their way, where freedoms gained are taken away, and new rules have far-reaching consequences, our studio looks closely at the many possible manifestations of (an) architecture and/of migration. In a world where complex problems are treated with simplistic answers, we focus on treading softly, looking closely to discover the potential in what is already there.
First device, collage, Aya Kurz, 2017
This last line from the poem “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” by William Butler Yeats expresses an extravagant passion in laying the heavens’ embroidered cloths at the feet of the beloved. In August 2016, climatologists presented the recommendation that a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – be declared. Humanity’s impact on the Earth and the heavens is now so profound. In an epoch defined by nuclear tests, plastic pollution and domesticated chicken, we must now shiver at the terrifying vulnerability of the heavens in our hands.
A SECOND DEVICE / TREAD SOFTLY – THE IMPOSSIBLE ORDER MIGRATION HISTORY AND MEMORY IN A POST-MIGRANT CONTEXT
The exhibits stem from the academic research carried out by Bachelor students in Liberal Arts at Bard College Berlin. They grapple with issues of identity and belonging, of relating migrants’ memories to the memorialisation of the Holocaust in Germany, of gender visibility and invisibility, and of irony as a tool to cope with the ambiguities of migrant existence. The installation in which these exhibits are embedded was designed and built by Master students in Art and Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. The students have employed means and materials that have been loaned, given or recycled, as such proposing an important alternative to consumerist methodology. The finished installation seeks neither to master nor to serve the individual embedded pieces, but instead to enter into a dialogue with them. Ideally, this dialogue should construct a complex system of interactive messages and materials that is convincing and sustainable, connected to its current domicile and to future domiciles: a post-migrant installation. Statement by Marion Detjen and Michelle Howard
A FIRST DEVICE / TREAD SEMPER SOFTLY THE MIGRATORY CEILING CLARA FUNG The geometry and construction of the Semper ceiling have been translated into a mobile installation, creating another dimension of scale and mode of interaction between the space and its occupants. The expressive ceiling carves a mapping of grids with arc plates that affect the whole space, but can only be perceived visually. A number of inflated balloons shaped to fit snugly into the indentations rest there and are dispersed throughout the room in a series of phases. The shaped balloons shape the spatial atmosphere, permitting it to respond to different demands and embrace its new migratory attributes. A FIRST DEVICE / TREAD SEMPER SOFTLY SHAPE M EMORY SEMPER AYA KURZ
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The multi-purpose hall is huge; it is easy for any normal-sized object to disappear there. I chose to use a wall at the entrance, which holds a long narrow balcony at a great height, as a docking station for an intervention intended to hide in plain sight. The depth of the balcony dictates the depth of my intervention at rest. The device can divide the room into multiple levels: a sitting level, a working level, stairs and lighting levels. It is made from a shape-memory alloy that remembers the form given to it when energy is applied. When opened, the whole room becomes an auditorium, and the space behind a classroom. It can quickly fold and disappear into the background, effectively erasing its own memory.
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Second device, island 1-4, axonometric projections by Adam Hudec, installation by the students of the CMT studio, 2017
TREAD SOFTLY BECAUSE YOU TREAD ON MY DREAMS
WALL – GARMENT
Third device, photo: Clara Fung, 2017
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Carrying the Curtain of the S emper Opera, Dresden 1974, part of a campaign by Dresden inhabitants to rebuild the opera after it had been firebombed in 1945.
Second Device, photo: Ella Felber, 2017
REVIEW SUMMER 2017
Michelle Howard
REVIEW SUMMER 2017
Design Studio MArch
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CMT
CONSTRUCTION MATERIAL TECHNOLOGY
Students: Ella Felber Clara Fung Ka Yee Victor Gautrin Adam Hudec Aya Kurz Clarissa Lim Kye Lee Duha Samir
ISLAND ONE Artist: Nina Lewis, “A Haggadah Migration Memory” The first island houses the work of just one person and became our place of predilection to meet, discuss and make plans as a group. So, too, for those who visited the exhibition. ISLAND TWO Artists: Ghaitaa Alshaar, “Mahatat/Stations” Victoria Martinez, “Sonnenallee < > Niederschönhausen” Margarete Hattingh, “Friedrich” Dachil Sado, “UNIdentity” The second island occupies the one generous space in the building, with an open view onto a park created from the ruins of a railway station bombed in World War II. We annexed this space, constructing a room-high layered wall between it and the rest. Sitting or standing in this – sometimes blindingly bright – space, one listens to stories about flight, migration and movement. ISLAND THREE Artists: Muhannad Kaikonnie, “A Place to Smoke - Cafe Kotti” Tamar Maare, “Migration Memes” Bono Siebelink and Clara Canales Gutierrez, “Integration Guru” The third island sits astride a redundant seating space in front of the conference room. It is anti-hermetic in that it builds walls, but only at half height, contains one project, provides the vantage point for another on the opposite side, and throws out spores in QR codes. ISLAND FOUR Artists: Joel Dombower, “Paths” Maheen Atif and Anna Gersh, “Migrant Women: A Litany for Survival” Wafa Mustafa, “Travels” The fourth island is situated in the furthermost point of the building. We emphasised this long path by lengthening it yet more and, in so doing, creating a labyrinth to be penetrated. Installation by CMT students
THE EXHIBITION AS ARCHIPELAGO Rather than hanging a continuous band of individual pieces, we elected to establish four islands that would each house a group of works. The philosopher Edouard Glissant had proposed the museum as archipelago. Archipelagic thought makes it possible to say that neither an individual’s identity nor the collective identity are fixed and established once and for all. I can change through exchange with the other, without losing or diluting my sense of self. In some cases, the connections between works had been intended from the beginning; in others, these connections were newly discovered or related to their spatial presence. Each construction, though individually conceived, is connected through its materials: white fire-resistant cardboard, cable binders and pencils.
