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Heartfelt, thought-provoking and at times hilariously funny, the 2008 documentary film “Koolhaas Houselife” made Ila Beka and Louise Lemoine cult figures in the European architecture world. A look at the difficulties of living with an architectural masterpiece — one that was designed by Rem Koolhaas for Ms. Lemoine’s paraplegic father — it touched a nerve with those who have always been suspicious of the gap between the idealism of many architects and the realities of everyday life.

Since that success, the two have gone on to make three more films that explore similar issues, including one on Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and another on Richard Meier’s Jubilee Church in suburban Rome. None of them are quite as revealing — or as funny — as the first.

But all four films, which are each about 20 minutes long and are on view at the Storefront for Art and Architecture on the Lower East Side through Feb. 27, feel like fresh takes on architecture, avoiding the clichés about architects as pretentious eggheads oblivious to their clients’ needs (although there is a scene about a leaky roof). They represent an unusually earnest, and long overdue, effort to explore a fascinating question: What is it like to live or work inside a piece of art?

The Lemoine home was especially fraught in this regard. A three-story house in Bordeaux, France, with a vast, glass-enclosed living area sandwiched between two concrete-clad slabs, it is centered on a mechanical platform that moves up and down, from the wine cellar and TV room to the living space to the upstairs bedrooms. It was designed to be big enough to accommodate not only Ms. Lemoine’s father, who had used a wheelchair since a car accident in 1991, but his desk as well — and thereby to help the house “reassert the position of the French male within the family,” as Mr. Koolhaas once said.

When the father died, in 2001, the platform also became a constant reminder of his absence. When it moves up to the bedroom level, it leaves a gaping void in the middle of the living room floor.

This material would seem to be irresistible for any filmmaker, and at first, if you know the story, you wonder why it was left out of “Koolhaas Houselife.” But one of the strengths of the film is that it never plunges into cheap melodrama; the father is never discussed, nor is the fact that Ms. Lemoine once lived there. Instead the opening scene shows the family maid with a mop in her hand, silently standing on the platform as it rises through the house’s various levels. With a somewhat bemused air, she steps off and begins her daily chores, shaking out the curtains, scrubbing floors, vacuuming the staircase and in the process transforming the house from an act of poetic imagination to a seemingly straightforward series of practical problems.

At one point a gardener carefully arranges a hose into a loose coil, its form echoing the spiral of the house’s main driveway. At another a caretaker pokes the base of a window looking for the source of a leak. Water suddenly starts to pour down the face of a concrete wall, spilling over a television set and onto the floor. Everyone scurries around, looking for buckets.

From there, the film transforms into a kind of mechanical ballet. Once again the platform rises slowly, this time carrying an empty chair and desk. As it clicks into place, its rails drop down until they are flush with the floor. Somewhere else a porthole window pops open, then bounces rhythmically up and down. Two burned pieces of toast pop out of a toaster. (In case you don’t get the point, a clip from one of Jacques Tati’s comic sendups of rumpled middle-aged Frenchmen unable to cope with modern life flickers across a television screen.)

The most charming sequence in the film, it goes to the heart of the filmmakers’ point: to demonstrate that architecture’s real meaning exists in small details, in the little victories and defeats that make up everyday life. In the process, they humanize the work itself. Reduced to a series of mechanical operations, the building is nonetheless as alive as the people inside it, with whom it is locked in an awkward dance.

Some of the later films are more uneven, partly because the filmmakers could not get the same degree of access, partly because the narratives — which generally move from big architectural ideas down to the nitty-gritty of daily life — start to feel predictable. The films are at their weakest, interestingly, when the architecture drifts too far into the background, and humans take up all the space.

The film on the Bilbao museum includes a beautiful series of shots of window washers as they rappel up and down the structure’s undulating glass-and-titanium surfaces. Suspended from ropes, one of them says he met his wife while she was a tourist visiting the museum, and he was working. “People find us more interesting than the art,” he says.

But the camera quickly moves outside, where the museum becomes a kind of stage set for tourists and street performers. A young bride is captured in front of the building, tossing a bouquet into the air. Not far away, a group of tourists sits on a low stone barrier trying to make origami sculptures out of crumpled tinfoil, an apparent reference to the building’s titanium skin. What you never see are the actual galleries, which are treated as if they were irrelevant to the whole museum experience.

In the newest film, on an addition to a winery in Pomerol, France, by the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron, the architecture virtually disappears. The owner’s son gives us a tour of the various rooms, earnestly mapping out the architects’ vision, but the camera stays in tight on him, and you never get a real feel for the spaces they designed. Toward the end, a large group of workers dressed as cowboys roasts marshmallows at a party in the new dining hall; it’s a colorful moment, but they could be anywhere.

Mr. Meier’s church gets a fairer shake in its film. After a few overhead shots of the building, the camera settles on the priest, who offers appealing interpretations of its curved walls: They remind him of an oyster, with the congregation as the pearl, or they could symbolize enormous sails, pulling the Roman Catholic Church into the future. We meet a guard whom the church has posted at the door to prevent services from being overrun by architecture pilgrims. Eventually, the congregation, which is there for Christmas Mass, spills out into the plaza in front of the church, and the magic of the building’s delicate forms is driven home.

All these films strive to place everyday people back at the center of the story, where they belong. And when the balance is right, as it is here, you begin to imagine a silent dialogue between the architects and those who inhabit their creations, as if they are struggling to understand one another across differences in time, space and perspective.

The Rolex Learning Center, a university study centre by Japanese architects SANAA, opens in Lausanne, Switzerland next week.

The centre is located on the campus of science and technology university EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), and will be open to both students and the public.

See all our stories about SANAA in our special category.

Here’s some text from EPFL:

Built on the campus of EPFL Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, The Rolex Learning Center designed by the internationally acclaimed Japanese architectural practice, SANAA, will open on 22 February 2010.

