Landscape Cinema – Ken Ehrlich – 2007

On Saturday, November 24, 2007 artist Erik Goengrich invites you for a Foto-Walk in the Passages of Downtown Sao Paulo.

The meeting point will be
in front of "cafe floresta"
in Copan (Av.Ipiranga 200)
at 10am

The walk will last around two hours.
The map and fotos here should give an impression of the walk.

To contact Erik send an e-mail to goengrich at gmx dot net

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mais informacao e en portugues:
www.goethe.de/saopaulo

Architecture and Documentary Practice: Writing, Imaging and Performance

Architecture &: Interdisciplinary Seminars
Bartlett School of Architecture, Tue 27 November 2007, 10 am–6 pm
Organised by Dr Robin Wilson
This is the third of a series of interdisciplinary, one-day conferences held at the Bartlett School of Architecture, Architecture &, initiated by Prof. Jane Rendell. It will explore current issues concerning the documentation of buildings, urban space and processes of architectural production. It will draw together architects, artists, editors and theorists to address issues of criticality, memory and performance in architectural documentation. One session will focus on existing practices of writing, editing and photography in the architectural profession. One will deal with concerns and techniques of documentation in theatre and performance studies. Further sessions will introduce the concerns of individual art and architecture practitioners, working across different media.
Contributors:_Session 1:_Professor Iain Borden (Architectural History and Theory, The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL)_Dr Robin Wilson (Critic, curator and lecturer on art and architecture)_Isabel Allen (Design Director of Habhousing and former editor of The Architects’ Journal)
Session 2:_Professor Susan Melrose (Performance Arts, Middlesex University)Dr Juliet Rufford (Writer and lecturer on theatre and performance)_Professor Joe Kelleher (Theatre and Performance, Roehampton University)
Session 3:_Sophie Warren and Jonathan Mosley (Artist/architect)_Mike Marshall (Artist)
Session 4:_AMID [Cero 9] (Architects)
This event is free but please RSVP architectural.research@ucl.ac.uk _Rm G02, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL Wates House, 22 Gordon Street, London, WC1H 0QB

inflating inflatables

I'm teaching a class this semester at CalArts called UnBuilt and FarOut. We're looking at experiments in architecture over the last fifty years with a particular focus on collaborative architectural practices whose work might have not been built or whose radical ideas functioned as cultural critique. Two weeks ago, after spending a class looking at the work of Ant Farm and discussing some of the more playful aspects of their work, some of my students proposed that we build inflatables. Inspired by their work, we built an inflatable that we could all fit in and it seems that more inflatables will be popping up around CalArts soon.

Learning from wolf

Last night Wolf Prix of the Austrian architecture firm Coop Himmelb(l)au gave a lecture at Sci-Arc entitled "Learning from Le Corbusier." He began by comparing Le Corbusier favorably to Mies van der Rohe, who he claimed was merely a designer, while the former was a 'sculptor' – therefore an architect. He showed some of Le Corbusier's poetic solutions to technical problems and spoke of the aim of architecture as overcoming gravity. He also evoked another sculptor – Brancusi – whom he claimed worked according to an "open system." Concentrating on the very recently completed headquarters for BMW in Munich, he showed a series of impressive images, the highlight being a four minute stop-motion animation detailing the four year construction process. The ambition on display did not stop with the gravity quote... he also explained how he convinced the board of directors of BMW to approve his design: namely, by claiming he could build something comparable to Acropolis. A national icon for Germany...
The strangest part of the evening was the fact that he took no questions...
I would have like to hear more about his thoughts on the relationship between sculpture and architecture given his seeming preoccupation with the formal language of sculpture. Also, Given that he described the BMW building as a new kind of public space, how does the project implicate and provoke our notions of what is public?

introduction to orange works

I recently became aware of the work of Brooklyn-based Orange Works. The group produces interventions in public places that play with and destabilize the visual language around construction sites. By re-contextualizing the lexicon of the bureaucratic demarcation of public spaces, Orange Works offers a variety of re-use opportunities in urban settings.

TALES AROUND THE PAVEMENT

A contemporary art project that takes place in various locations on the streets of Downtown Cairo
5-15 November 2007
In the megalopolis that is present-day Cairo, public space is a scarce resource. 3ARRASIF: TALES AROUND THE PAVEMENT is a contemporary art project exploring Downtown Cairo's existing public spaces where residents are allowed to gather and interact as a site in which the complex relationship between the city's dwellers and its various governing bodies is constantly negotiated and redefined. 8 artists, designers and architects are commissioned to produce new projects through which they subtly disrupt the urban landscape by reinventing some of the guerrilla-style tactics and survival strategies employed by city dwellers on a daily basis in the public sphere.
Curated by Aleya Hamza and Edit Molnar

TALES AROUND THE PAVEMENT (CAIRO UNCLASSIFIED) is a project commissioned by MEETING POINTS 5 (MP5), a multi-disciplinary contemporary arts festival organized by the YOUNG ARAB THEATRE FUND taking place in the Middle East and North Africa in November 2007.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Marwan Fayed
Eklego Design
Mohamed Allam
Malak Helmy and Essam Abdallah
Mahmoud Hamdy
Kareem Lotfy
George Azmy