used embodies these ideas. Embroidered into one connected structure, the exhibits find their place, creating something richer than before, without losing their unique characteristics. We address the restrictive borders of the room, while at the same time connecting its openings, an ambiguity omnipresent in the migration and integration debate. The devices of “Tread Semper Softly” hang loosely from a stressed cable. As the opacity and density decrease, the fabric dissolves. “The Impossible Order” is displayed on a net and as an archipelago, the exhibits forming islands of increased intensity, fixed by worn stones from the Danube riverbed, themselves having travelled a very long way. A centre does not exist; one is asked to think elliptically and to make connections, opening a broader field than each on their own ever could.
PALIMPSEST
THE WALL-FITTER
The signage for the exhibition was applied by hand, using a thick 2B pencil, directly onto the white, fire-resistant cardboard in both English and Arabic. In this way, the subtle differences and surprising connections between these scripts were made visible. With the next montage of the exhibition, it can be rubbed out and written over, its traces creating a palimpsest over time.
Gottfried Semper proposed that enclosure derived from the art of the wall-fitter. The exhibition walls do not aspire to simple rectilinear division of space: they are freestanding and vibrate a little when shaken, they taper and bulge, they are porous, easily dismantled, adjusted and reassembled, can withstand tension and pressure while remaining flexible, and can be climbed using the triangular fasteners. We experimented, assembled walls that promptly fell again, improved, failed again and restarted. We made mistakes, compromises, built structures, developed techniques and tools, and finally we assembled an exhibition.
A THIRD DEVICE / TREAD SOFTLY – THE EMBROIDERED CLOTH This third device reflects our thoughts on migration, stemming both from our own personal backgrounds and our collaboration in Berlin with students who have only recently been granted asylum. In the first device, we expressed our ideas in individual works. For the second, we worked in three small groups. Here we collaborated, connecting and integrating our previous works. The challenge lay not only in the work, but also in confronting our very different cultural backgrounds and political views. Gottfried Semper argued that there is not always a need for explicit connections to reveal the interrelated nature of ideas. Weaving, embroidery, and later mosaic and enamelled brickwork transformed walls into more than mere protection. They became narrative devices, exemplifying their materiality as well as the culture(s) they emerged from. The flexible network of textile walls we
Text: Michelle Howard
Wall-Fitter, photo: Ella Felber, 2017
Advisor: Michelle Howard
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Symposium, “Do We Want Populism, or Do We Want Architecture?”, IKA, June 2017
REVIEW SUMMER 2017
Advisor: Angelika Schnell
Guest critics and input: Anamarija Batista Waltraud Indrist Eva Karel Elke Krasny Dörte Kuhlmann Achim Reese Andreas Rumpfhuber Andreas Spiegl Eva Sommeregger Christian Tonko
to turn inward to ourselves and our psyche, or we still seek familial connection and the formation of a common identity after all, manifested in a single-family house.
Photo: Anna Valentiny
Students: Maximilian Hertz Ronja Hye Linda Lackner Marlene Lübke-Ahrens Daniela Mehlich Patrick Pazdzior Jakob Rockenschaub Doris Scheicher Anna Valentiny
Symposium panel 1 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE POSTMODERN IDENTITY DISCOURSE MARLENE LÜBKE-AHRENS In the Rear-view Mirror “Silence inside. Emotions outside. The windows are misting up. I turn the ventilation up to three. Rustling. A few birch seeds tumble through the air. Glancing into the rear-view mirror, I suddenly see a man, tastefully dressed, with an interesting face and a likeable presence: I think I recognize Pierre Bourdieu, but isn’t he dead? Individualism or community? City or countryside? Residential cell or detached house? Freedom or security? Either we seek a residential cell in dense residential construction, preferring to live alone in order
The conservative concept of the nuclear family is fundamentally a long outdated model of the family, superseded by cohabitation and patchwork families that clearly symbolize its failure, or by same-sex unions, but especially in uncertain times like the present, people increasingly seek stability in life. What could be more obvious than finding that stability in the nuclear family? Given that building a home is a joint endeavour and a bet on the future, there will be no decline in the housing market in our times, when people are desperately trying on something that actually seems to be long outdated. We want to be able to rely on something, and think we can find it within the constraints of the nuclear family, a construct that comprises more problems and obstacles than dreams-come-true. It is absurd and human all at once. Yes, I have my social contacts here, but where did my personal freedom go?”