The Rolex Learning Center will function as a laboratory for learning, a library with 500,000 volumes and an international cultural hub for EPFL, open to both students and the public. Spread over one single fluid space of 20,000 sq metres, it provides a seamless network of services, libraries, information gathering, social spaces, spaces to study, restaurants, cafes and beautiful outdoor spaces. It is a highly innovative building, with gentle slopes and terraces, undulating around a series of internal ‘patios’, with almost invisible supports for its complex curving roof, which required completely new methods of construction.

“The Rolex Learning Center,” Patrick Aebischer, President of EPFL, said, “exemplifies our university as a place where traditional boundaries between disciplines are broken down, where mathematicians and engineers meet with neuroscientists and microtechnicians to envision new technologies that improve lives. We invite the public into this space to convey the message that working in science is working for the advancement of society.”

EPFL is one of the world’s leading universities in technology and science, renowned for its innovations in research and learning. It is currently ranked number one in Europe alongside Cambridge in the fields of Engineering Technology and Computer Sciences. The campus, on a site overlooking Lake Geneva and the Alps, brings together over 4,000 researchers, and 7,000 students, who work in a highly collaborative environment with international experts in engineering, science and industry.

The Rolex Learning Center has been financed by the Swiss government and major Swiss businesses. Rolex’s participation in the project is the fruit of a long-standing relationship with EPFL in research into materials science and microtechnology for watch design, and its deep rooted tradition of philanthropy in the arts, science and culture through the Rolex Awards for Enterprise and the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative.  Logitech made the initial contribution that launched the architectural competition. Losinger, member of Bouygues Construction Group and sponsor, was the principle contractor for the building. Credit Suisse, another financial partner for the project, will have a Future Banking Laboratory in the building. Further internationally active Swiss partners who contributed to the finance, research, and innovation of the building are Nestlé, Novartis, and SICPA.

Una muestra considera el plagio una fuente de creación subversiva
‘Plagiarismo’ reflexiona sobre la evolución cultural del concepto de copia

A buen seguro, la exposición Plagiarismo no gustará a la SGAE. La guardiana del copyright no se ha pronunciado hasta el momento sobre esta muestra, que inició su andadura en la Casa Encendida en Madrid explicando e ilustrando cómo el plagio, o la copia, puede ser también fuente de creación y subversión. La polémica muestra, comandada por Jordi Costa y Álex Mendíbil, en el Espai Cultural Caja Madrid, donde permanecerá hasta el 4 de julio, establece una cata en la historia de la cultura y su consecuente reflexión, no exenta de humor. “Lo que queremos es provocar el debate”, apunta Costa echando mano de una paradoja: “Cualquier plagiario que puede pagar los derechos del original está libre de culpa”. Y el comisario pone como ejemplo clarificador el sampler que Madonna ha realizado a partir de Abba o la reiteración que Hollywood acostumbra a hacer de una misma película.

Los comisarios analizan el fenómeno a través de dos fuerzas opuestas: la histórica, que desde siempre ha canibalizado el arte sin complejos y la opuesta y más moderna que, con la ley en la mano, equipara plagio y delito. Costa y Mendíbil se apuntan a la teoría memética según la cual “el fenómeno plagiario ya se inicia en nuestro adn, que se desarrolla a base de copiarse a sí mismo”.

DISCURSO ILUSTRADO

Las piezas de Plagiarismo ilustran ese discurso que los autores remontan al Quijote de Avellaneda o a los muchos pastiches generados por el personaje de Sherlock Holmes, más allá de su creador Conan Doyle. Así vemos la instalación Apocalipse Now, de Artemio Narro, que sincroniza el discurso final de Kurtz, el personaje de Marlon Brando en la película de Coppola, con la tierna imagen de Winnie the Pooh. O la manipulación musical que David Domingo hace de la película El exorcista de William Friedkin: “Además de vomitar, canta”, prometen con ironía los rótulos de la muestra.

Así, al tiempo que el espectador se entera de que Disney jamás pagó derechos de autor por su “saqueo” a los cuentos infantiles europeos, se le ofrece la oportunidad de pintarrajear una réplica de La Gioconda de Leonardo, partiendo de la manipulación de Marcel Duchamp, que le añadió unos irreverentes bigotes, o de ver cómo el concepto de autoría en la música folk americana –unos auriculares permiten constatarlo– tiene unas imprecisas fronteras.

Orson Welles, que con su película Fraude elaboró un discurso similar, tiene un lugar de honor en Plagiarismo. Especialmente con la inclusión de algunas de la copias que el protagonista del filme, Elmyr d’Hory, hizo de algunas de las obras maestras de la pintura. Esas falsificaciones han sido prestadas por un coleccionista residente en Eivissa.

La música y especialmente las mezclas de algunos dj’s tienen su ejemplo en el híbrido que Dj Danger Mouse hizo del White album de los Beatles con el Black album de Jay Z, produciendo el Grey album, cuya posibilidad de descarga en un solo día marcó una jornada histórica en internet. Según los comisarios, este tipo de creación plagiaria conlleva una mayor peligrosidad para el sistema, que, sin embargo, ve con buenos ojos cómo “la publicidad crea y multiplica sus mensajes”.

Más curiosa es la forma en la que el tercer mundo afronta la idea de copia sin complejos. Es el caso de la turkexplotation, de la que se exhibe una selección. Se trata de versiones de superproducciones como La guerra de las galaxias, Spiderman o Star Trek realizadas sin el menor rubor en Turquía con presupuestos ínfimos. Toda una joya del trash.