RONJA HYE Life in Sennestadt – Life on the Drawing Board “Many cities were in ruins after the Second World War, among them Bielefeld. The effects were devastating: the bombings had claimed 1349 victims. Supply lines for water, power and gas, as well as 15,688 homes, had been completely or partially destroyed. Long after the end of the war, life in the city was still marked by homelessness and hunger, black market and panic buying, flat allocation and food rationing.3 To address these problems, the city of Bielefeld applied to the ECA (Economic Cooperation Association) for funds provided for reconstruction by the European Recovery Program, better known as the Marshall Plan.4 In the end, the region of Bielefeld announced a competition for the creation of a new city in 1954, which was won by the planner Hans Bernhard Reichow and his team. The Sennestadt project was subdivided into twelve residential projects of 300 flats each.5 For my grandmother, Sennestadt became her home – no matter if Reichow was a Nazi, or the neighbours were Nazis, or everyone was, or no one – and she calls herself a true Sennestadt native. She has learned to live with the fact that today, people from different nations and people with various sexual orientations live in her street. She practices tolerance. Even if a lot has changed in her life and her neighbourhood since the 1980s, this is her home.”
Angelika Schnell
In his satirical short story “Nordseekrabben”,1 Bertolt Brecht sets a former World War One soldier – described as a “Dionysian trench pig”2 by Helmuth Lethen – loose on a rampage through a modern Bauhaus apartment, rebelling against the educational aspiration and self-imposed attitude of rationality reflected in each everyday object and detail. It has often been popular and, more often than not, populist to mock the puritanical nature of the modern era, as was frequently done by postmodernists in the 1970s and 1980s. Whether it was Charles Jencks pronouncing the death of modernism, or Stanley Tigerman depicting Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Crown Hall sinking like the Titanic, or yet Robert Venturi mockingly coining the maxim “Less is a bore” – we have to call to mind the fury of postmodernist criticism of modernism in order to grasp the difference from present-day populist protests, which rail in turn against postmodern pluralism and relativism, alleging that these have spawned a politically correct policing of expression that necessarily underestimates the longing for identity due to considering the concept an illusion. Meanwhile, racism, chauvinism and sexism have paradoxically become established as forms of a popular protest movement. However, the present-day, right-wing populist attacks against equally populist, postmodern relativism seem to have lost sight of architecture as the preferred battlefield of political and cultural conflict. Of course, this does not necessarily mean that architecture is not affected; instead, its role in the reinforcement of present-day right-wing extremism and populism must be considered more closely. This is all the more urgent because of the open question of the precise relationship between debates and themes critical of modernism and culture in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and cultural (and other) crises of the present day. In the HTC Master studio 2017, nine students explored and elaborated questions and positions diagnostic of our era of right-wing populism and global crises. They presented their findings to an audience during a three-hour symposium and discussion on 21 June 2017. The symposium consisted of three panels featuring different content and three short presentations each. Text: Angelika Schnell
DORIS SCHEICHER ... From Here to Timbuktu: Destruction of Culture and Other Crimes Against Humanity. “In September 2016, the destruction of cultural heritage was punished as a war crime for the first time. The Malian jihadist Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi confessed to having participated in the destruction of cultural monuments in the historic city of Timbuktu, most of which had been included in UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1988. As a member of the radical Islamist movement Ansar Dine, which has close links to Al-Qaeda, Al Mahdi had ordered the destruction of numerous cultural sites during their occupation in 2012. For this, he was sentenced to nine years in prison by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and for the first time in the history of international law, the principle that attacks on a people’s identity and culture are a crime was applied.6 From their effective media coverage and global dissemination, we can conclude that the Islamists’ actions were intended to cause consternation around the world. This becomes particularly apparent if we consider how targeted the actions in Timbuktu were. Leveraging awareness of the city’s historic significance and its importance as a World Heritage Site, the Islamists reached a broad audience, nationally and internationally.”
Symposium panel 2 THE FUTURE OF HOMO CREANS IN THE ANTHROPOCENE
HTC HISTORY THEORY CRITICISM
had followed a stringent course of development. Nothing would remind such a time traveller of the USSR’s five-year plans, the Nazis’ concentration camps, or of the ‘triple crisis’ that the remaining two dozen, old liberal democracies faced in the early 1970s: the ‘orchestra’ of the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, the oil crisis, and the acknowledgment of the Limits of Growth by the first scientific publication on the topic. If, as Harari states, ‘A critical examination of Dataist dogma is likely to be not only the greatest scientific challenge of the twenty-first century, but also the most urgent political and economic project,’8 then is empathically turning to the Other the most urgent social transition of the twenty-first century, in order to do justice to humankind’s genesis and to our responsibility toward our fellow beings?” PATRICK PAZDZIOR Aesthetic Capitalism, Infosphere, Bullshit Work and Architecture “For a number of years now, a world without the Internet, algorithms, robots and performance has been inconceivable. We live in an Infosphere9 of Aesthetic Capitalism10 that has not only been permeated by the cultural industry11 for a long time, but in which every activity and all production is also aesthetically charged. Our economy is increasingly based on the (re-)production of information instead of goods. Architecture, understood as a certain way of planning buildings, could be seen to have primacy among currently prevalent forms of production, as architects do not produce buildings but, as a rule, develop abstract information that is subsequently represented in ever greater detail – in the form of drafted plans in earlier times, and today increasingly through data alone. A new generation of architects must find their place within the Aesthetic Capitalism of the Info sphere, without running the risk of creating more bullshit jobs, whether in architecture itself or in the professions depending on or supplying to it. This place will be – how could it be otherwise – political.” ANNA VALENTINY Postcards of Mother Earth “What will the architecture of the future have looked like? What will the machine’s eye see from outer space on humanity’s home planet, when it is all over – or will this postcard actually be sent to galaxies far away by a descendant on Earth leave? Together with the images that emerged from the definition of the theme, Postcards of Mother Earth proposes a design based on an exploration of architecture’s form in the future and the present. I have Hans Hollein comment the design by making a collage of his early texts and juxtaposing them with Postcards of Mother Earth. These are image captions that reduce the allpervasive factor of time to absurdity – the archaeologies of the future are juxtaposed on an equal footing; in the year 1 002 017, they will have been, like today and long ago.”
MAXIMILIAN HERTZ Conscience or Singularity. Probe on Mankind’s Artificial Dissociation of Intelligence from Conscience in the Face of an Emerging Technological Singularity “Crisis is almost omnipresent nowadays – at least since the bursting of the housing bubble in 2008. A dim anxiety, concerned with the ‘end of old certainties’, seems to gain ground in media discussions and spread into the niches of local backwaters. Whatever form crisis might take, it is sensually perceived with physical or mental pain. It involves a decisive momentum, as it inherently contests experiences, norms or values. The current self-doubt of liberal Western culture is all the more astonishing since, as Israeli macro-historian Yuval Noah Harari declares, ‘Liberalism (...) has won the humanist wars of religion,’7 after decades when most countries in the world were either under totalitarian rule, military dictatorships or in the Communist sphere of influence. If one had slept through the ‘short 20th century’ – between 1914 and 1989 – one would have thought that socio-economy
1 Bertolt Brecht, „Nordseekrabben“ (1927), in: B. Brecht, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 11, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1967), 153-162 2 Helmuth Lethen, Verhaltenslehren der Kälte. Lebensversuche zwischen den Kriegen, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994), 167 3 Bernd J. Wagner, “30. September 1944: Ein Luftangriff zerstört das alte Bielefeld” Bielefeld, accessed July 10, 2017, www.bielefeld.de/de/biju/stadtar/rc/rar/01092014.html 4 Hans Stimmann, “Standardisierte Unterkünfte,” Bauwelt, accessed June 30, 2017, http://www.bauwelt.de/themen/Standardisierte-Unterkuenfte-Fluechtlinge-Zweiter-Weltkrieg2480368.html 5 Sennestadt – Geschichte einer Landschaft (Bielefeld: Sennestadt GmbH, 1980), 227-231 6 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, accessed S eptember 27, 2016 7 Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus (London: Vintage, 2017), 318 8 Ibid., 459 9 Luciano Floridi, Die vierte Revolution (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2015)
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10 Gernot Böhme, Ästhetischer Kapitalismus (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2016) 11 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung (Frankfurt am Main; S. Fischer Verlag, 1969) 12 Kenneth Frampton, “America 1960-1970. Notes on Urban Images and Theory”, Casabella, no. 359/360 (1971): 25-40 13 Elihu Katz, David Foulkes, “On the Use of the Mass Media as ‘Escape’: Clarification of a Concept”, Public Opinion Quarterly, no. 26 (1962): 378 14 Joachim Fischer, „Rekonstruktivismus als soziale Bewegung“, in: 204 ARCH+, 10/2011, p. 76-79 15 On 30 April 2017, the newspaper Bild am Sonntag published a guest editorial by the German Federal Minister of the Interior entitled “We are not b urka”. The editorial included a ten-point catalogue on German “Leitkultur” (core culture), triggering a debate about integration and national identity throughout G ermany; www.bild.de/51509022 (downloaded on 08 August 2017).