El Periódico, 10/05/06 [via firgoa]

[La siguiente cita me ha parecido tan oportuna que he decidido plagiar la acción de usarla para comentar este artículo:]

Si la naturaleza ha creado alguna cosa menos susceptible que las demás de ser objeto de propiedad exclusiva, esa es la acción del poder del pensamiento que llamamos idea, algo que un individuo puede poseer de manera exclusiva mientras la tenga guardada. Sin embargo, en el momento en que se divulga, se fuerza a sí misma a convertirse en posesión de todos, y su receptor no puede desposeerse de ella. Su peculiar carácter es también tal que nadie posee menos de ellas porque otros posean el todo. Aquel que recibe una idea mía, recibe instrucción sin mermar la mía, del mismo modo que quien disfruta de mi vela encendida recibe mi luz sin que yo reciba menos. El hecho de que las ideas se puedan difundir libremente de unos a otros por todo el globo, para moral y mutua instrucción de las personas y para la mejora de su condición, parece haber sido concebido de manera peculiar y benevolente por la naturaleza, cuando las hizo, como el fuego, susceptibles de expandirse por el espacio, si ver reducida su densidad en ningún momento y, como el aire, en el que respiramos, nos movemos y se desarrolla nuestro ser físico, incapaz de ser confinadas o poseídas de manera exclusiva. Las invenciones, pues, no pueden ser, por su naturaleza, sujetas a propiedad. – THOMAS JEFFERSON

Kothari visitó España el pasado noviembre a invitación del Gobierno y estudió los casos de Madrid, Bilbao, San Sebastián, Almería, El Ejido, Roquetas de Mar, Sevilla, Barcelona y Zaragoza. Su objetivo era elaborar un informe con recomendaciones que será presentado al Consejo de Derechos Humanos de la ONU en noviembre, aunque hoy ha adelantado sus conclusiones preliminares.

“El principal problema de la vivienda en España es que no es asequible, con lo que una considerable proporción de la población dedica más del 40% de su salario al pago de hipotecas”, ha explicado Kothari, quien ha valorado la respuesta del Gobierno español y su compromiso a colaborar con su mandato.

Posible efecto sobre otros derechos

Su temor es que ese elevado porcentaje tenga un efecto directo en el disfrute de otros derechos humanos, como el “acceso a la educación, la alimentación o el vestido”. En ese sentido, ha apuntado que la alta tasa de violencia doméstica que se registra en España, “de las más altas de Europa”, está “directamente relacionada con el problema de accesibilidad”. “Si las mujeres no tuvieran tan difícil acceder a una nueva vivienda se sentirían más libres para salir de su entorno y eso contribuiría enormemente a mejorar su situación”, ha comentado.

Según datos de la Asociación Hipotecaria Española (AHE) incluidos en su informe preliminar, sólo el 0,3% de la población española era vulnerable por impago de hipoteca en septiembre de 2006, aunque Kothari teme que “la situación no pueda sostenerse a largo plazo”.

“En cuanto suban un mínimo los tipos de interés -ha apuntado-, las personas que no podrán hacer frente a su hipoteca aumentarán considerablemente”, por lo que es fundamental que aumenten las viviendas de protección oficial de promoción privada en venta y en alquiler y que “se informe claramente a ciudadanos e inversores de que ese momento va a llegar”.

Para Kothari, “la solución no pasa por incrementar el suelo edificable, porque el precio al que sale a la venta incluye las expectativas de revalorización, con lo que incluso para el sector público resulta difícil adquirirlo”.

“Aburguesamiento”

Por ello, ha abogado por intervenir en el sector a través del control de la especulación, la ocupación de las viviendas vacías (el 15% del total) y la reducción de los precios de los inmuebles sociales, que “suelen ser demasiado elevados para la población de ingresos más bajos”.

Además, a su juicio, “la promoción de viviendas está restringida a pocos actores, que se reparten ganancias astronómicas”, así que habría que abrir el mercado a nuevos promotores, que se encarguen de dinamizar el mercado, especialmente para los jóvenes y en régimen de alquiler.

En ese sentido, recordó que sólo el 12% de las viviendas se alquilan, “uno de los porcentajes más bajos de Europa”, y “prácticamente todas están en manos privadas, con sólo el 2% calificado como vivienda social, frente al entre 10 y 30% de otros países europeos”.

Otro aspecto que preocupa al relator es “el aburguesamiento” de las ciudades, que lleva a la segregación, los desalojos y el empleo de violencia física y psicológica para forzar al abandono de los hogares, fenómeno conocido como “mobbing” sobre el que, en su opinión, hay escasa jurisprudencia.

ilustración obtenida en e-faro

[via blog.etsas y elpais]

Alto, enjuto y con una mirada entre risueña y penetrante que debe hacer tambalear a más de uno, RemKoolhaas (Rotterdam, 1944) es el arquitecto más influyente de las últimas décadas. Sus teorías —expresadas en libros como Delirio de Nueva York (Gustavo Gili), S.M.L.XL o Content—y sus proyectos —desde la Kunsthal de Rotterdam de 1992 a la Casa da Musica de Oporto, que inaugura esta semana— son seguidos y analizados con lupa por la profesión.

Tras obtener en 2000 el Premio Pritzker, le fue concedido en Barcelona el Premio de Arquitectura Contemporánea de la Unión Europea-Premio Mies van der Rohe 2005, dotado con 50.000 euros y de carácter bienal, por su edificio de la Embajada de Holanda en Berlín que ha realizado su estudio OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture), brazo constructor de este proyecto que tiene en su estudio paralelo, AMO, su contrapartida teórica.

Pregunta. En el terreno mediático han tenido mucha repercusión su defensa de lo enorme y también su mirada curiosa hacia el caos como organización urbana. ¿Lo refleja en su arquitectura?

Respuesta. He sido periodista y me interesan mucho los distintos fenómenos del mundo. Algunos son caóticos y otros están muy estructurados. Es verdad que hemos estudiado condiciones autoorganizadas en África o investigado el ritmo frenético de crecimiento de las ciudades chinas, pero todo esto es una investigación personal mía y no tiene por qué estar conectada con la obra. Intento entender el contexto más amplio en el que suceden las cosas de forma que nuestras intervenciones encajen bien en este entorno.