Photo: Angelika Schnell
DO WE WANT POPULISM, OR DO WE WANT ARCHITECTURE?
Design Studio MArch
Photo: Anna Valentiny
REVIEW SUMMER 2017
Symposium panel 3 NO END TO THE CRISIS OF REPRESENTATION JAKOB ROCKENSCHAUB Of the Opacity of Symbols and Models as Non-places “With its ever faster rhythm, the economy of neoliberalism is increasingly based on politics of pre-emptive hyper-reality, according to Armen Avanessian and Suhail Malik; this becomes apparent, for instance, in the expansion of echo chambers in social media. Through speculative anticipation of the future, the algorithm operationalizes personal interests in the present. The result is an increasingly fine-grained dispersion of individuals, whose characteristics are ever more clearly distinguishable from one another in a paradigmatic impetus. At the same time, the space of political action appears incapable of keeping up with the complex varieties of a globally operating free market. In response to new social contexts, practices that seem nostalgic are advanced by both the Right and the Left. According to Baudrillard, the politics of representation have ground to a halt, so that symbols have become opaque. In their profusion and concatenation, they enable the resuscitation of absent reality, paradigmatically circling above the tiny facts as an independent, second layer.” LINDA LACKNER In the Name of the People: Architectural Discourse on Postmodern Populism “The nature of the people was explored in detail in an exchange between Denise Scott Brown and Kenneth Frampton in the Italian architectural journal Casabella in 1971. Scott Brown consistently argues from the perspective of the Chicago school of sociology, which forms a basis for empirical cultural studies. Popular culture has become a part of the latter, overriding the formerly strict, hierarchical boundary between high culture and popular culture. Frampton, in turn, considers himself a proponent of critical theory, and voices suspicion of society’s manipulation by the mass media, popular culture and thus the culture industry.12 The two protagonists can be interpreted as representing a higher-level paradigm shift in cultural studies that is concomitant with architectural postmodernism, and can be summarized by the question about the influence of new mass media on society. The latter, the position of critical theory, asks, ‘What do the media do to people?’13 – by this implying said suspicion of manipulation by the mass media. The former, and thus Denise Scott Brown as a proponent of the Chicago school of sociology, asks, ‘What do people do with the media?’ – implying a subject with free agency, to which the market adapts instead of merely manipulating it.” DANIELA MEHLICH Dangerous Reconstructions “The German reconstruction debate is an example of an originally left-wing discourse that has been co-opted by its right-wing critics. The debate about Germany coming to terms with its past – in which the reconstruction of historical buildings can be seen as one of its instruments – was initiated by the Left in the 1960s, and has taken on a life of its own in the past two decades in the form of constant reconstruction projects initiated and supported by citizens. In this context, the continuous reconstruction of historical buildings in the recent past must be understood not only as a sign of a crisis of architecture, but as a crisis of the societal context in which it is embedded. In ‘Reconstructivism as a social movement’,14 sociologist Joachim Fischer attempted to diagnose this present-day society – and instrumentalized architectural reconstruction on behalf of a bourgeois, antipluralist, anti-democratic, decidedly national identity. It is obvious that in times when once again, there are public debates about ‘German Leitkultur’ (Thomas de Maizière15), and the city palaces not only of Berlin, but also of Potsdam and Braunschweig have been reconstructed, the long-lasting German reconstruction debate is more topical than ever. The following essay uses the opportunity for a diagnosis of our times, and interrelates the ‘reconstructivism’ proclaimed by Joachim Fischer, the reconstruction of the Berlin City Palace, and the right-wing populist organisation PEGIDA.” The texts are excerpts from esssays written in the course of the studio. They were presented at the conference “Do We Want Populism, or Do We Want Architecture?” organized as the final presentation by the students. The complete essays can be downloaded from: https://issuu.com/ika-vienna/docs/populism
REVIEW SUMMER 2017
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IMAGE OF FRAGILE TRACES / REFLECTION OF FRAGILE TRACES
Thesis Project Kay Sallier
Advisors: Michelle Howard Oliver Domeisen August Sarnitz
SUBMERSION – PLATO’S CAVE
Tracks on the ground disappear into the depths of the cavernous spatial continuum. Blurred surfaces flow as a tubular corridor into the Earth’s
THESIS PROJECT
interior. A backwards glance reveals only hazy silhouettes. (…) Neither the beginning nor the end of the path is visible anymore – only the play of light and shadow.
ROMAN BATH AT PRATERSTERN IN VIENNA Vestiges of a vanished world – the few extant documents, floor plans and pictures of the Roman Bath built in 1873 at Praterstern in Vienna show the fading copy of a romanticized bathing complex imagined within an architectural yesterday. Having been forgotten and absorbed into the profane nature, this place symptomatically stands for the fragility of historic buildings in the district of Leopoldstadt. The remaining fragments reflect the traces of a time when prosaically experienced reality was exchanged for a phantasmagorical dream world. The project repeatedly transforms this place into an island on the island of Leopoldstadt, which was once characterized by arms of the river Danube and alluvial forests, and then changed into a staged space. The newly generated bathing landscape is a deformed, theatrical reflection, transmitting blurred, fluid and ephemeral silhouettes of the space of the former building. Therein the dialectic of cover/uncover, emerge/ submerge and sharpness/blur forms a spatial transcript of the former bath on a tactile and visual level. The reflexive, replicating character of historicism and its soft focus on history is methodically corrupted, referencing Echo mythology; traces fade and are superimposed by themselves onto a speculative and imagined palimpsest. Through design, atmosphere and phenomenology, this work projects collected material and explores the ambiguity of reference/quotation, original/copy and image/reflection.
Abbilder fragiler Spuren (Image Of Fragile Traces), Model of the basin landscape and the existing structures, groundfloor, 1:200, polystyrene and plaster
NYMPHAEUM – FADING FOCUS
The pull of the curve leads into a sea of mist and watery reflections. Veils of water make all human contours fray and wash away, dissolving them into virtual images in the mist. (…)
GROTTO – FLUID SILHOUETTES OF SPACES AND BODIES
[T]RAUMBILD ([DREAM]SPACE IMAGE), Shot of the model showing fragments, 1:100, polystyrene and plaster
A distorted mirror image of the negative and positive volumes of the axial spatial scenery lined up above projects formations of shallow and deep basins of water. The dark, labyrinthine web is an aging portrait of the idealized spatial silhouette from 1873, shown in section. (…) In darkness, the relation between visual and tactile elements is inverted.
Grotto – Fluid silhouettes of spaces and bodies, collage
REVIEW SUMMER 2017
A VIRTUAL CULTIVATION
Thesis Project Uwe Brunner
Advisors: Kathrin Aste Luciano Parodi
The world we live in is becoming ever more complex. We are gaining access to a steadily growing amount of information on biological diversity. At the same time, we are experiencing a ubiqui tous and constant theorization of our everyday life. We are acting in a space that is composed of a multitude of dimensions, but we are only capable of perceiving a fraction of these coexisting spatial realities with our senses. However, it is an intrinsic desire of humanity not only to be aware of this complexity that surrounds (or penetrates) us, but to strive for techniques and methods of depicting it.
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THESIS PROJECT
It is therefore a crucial question how we can achieve a process-orientated perception of space and what ways of depicting it are possible. The exploration is based on the illustrations of various organisms by the German biologist and philosopher Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) that he published in his book “Kunstformen der Natur” (Art Forms in Nature, 1904). To achieve this goal, it is important to understand and depict space itself as a product of a variety of virtualities and simultaneously existing events. That means perceiving architecture and form as active entities that are in a constant process of trans formation and change. Further, the project aims to enrich this approach by an aesthetic theory that links the concept of active space to a notion of sympathy in an architectural context.
Uwe Brunner, 2017
1 See: Lars Spuybroek, The Sympathy of Things. Ruskin and the Ecology of Design (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016)
REVIEW SUMMER 2017
RESEARCH
Research Project FWF – PEEK
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INTRA SPACE INTRA SPACE is an experimental zone, set up to explore diaphanous1 relations between virtual figures (Carla, Charly, Clara, Murphy, Khaled, Benny, Bob, Old Man, Dame (maybe Vivienne)), humans, technical equipment and machines. It was realized between 2014 and 2017, and it is the third project in a row – after “Welt, Version 1+2”2 and “Hands have no tears to flow”3 – to explore the materiality, construction, form and appearance of our bodies in a near future.