P. El Movimiento Moderno era una propuesta de futuro y usted defiende que hay que repensar el presente a partir de la situación económica y social existente.

R. Personalmente, nunca me ha atraído el futuro. Tengo una obsesión por el ahora, por el presente. Como tenemos dos despachos, OMA y AMO, podemos hacer cosas que un arquitecto no puede hacer. Por ejemplo, no puede limitarse a no hacer nada porque el arquitecto es el que llega y construye, no puede decir esto está perfecto y déjelo así como está. Con AMO trabajamos ahora en un proyecto muy interesante para el Museo Ermitage de San Petersburgo y les decimos: “No hagan nueva arquitectura, piensen en lo que está ahí, analícenlo para ver cómo puede funcionar con una nueva distribución de las obras, pero no toquen nada”. Y en Pekín también estamos por la labor de conservar. Eso son aportaciones para el futuro.

P. Es decir, ¿que lo más revolucionario puede ser no hacer?

R. Sí, a veces sí.

P. ¿Cuáles son sus preocupaciones teóricas ahora?

R. Estamos acabando un libro sobre Lagos, en África, con mis alumnos en la Escuela de Arquitectura de Harvard, que aparecerá este año.Y también estoy empezando a pensar en escribir sobre el pasado, conectado con esto de no hacer nada, pero no sé qué forma adoptará este proyecto.

P. Algunos críticos afirman que en sus teorías el tema social no es prioritario. ¿Es así?

R. La arquitectura ha sido siempre una profesión moralista y arrogante. Eso de que nosotros lo hacemos todo bien, pensando lo mejor para el mundo. Y siempre he considerado que era un aspecto muy desagradable de la profesión. En mi caso, lo que ha resultado confuso es que al contemplar con una mirada crítica y dura la situación actual parece ser que no tengo corazón o que no tengo buenas intenciones, según dicen algunos. Bueno, es cierto que detesto hablar de las buenas intenciones, pero estamos muy contentos con edificios como el de la Biblioteca de Seattle o la Casa da Musica de Oporto, y como cualquier arquitecto o ser humano estoy interesado por los temas sociales desde una óptica antropológica, como podrían estarlo los sociólogos. También somos cada vez más políticos con nuestros compromisos de cara a Europa, que es un aspecto muy importante de toda nuestra visión en el estudio.

P. La portada de Content, en la que caricaturizaba a Bush, Sadam Husein y otros políticos, ¿era un manifiesto o una broma?

R. Un manifiesto, por supuesto. Creo que los arquitectos deberían convertirse en algo mucho más político, más antropológico y más económico.

P. Las ciudades europeas han entrado en una carrera por conseguir la mejor arquitectura como atracción turística. ¿Es un fenómeno que favorece la arquitectura?

R. Aunque es algo que puede ofrecer más oportunidades y elevar las expectativas, básicamente me parece un fenómeno malsano porque presiona e incide en el aspecto espectacular a expensas de la seriedad y, paradójicamente, también de la creación y la invención verdadera. La arquitectura solía ser la expresión más seria de los valores del ámbito público y ahora esto se está desdibujando cada vez más. Tal vez por esto hemos ganado este premio, porque el edificio de Berlín es muy serio, no un gancho para el turismo.

P. ¿En qué fase está su proyecto del Palacio de Congresos para Córdoba?

R. [Koolhaas cede la palabra a su socia en OMA, Elle van Loon]. Lo presentamos dentro de dos días y confiamos en que en dos meses podrá empezar la construcción. Intentamos que el proyecto sea un espacio más público de lo habitual, que tenga vida siempre, no sólo cuando haya congresos.

P. ¿Construirá el macroedificio para la televisión de Pekín? R. Sí, ya lo estamos construyendo. Rompe el esquema del rascacielos típico y provoca un movimiento circular entre las diferentes funciones de la emisora. Pekín es una ciudad gestionada con unas reglas muy serias de planeamiento. Por esto es un proyecto importante para nosotros, ya que es un auténtico compromiso con su civilización.

Publicado en EL PAÍS, martes 12 de abril de 2005

Paris subway car. Photo: Adam A.

The curse of modernism
The search for truth can take us to the most unlikely places. As post-war domesticity and prosperity settled over much of America, the growing rift between haves and have-nots exposed serious doubts about the promise of modernism and a modern life. An honest appraisal of a deteriorating American condition didn’t come from the cloistered towers of celebrated universities or intellectual cafés thick with smoke. It came from the heart of the ghetto where new voices were quick to take up arms against the status quo. Holstered with felt tip markers and spray cans, truth was recognized in a colorful show of force and bravado. For graffiti artists, manipulating letters became lifeblood and fighting back meant getting ill, and ill-legible.

Holstered with felt tip markers and spray cans, truth was recognized in a colorful show of force and bravado. For graffiti artists, manipulating letters became lifeblood and fighting back meant getting ill, and ill-legible.

Because modernism was considered positive, rational, and objective, architects like Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe championed its capacity to facilitate a new social order. They prophesized that technological progress and a reconsidered urban plan would result in “better living through architecture.” Although Le Corbusier applied his concepts to a series of theoretical, large scale housing projects, cities like Paris were wary of the plans and rejected his ideas. But by the end of World War II the need for new housing stock (both in Europe and the United States) persuaded a generation of architects and urban planners to embrace Le Corbusier’s Utopian vision. The dream that modernism could somehow ameliorate living conditions never came true. Instead, just the opposite occurred. Anonymous, cheap, high-density housing isolated its inhabitants from the greater city and exacerbated socio-economic problems. It prompted Charles Jencks, the architect credited for popularizing the term post-modernism, to date the symbolic end of modernism as July 15, 1972. That’s when the prize-winning Pruitt-Igoe housing development in St. Louis was demolished. Designed in 1951 by Minoru Yamasaki (who went on to design the World Trade Center towers) the project included 33 eleven story buildings, 2870 apartments, and when it was initially conceived, not one playground.