Funded by FWF Austrian Science Fund [AR299-G21]
Esther and Christina with two Carlas, 2nd generation. INTRA SPACE, 2017
Collaborators: Michael Wimmer and Christian Freude, TU Vienna, Institute of Computer Graphics and Algorithms Dennis Del Favero and Michael Thielscher, UNSW, iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research Birk Weiberg and Yvonne Wilhelm, Zurich University of the Arts, Institute for Contemporary Art Research Ursula Frohne, University of Cologne, Institute for Art History Mohammad Obaid, Chalmers University of Technology, t2i laboratory Christian Theobalt and Nils Hasler, Max-PlanckInstitute for Informatics Saarbrücken/The Captury Diane Shooman, University of Art Linz, Institute of Fine Arts and Cultural Studies Gabrielle Cram, Tanzquartier Vienna Advisory board: Karen Barad, University of California Santa Cruz Marcos Cruz, The Bartlett School of Architecture Bojana Kunst, University of Giessen Sanford Kwinter, University of Applied Arts Vienna Maria Palazzi, Ohio State University Jürgen Sandkühler, Medical University of Vienna, Centre for Brain Research
NOTE 1 Carla, Charly, Clara, Murphy, Khaled, Benny, Bob, Old Man and Dame (maybe Vivienne) are engineered beings They are humanoid, they are humanic, they are post-machinic and post-bio, engineered beings living together: Carla, Charly, Clara, Murphy, Khaled, Benny, Bob, Old Man, Dame (maybe Vivienne), but then … they are also living together with humans … so, they have a family.
They have no age, no nationality, no religion, no family, no secondary education,
They have multiple ages, multiple religions, many families and all possibly imaginable educations. no eye colour, Each of them has 2 eyes of no colour and 12 eyes receptive to millions of colours, temperatures and radiations – 12 eyes positioned in space, 12 eyes for total control. no driving licence, no
hobbies. They do have special skills and a history, Carla and her companions are projections, they are not of matter; their consistency is light, light as “lux”, light as “Licht”. In full sunlight, Carla is here and not here. She is post-android, no white blood, no red blood, no electric sheep, a next generation. they
speak multiple languages, they have a sort of memory, and they are sensitive and responsive to environmental conditions and changes. The layout of their construction, the number of vertices, is identical to every other being in INTRA SPACE Carla and her
companions are the first citizens of Intra Space; they crossed the border as snapshots of real-life, fleshand-blood humans. Carla is a snapshot of another Carla, a body scan of a 16-year-old girl. and allows
their bodies to assimilate with other virtual figures. Later generations of Intra Spacians are
mutants: in part, they are copies of humans; in part, they enjoy morphing themselves from one identity to another; in part, they follow protocols as established by MAKEHUMAN1. They carry inbuilt sliders hidden in the folds of their skins, allowing for swift passage from one identity to another… identity forth, identity back. Infinitely variable versions exist be-
tween them. They are figures of the digital realm. Carla and her companions are Intra Space,
or in parallel to them; you can live upside down … they can be late … they can be in delay. When Carla,
Charly, Clara, Murphy, Khaled, Benny, Bob, Old Man and Dame (maybe Vivienne) are on their own, the motions, streams and ruptures of the technical environment roam through their structural circumstances. I like
for them to be around. It would be great if they showed up in the office, and would lay out the appearance, atmosphere and climate of Intra Space, explain Intra Space, describe Intra Space, and I would take notes. They would say Intra Space has no climate and no appearance; Carla would say Intra Space is Carla. But then again, she could say anything, because language has no meaning to her. Although Carla is eloquent and a great conversationalist, words do not mean anything to her. She knows they are formed by internal codes, by grammar and syntax, not by meaning, and I am afraid she would also not accept the concept of meaning. As if they were breathing, It is convenient to say Carla is a she. But Carla is neither a she, nor a he, nor Carla. Christian might say that she is the product of a certain technical framework, and then I would say, yes … but then again … I would say she is human … I would say Carla is a humanoid, she is a friend; I like to see her around, to remember her. unconscious puls-
es circulate through their constructions,
Christian might also argue for Carla being a product of software, hardware, optical devices … and human stimulation … he might refer to Solaris, the mysterious intelligence embodied by an ocean, which, upon human stimulation, produced illusive beings out of traces of human memory … he might say that what we call “being” is constituted by the ocean as well as by humans in orbit, by the human stimulus on the ocean, as well as by the illusive figures pieced together from traces of human memory by the ocean. functioning
like a vegetative nervous system. The apparatus resonates in Carla’s and her companions’ structure: tiny flickering motions pass through their limbs; sudden changes of orientation in a body part move them into positions which can be quite unfamiliar to human physical vocabulary. Where are
and they live in Intra Space; they live in themselves, as you could live in them. They have no inner, they have no outer; you can dive into them. They have your eyes and you can use their eyes; you can live in symmetry
Carla and her companions at night, when Christian has switched off the technical framework? Where are Carla and her friends when the projector is run down?