Pruitt Igoe Housing Project. Photo: www.affordablehousinginstitute.org; Tags. Photo: Graffiti Research Lab

It’s easy to see how a generation of restless teenagers growing up in high-rise and low-rise ghettos doubted and eventually rejected modernism and its oppressive reality. For them, modernism represented systemic irrationality, negativity, half truths, poor education, and limited access to economic empowerment. However, when a self-aware subculture rose out of the urban core to embrace plurality, fragmentation, and indeterminacy, something clicked. In retaliation they shaped an honest reflection of their lives from a fundamentally post-modern lens that pitted them against larger forces that had denied them individual value and cultural identity. Adventurous teens did this with no capital and no organizational power. They fought back with one of the few things they could control, words.

By focusing on just their name, “bombing” (tagging) it over and over again in different styles, teenagers developed an intuitive understanding of how the building blocks of language could be controlled for their specific needs. No wonder these artists referred to themselves as writers and their work as writing.

The power of language
Hegel wrote that, “To learn to read and write an alphabetic writing should be regarded as a means to infinite culture.” The post-structuralist French philosopher Michel Foucault wrote that, “Language is oppression,” because it is developed to allow only those people who speak it not to be oppressed. During the late 1960s overcoming socio-emotional hurdles necessitated both Hegel’s key to unlocking infinite culture and Foucault’s understanding of language’s deeper power. Once harnessed, an unusual torrent of creative, language-based experimentation and expression flowed from inner cities like New York and Philadelphia. It turned tables, oppressed the oppressor, and lit the fuse for a contemporary graffiti movement.

It all started with the tag. The first were rudimentary in contrast to today’s complex signatures but were steeped in a layer of political and social dynamism that is no longer possible. Loosely derived from territorial gang marks, early graffiti artists like TAKI 183, JULIO 204, and LEE 163 included their name and street numbers as a first step toward identity, attention, and respect in an otherwise stark and ruthless city. During his day as a foot messenger TAKI 183 was able to tag office buildings, subway stations, mail boxes, and the inside and outsides of subway cars. He was the first to go “all-city” a title of reverence reserved for the graffiti artist that gained visual prominence throughout all five boroughs of New York City. Recognition for TAKI 183 and enthusiasm for the burgeoning graffiti scene was stoked when, in 1971, the New York Times published an article about the omnipresence of the messenger’s curious mark. It quickly led to surge in tagging.

Contemporary graffiti’s connection to post-modernism certainly began as a response to the flaws of modernism but it was able to establish itself as an independent discipline that understood how to manage and employ meaning within a cultural context.

“Getting up”, the recognition that comes with the near constant act of tagging your name, became the driving force in the nascent graffiti scene. As a result the application of tags proliferated through crowded urban housing projects and high-traffic public transit systems until surfaces were covered in permanent inks. The competitive nature of graffiti, a hold-over from urban gang activity, was played out in non-violent “battles” that featured spray cans and skill instead of knives and strength. (The competitive nature of graffiti would seep into and boost the related youth sub-culture of hip-hop dance and music.) More importantly, competition brought about the stylistic innovations that were necessary to distinguish one tag from the rest. These revealed themselves in unique hand styles and lettering including the use of bubble letters, complicated scripts, calligraphic flourishes, flexible ascenders and descenders, new ligatures, simple illustrations, and cartoon characters. In many cases a combination of these left tags illegible to all but the graffiti artists. By focusing on just their name, “bombing” (tagging) it over and over again in different styles, teenagers developed an intuitive understanding of how the building blocks of language could be controlled for their specific needs. No wonder these artists referred to themselves as writers and their work as writing.

Bubble letters. Photo: Graffiti Research Lab

Rome subway car. Photo: Phil Moore

A post-modern condition
Post-modernism, with its distrust of universal judgements and hostility toward hierarchies of value, reflected a shift away from the establishment toward the pluralism of an increasingly global society. The interconnections of globalism not only increased communication, trade, and overseas manufacturing but also decentralized accepted political and commercial power bases as well as their centers of intellectual production. They allowed for cultural pluralism to succeed where previously it had not and exerted further pressure on the concept of stylistic unity. Wide-spread sharing resulted in a democratisation of taste where the values of struggling social classes could survive and thrive in micro-economies that performed outside the well-oiled machine of mass commercial markets. Contemporary graffiti’s connection to post-modernism certainly began as a response to the flaws of modernism but it was able to establish itself as an independent discipline that understood how to manage and employ meaning within a cultural context.

In arts and architecture the post-modern was evident in the way familiar styles and spaces were recreated and reviewed. Wit, ornament, and historical reference collided in an eclecticism that was best summed up by the architect Robert Venturi when, in his watershed book, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture , he turned Mies van der Rohe’s favorite doctrine, “Less is more,” inside out by noting, “Less is a bore.” Venturi argued for a pluralism of meaning in architecture that adequately reflected a diverse society. He wrote, “I like elements which are a hybrid rather than pure, compromising rather than clean, distorted rather than straightforward, ambiguous rather than articulated, perverse as well as impersonal, boring as well as interesting, conventional rather than designed, accommodating rather than excluding, redundant rather than simple, vestigial as well as innovating, inconsistent and equivocal rather than direct and clear. I am for messy vitality over obvious unity.”

Vanna Venturi House. Photo: JPMM; Michael Graves Denver Library. Photo: ©2007 Paul McAleer

Applied to graffiti, Venturi’s ideas on a valid architecture described one of writing’s most interesting characteristics: its ability to reconsider letter forms, reformulate language, and destroy the accepted hierarchies of communication. With no artificially imposed order and the inherent decentralization of postmodernism as its guide, graffiti writers used irony (in the form of the oppressor becoming the oppressed), double coding (writers communicated simultaneous messages to different social groups), and paradox (the inherent illegibility of their work), as tools to change our shared expectations of how, where, and why we communicate. It is an archetypal study in semiotics where signs and symbols are used to recognize how meaning is formulated and perceived. It is also an example of how information can be transferred and data decoded between sender and receiver.

Wall. Photo: Graffiti Research Lab

Change happens
In just over a decade graffiti writers were able to evolve their work from one color tags to kaleidoscopic subway cars and then to “wild style” pieces with highly ornamented and intricate lettering. This evolution is proof of the inherent competition that forced writers to consistently experiment and of graffiti’s incongruous relationship with the marketplace. Unlike traditional applications where type, layout, and design serve the needs of buyers and sellers, writers had no allegiance to anyone or anything. With no pressure and no labels such as “success” or “failure” to limit them, writers moved from student to teacher, directing a hip-hop revolution that would eventually position their urban culture as the predominant commercial lifestyle in America.

Graffiti artists did reach a crossroads in the 1980s. As teachers, they provided for (but couldn’t cash in on) a generation of profitable hip-hop products that were scooped up, repackaged, and sold by marketers from coast to coast. As artists, some tried to find acceptance through mainstream cultural outlets but ended up playing muse to the likes of Keith Haring or Jean Michel Basquiat. As writers, with too much time and too little money, they were on a collision course with a political system that was coordinating their demise. City Hall saw graffiti not as the effect of social ills but as its cause. Between 1984 and 1990 New York City adopted George Kelling’s Broken Window Theory and veraciously targeted graffiti. Subway cars were buffed clean on a regular basis and any car that had been tagged was taken out of service. Penalties for those caught writing were increased and access to subway and commuter train layover yards obstructed by new barbed wire fencing. Eventually graffiti proof, Teflon coatings were applied to subway cars, denying writers their best canvas and all but killing their pursuit.

COPE Photo: Vito Street

Even as politicians and police continued to attack writing as a serious crime, the 1990s saw the acceptance of graffiti writing grow until it became an integral part of global fashion, music, graphic design, and illustration. In trying to understand how counter intuitive shifts are eventually accepted by society architect Bernard Tschumi wrote in his treatise, Violence in Architecture , “If the Sistine Chapel were used for pole-vaulting events, architecture would then cease to yield to its customary good intensions. For a while the transgression would be real and all-powerful. Yet the transgression of cultural expectations soon becomes accepted. Just as violent Surrealist collages inspire advertising rhetoric, the broken rule is integrated into everyday life.”

While deconstructivist architects, including Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, and Daniel Libeskind, have avoided this or any other title that might place artificial restrictions upon them, graffiti writers have been going about their work oblivious to the fact that they, more so than architects, are defining both a visual and spatial representation of deconstruction.

New interpretations
Graffiti, in its most pure form, had fulfilled its promise. By this time the original rebirth writers that came out of the ghetto could no longer sustain their participation. Time and times had inevitably changed. The freedoms of postmodernism gave way to a technological and information revolution. No longer confined to the urban core and no longer propelled by one socio-economic identity, tech-savvy writers used the cumulative work of their predecessors as a palimpsest to violate what had come before and reinvent graffiti writing all over again.

It was inevitable that new tools and a dose of cross-fertilization would force the complete pliability and subversion of letters and language as part of a wave of deconstructive thought. Deconstruction, as it relates to philosophic applications, was posited by Jacques Derrida who challenged existing theoretical texts by exposing them to the innate ambiguity of language. He suggested that words have different meanings based on each reader’s past experiences, cultural connections, or social influences. Under these circumstances absolutes disappear and an author’s original intent is open to infinite subjectivity. In a Domus magazine interview from 1986 Derrida described his intent, “Deconstruction…analyzes and compares conceptual pairs which are currently accepted as self evident and natural, as if they had not been institutionalized at some precise moment, as if they had no history. Because of being taken for granted they restrict thinking.” It is important to note that rather than a negative process of dismantling, deconstruction is more accurately defined as affirmative because it frees concepts from their historic foundations and opens up new possibility. (Even Nietzsche said that all perception is interpretation.)

Marcel Duchamp was the first deconstructive artist when he questioned value and authenticity by releasing everyday objects from their traditional meaning and proudly proclaiming them Readymades. Duchamp did it again with analytical cubism where form could be viewed from multiple perspectives. Today architecture is considered best positioned to interpret the visual and physical expressions of deconstruction. What constitutes a deconstructive architecture is still an open question: a non-linear design process, manipulation of surface or skin, geometric imbalances, distorted spaces, rejection of historical precedent, influence from Russian Constructivists, or just controlled chaos. Architect and author Mark Wigley says it’s simply, “the ability to disturb our thinking about form” that makes a project deconstructive.

Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum. Photo: Tenis Vermelho; Thom Mayne’s Diamond Ranch High School. Photo: Suntom

While deconstructivist architects, including Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, and Daniel Libeskind, have avoided this or any other title that might place artificial restrictions upon them, graffiti writers have been going about their work oblivious to the fact that they, more so than architects, are defining both a visual and spatial representation of deconstruction. The reason for this is that deconstruction in constantly teasing out meaning from meta-language, the language used to describe language. Unlike architecture, graffiti writers base their work in the same vocabulary and tools as their theoretical counterparts. No longer concerned solely with post-modern ornamentation today’s writers are dismantling letter forms piece by piece and forming their own meta-language for a small army of citizen philosophers. Long-accepted letter forms have been ditched and the door has been opened to an alternate universe where the re-organization of information and the exploration of semiotics continues.

Zaha Hadid painting. Photo: Mangtronix

The best examples of this are cross-fertilizations where language and architecture merge. Hybrid “typogritecture”, breaks apart and reprocesses letters through a deconstructive filter only to be re-engineered into unrecognizable symbols that carry graffiti’s unique message. JOKER has stretched the letters if his tag into a series highly gestured techtonic plates that shift and dip on the page and in public spaces.