IMPRINT Institute for Art and Architecture (IKA) Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
Editor: Julia Wieger Design: grafisches Büro
These movements are entirely composed of
technical interferences. Dreams? Would you say electronic dreams? When Donna Haraway accuses Lacan of not having theorized the “fourth wound” to human narcissism, namely the “synthetic wound”, whom would we accuse of not transferring Freudian dream analysis to Carla’s electronic jittering? Mostly,
these remain small-scale jitters, since the individual units of their structures have been given a hierarchy to prevent collision, provide orientation and direct gravity forces in order to resemble the logic of human body posture. You did not explain the donning
ceremony, the shaking of hands, the greeting ceremony between the digital entity and the human entity. In order to enter Carla, you need to follow a strict sequence of movements. Remember when Joi superimposed herself on Mariette, cutting into Mariette’s prattle, “Stop! I need to concentrate, I need to find a fit!” and we could see the gradual congruence of human and projected entity … finger to finger, lip to lip, hand to hand … a perfect fit! Carla and her com-
panions can come very close to someone without touching them, and in that proximity, they are able to adopt and merge with qualities of the other. Have you ever dreamt you
were Carla, or any of her companions? Or have you ever dreamt of Charly, Clara, Murphy, Khaled, Benny, Bob, Old Man or Dame (maybe Vivienne)? How about feelings towards Carla and her friends?
NOTE 2 A Technical Framework tracks, records and displays humans inside a defined area. It is comprised of various components: a motion tracking system, twelve RGB cameras (1280 x1024px) as the “eyes” of the motion tracking system4, virtual figures5 (based on different methods of construction, such as the open source software Make Human6, photogrammetry techniques7, online 3D scan laboratories8), a collection of pre-recorded movements and gestures9, code programming the behaviour of the figures10, a responsive sound terrain11, as well as a spatial visualization system consisting of projectors, large scale mirror membranes and projection screens 12.
Temporary premises: Augasse 2–6, 1090 Vienna 1st floor, core A
NOTE 3 INTRA SPACE can be read as a spatial transposition of the theoretical concept of “intra-action”13 introduced by philosopher, theoretical physicist and feminist scholar Karen Barad. Her philosophical framework of “agential realism” views the world as a dynamic, relational structure in which intra-actions function as boundary-making, material and discursive measurements in the unfolding of matter and meaning. INTRA SPACE produces a transformative, differential and resilient space of emergence where apparatus, human bodies and digitally constructed figures become diaphanous to each other. A sensorium for embodied experiences, where architectural processes coincide with bodies of the apparatus, the virtual, the engineers, the visitors, the machines and cameras – where bodies are constantly updating sites of construction. The experimental framework critically looks at the potentials of both the digital and the human to mutually enhance their functionality, their exposure in artificial and real spaces, their social interaction and self-perception. It offers a technical and conceptual infrastructure, a transformative disposition for equal encounters between digital, machinic and human sensoria. The resulting differentiated perspective, spanning from a single point of touch to a sensory space, negotiates the body in motion as an immediate, perceptive entity in relation to its surroundings.
1 Christina Jauernik, “Diaphane Figuren,” in Das Diaphane. Architektur und ihre Bildlichkeit, ed. Ulrike Kuch (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2018) 2 Wolfgang Tschapeller, 2004 3 Wolfgang Tschapeller, Austrian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2012 4 Developed by computer scientist Nils Hasler + team. See: Nils Hasler et al., “Fast articulated motion tracking using a Sums of Gaussians Body Model,” paper presented at the IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision, Barcelona, March 2011 5 Established in a joint artistic + technological effort by visual artist Martin Perktold and Christian Freude 6 Developed by Jonas Hauquier et al., see: http://www.makehuman.org/index.php, accessed October 1, 2017 7 Changchang Wu, “VisualSFM, A Visual Structure from Motion System,” webpage of Changchang Wu, accessed September 5, 2017, http://ccwu.me/vsfm 8 see the webpage of Ten24, 3D scan store, accessed October 22, 2017, http://www.3dscanstore.com 9 Created by performers Esther Balfe + Christina Jauernik + digitally processed by Computer scientist Christian Freude 10 Programmed by computer scientist Tom Tucek with engineer Michael Thielscher, the scientific team at iCinema (UNSW) + Paolo Petta (Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Vienna) 11 Designed by sound artists Dmytro Fedorenko + Franz Pomassl
Text: Christina Jauernik, Wolfgang Tschapeller
12 Configured by Ludwig Löckinger, projecting (bigger than) life-sized virtual figures across two foil mirrors onto a rear projection screen at 20,000 lumen.
Project leader: Wolfgang Tschapeller, Institute for Art and Architecture, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
13 Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2007), 33
Project team: Esther Balfe, Dennis Del Favero, Dmytro Fedorenko, Christian Freude, Christina Jauernik, Krassimira Kruschkova, Ludwig Löckinger, Simon Oberhammer, Martin Perktold, Franz Pomassl, Tom Tucek
Office: room 1.3.11, 1st floor, core A +43 (1) 58816-5102 g.mayer@akbild.ac.at, u.auer@akbild.ac.at
For a detailed documentation of the project see: “intraspace”https://intraspace.akbild.ac.at, accessed December 5, 2017
Postal address: Schillerplatz 3, 1010 Vienna, Austria www.akbild.ac.at/ika