JOKER. Photo: www.jinscoe.com

DAIM’s writing, reminiscent of Zaha Hadid’s large scale paintings, relies on heavily layered dimensional tags that simultaneously leap off the wall and drop into deep space.

DAIM. Photo: Sebastian Gondek / PLphoto

DELTA has transcended traditional elements like spray paint, using sculptural devices to create complex tags more suited to robotics and the electrosphere than to the street.

DELTA. Photo: www.deltainc.nl

In one of the more interesting hybrid explorations the Dutch writer ZEDZ has teamed with the architecture studio of Maurer United Architects on a proposal to build his tag into large-scale street furniture for the campus of the Eindhoven University of Technology.

ZEDZ and Maurer United Architects. Photo: www.zedz.org

Recognizable in the work of all these writers is the easy integration of technical elements derived from the computer and architectural drafting software. The results are true and the writing has obviously pushed the boundaries of how language can be visualized and communicated. Yet there is something unreal about it. There comes a point in which upsetting narrative content and violating a utilitarian need causes these technically perfected and abstracted tags to become at once meaningful and meaningless. The writing is iconographic and each piece lives as a magnet for our attention, but they are increasingly difficult to connect to personal experiences. Lacking the raw energy and power or the history and shared experience that comes with racking paint and cutting chain link fence, these pieces float in a world of fiction. They are unreal and it’s easy to doubt their authenticity.

Hybrid “typogritecture”, breaks apart and reprocesses letters through a deconstructive filter only to be re-engineered into unrecognizable symbols that carry graffiti’s unique message. JOKER has stretched the letters if his tag into a series highly gestured techtonic plates that shift and dip on the page and in public spaces.

Language dissolves, communication fails
Watching from the sidelines as a new language is formed, evolves, and falls apart is a rare opportunity. Having the activity compressed into just a few decades is a rare treat. That graffiti writing is dead is not to say that it doesn’t happen anymore (just ask the owner constantly cleaning tags from his building). But after a meteoric ride and the market’s slow strangulation, graffiti has none of the rocket fuel that post-modernism provided and the academic nature of deconstruction isn’t able to infuse writing with the personal narrative that has gone missing. To recognize that letters, like architecture and other modes of meaning, have limits to their effectiveness, is part of the exciting experiment. It may be that, as Bernard Tschumi describes, this is just a pause in which our current violation can be absorbed.

More likely we have come to a definitive moment. Not because writers are unable or unwilling to conjure up new constructions. They keep at it. But without tension, sincerity or a revolutionary message the constant re-combinations are, like deconstruction itself, just exercises open to doubt. The truth is that Le Corbusier’s hope for an age of technology and progress that could improve the lives of so many has finally arrived. A new global level is doing today what the architect wanted his craft to do almost a century ago. Information, access to it and the ability to manipulate it, is fulfilling the promise of a new social order. And in the end it is the sheer volume of data being sent and received through rational computer-based systems that is rendering graffiti writing impractical. Bombing is losing out to blogging and modernism has made a triumphant return.

[via core77]

Por otra parte, si el hardware parece prestarse fácilmente a una lógica comercial, todo el mundo sabe que eso no se aplica a los programas de software y aún menos a los cerebros y las redes. Los bienes informacionales plantean serios problemas para el establecimiento de derechos de propiedad comerciales tradicionales, no son ni exclusivos, ni rivales, ni transparentes. Añadamos una última dificultad: el hecho de que, para el usuario del ordenador, los programas de software y la red de actividad del conocimiento sean indisociables de su subjetividad pone en cuestión la base de la instauración del salariado libre (por oposición a la servidumbre y la esclavitud); la separación estricta entre la persona y la capacidad de trabajo.

Así pues, sería muy poco riguroso plantear el problema de la apropiación de la red y la información por el capitalismo como la repetición del movimiento de las Enclosure Acts, las leyes británicas de cercado y delimitación de propiedades del 1709 a 1869. Se repiten ciertos rasgos, pero con una diferencia esencial; en 1750, la innovación y la productividad se encontraban del lado de los señores latifundistas que acaparaban la tierra. Hoy, el software libre del tipo Gnu-Linux es más productivo, más innovador, menos costoso que el software propietario de tipo Windows-Microsoft. El copyleft define un derecho de propiedad particular, que no impide el uso comercial de un software libre, sino que abre el acceso a su código-fuente, de forma que pueda reproducirse y modificarse a voluntad. La idea directriz de ese nuevo derecho, público o “común”, consiste en preservar lo que constituye la riqueza sin pre cedentes de la red: su posibilidad de generar externalidades positivas y rendimientos crecientes de uso innovador. Se trata de un descubrimiento revolucionario para la economía política y para los principios de la organización social de la pro ducción. Las redes apenas están en sus inicios. Constituyen el nuevo producto neto, y los detentores de la nueva economía son como los fisiócratas de una nueva era.

En la antigua economía política, el objeto de la riqueza por excelencia estaba constituido por el incremento de bienes o de servicios reproducibles y sustituibles, cuyo carácter económico validaba la comunidad de uso, determinando en última instancia la rareza y la utilidad marginal (aquélla que aporta además la última unidad de bien). Con la comunicación, las redes de distribución y el conocimiento reducidos al rango de medios, en la nueva economía política, la relación de uso de los bienes materiales y la jerarquía de los medios se ha invertido: la adquisición de bienes y servicios es un medio de disfrutar la singularidad en común, y de crear configuraciones inusitadas. Es fácil ridiculizar el carácter lúdico de la cibernavegación, la ilusión del mundo virtual. Pero es más interesante comprender cómo el formalismo de la producción capitalista, su indiferencia absoluta y cínica respecto a los usos y valores reales ha acabado por descubrir así, a su pesar, un nuevo continente de la riqueza: el del mundo de la vida y la ingeniosidad pura, el genio que “experimenta las cuestiones de forma como cuestiones de contenido” (Nietzsche) y que sabe mantenerse a distancia de los contenidos reduciéndolos a la superficie. Esta contradicción estratégica es la más virulenta en los nuevos sectores clave de la nueva eco nomía cognitiva. Investigadores, comunicadores, instructores, enseñantes, técnicos de la producción del ser vivo y de lenguajes simbólicos, manipula dores de símbolos, descubren la inanidad de contenido y la vulgaridad sin fondo de las formas de captación del valor respecto a la riqueza. De ahí se deriva la formación de un mundo tan ajeno al horizonte mercantil en sus valores y sus hábitos y tan enemigo de este último como el mundo burgués de los siglos XIV al XVII podía serlo respecto al orden feudal y religioso.

[extraido del libro MUTACIONES ed.ACTAR  p.79-80 ]

Between 1999 and 2003 Fast-uk contributed biennial exhibitions to the international Intersculpt project in the Northwest of England. For 2006 Fast-uk and folly have partnered to present the exhibition, ‘Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders’ which moves on from the legacy of Intersculpt, to explore the possibilities afforded to artists, architects, designers, and others for the creation of new types of objects, buildings, and products stemming from the increasing use of and integration between digital technologies for design and fabrication. The converging and blurring of traditional disciplinary boundaries is made possible by these technologies, from rapid prototyping to the use of generative and algorithmic software for design. With ‘Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders‘, Fast-uk and folly present the work of practitioners at the cutting edge of these developments.

John Marshall, Fast-uk

This exhibition bring emerging and existing contemporary practitioners and technologies into the public arena and help to make cutting-edge developments in art and technology more accessible. ‘Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders’ was held from 29 September – 21 October 2006 at venues across Lancaster city centre in the North West of England. The main exhibition space was the new CityLab development in Dalton Square.

The aim of this exhibition is to present the very latest examples of work that blur the conventional boundaries of arts and design practice through the use of technology.

Future Factories – Holy Ghost
Lionel T. Dean continues the Future Factories theme of organic growth with a design that’s in a constant state of evolution. In Holy Ghost, the back and arms of an iconic chair design have been morphed to create a very different view of an everyday object and a new object of desire. The chair is presented as an animation sequence, which Dean has frozen and used to create two ‘hard copies’ of the design using Rapid Prototyping technology.

In 2002 Dean was appointed Designer in Residence at Huddersfield University and began working on Future Factories, a digital manufacturing concept for the mass individualisation of products. Future Factories has had exhibitions in London and Milan. Previously Dean worked as an automotive designer for Pininfarina in Italy, before launching his own consultancy business.

www.futurefactories.com

Justin Marshall – Coded Ornament
Through collaboration with Hayles & Howe, a manufacturer of architectural ornamental plasterwork, Marshall has developed a range of plaster mouldings that integrate digital design technologies with traditional manufacturing skills. The installation Morse, a spiral of dots and dashes, relates to the binary nature of digital information and forms the heart of the exhibition. A separate work, Penrose Strapping 1, is a stunning contemporary example of traditional strapwork with scrolls, arabesques, and loops across the wall.

Justin Marshall’s practice spans sculpture, installation and design. Much of his recent work has been ceramic or plaster based, combining traditional skills with new technologies. Marshall is currently Research Fellow in 3D digital production at University College, Falmouth. His most recent exhibition was at Das Keramikmuseum Westerwald, Hoehr-Grenzhausen, Germany, and in 2005 he was awarded an Autonomatic research grant to work with Hayles & Howe decorative plaster company to develop new processes and work.

www.justinmarshall.co.uk

Sponsor: www.haylesandhowe.com

Assa Ashuach, Lionel T. Dean, Naomi Kaempfer, Arik Levy & Dan Yeffet – .MGX by Materialise

Materialise are specialists in the field of Rapid Prototyping. They offer services to the industrial, medical and dental sectors but with their .MGX brand they have been making major waves in the design world with computer-manufactured designs for lighting and decorative objects. Knowledge of digital tools has allowed the designers to shape and calculate complex mathematical structures. The rapid digital manufacturing techniques of Materialise have enabled these extraordinary shapes to be turned into reality, and have unleashed a new era of rapid manufactured design.

www.materialise-mgx.com

Arik Levy ” black_honey ” 2005

Geoffrey Mann – Flight – Take Off
These sculptural forms, the echoes of a bird taking flight, at first appear ambiguous. By capturing the first five seconds of take off, these solid forms are indeed a frozen moment in time. By materialising movement, Mann illustrates that time and motion are actually transient objects.

Mann trained in 3D Design at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen and studied Ceramics & Glass at the Royal College of Art, London. He works as a product artist, digital consultant and lecturer and his current research focuses on creative ways of ‘humanising’ the processes of digital production. Mann has recently exhibited at Pinakothek der Moderne Germany, New York Central Library USA, and at this year’s International Festival of Glass.

www.mrmann.co.uk

Gavin Baily & Tom Corby - Cyclone.soc
Cyclone.soc is a projected installation that brings together two contemporary phenomena: severe weather and the polarised nature of debate that occurs in some online newsgroup forums. The project maps live conversation from political and religious newsgroups onto the isobars of hurricanes and the complex structure of the weather is used to visualise the churn and eddies of newsgroup debate.

Gavin Bailey’s work has focused on developing conjunctions of software-based visualisation and the data traces of social processes. Tom Corby’s research is concerned with challenging received assumptions about the role of software/computer code as a platform for ‘productivity’ and ‘functionality’.

Recent exhibitions include Simplicity:
Ars Electronica 2006, Linz , Austria
Art meets media: Adventures in Perception at NTT Inter-Communication
Center (ICC), Tokyo and File media art festival, Sao Paulo , Brazil .

www.reconnoitre.net

[via generator.x & fast-uk]