Exhibition: 23.06.-30.07.2017, opening 22.06.2017, 7pm
Blog: www.architecture-after-the-future.org
Venue:
HDA – Haus der Architektur
Mariahilferstraße 2, 8020 Graz
According to social theorists, such as Marc Augé or Franco “Bifo” Berardi, we live in an age characterised by the collapse of the very idea of the future: In the last decades of the 20th century, with the repeated economic crisis, the discouraging reports to the Club of Rome – a group of experts from a wide range of disciplines – and the seemingly definite collapse of the socialist project, our belief in the future was irreparably shattered. Taking into account that the architectural project, in the conventional sense of the term, has always been a project of the future, the described situation must have had profound consequences for architecture as a discipline. The exhibition Architecture After the Future is based on the assumption that understanding and revealing these consequences presents a major task for the contemporary discourse on architecture and also a necessary prelude to the imminent debate on how to reintegrate the dimension of the future once again into the architectural and broader cultural imagination. The exhibition features eight contributions to Future Architecture Platform’s Call for Ideas 2016. Each of the eight projects selected by curator Ana Jeinić exemplifies a specific strategy for adapting architectural practice to the post-futurist cultural condition.
The strategy of reluctance is thematised by Miloš Kosec, while the related affinity towards indeterminacy, vacancy and reduction can be found in José Tomás Pérez Valle’s architectural treatment of territorial disputes in Latin America. Ephemerality – or the tendency to squeeze the temporal existence of an architectural object into the present moment – characterises the spatial interventions of Bika Rebek and Noemi Polo, as well as Ersi Krouska’s portable refugee tents. Paolo Patelli’s architectural archaeology of the European Union exemplifies the prevalence of the reflexive (past-oriented) content and the decline of the projective (future-oriented) dimension in contemporary architectural projects. The tendency of relativisation, catalogisation, and equalisation of utopian scenarios distinguishes Mika Savela and Henrik Drufva’s proposal of a world atlas of utopias for the era of post-everything. Paul Landon’s videos and installations thematise the impact of speculative building and its visual representations on the perception of urban space, while a mix of pragmatic and ameliorative (rather than optimistic and utopian) sort of future speculation characterises the architectural projects of Florian Bengert.
The exhibited projects will be accompanied and structured by a series of short texts about post-futurist design strategies written by Ana Jeinić and illustrated by Andreas Töpfer. The topic of the exhibition will be further elaborated in the form of a Symposium with selected artists and guests, while the blog Architecture After the Future aims at providing a broader perspective on the crisis of future in contemporary architecture and exploring possible ways of overcoming it.
Featured authors and projects:
BNGRT (Florian Bengert) – Space in Time. The Future of Logistic Landscapes
Miloš Kosec – I Would Prefer Not To. The Emergence of the Reluctant Architect
Ersi Krouska – Penelope Pop-Up. Refugee Tent System
Paul Landon – Dissolving Futures
Paolo Patelli – The Architecture (an Archeology) of a Post-Nation. A Design-Based Inquiry into the Prototypes of the European Project
José Tomás Pérez Valle – No Man’s Land. Subtracting the Border
Selim Projects (Mika Savela & Henrik Drufva) – Proxima Utopia
Sibilasoon (Bika Rebek) and Amore Agency (Noemi Polo) – The Invisible Window
Curator: Ana Jeinić
Exhibition design: Ana Dana Beroš
Illustrations: Andreas Töpfer
Graphic design: milchhof:atelier
Video production and editing: Matija Kralj
Project manager: Janosch Webersink
Event in the context of Future Architecture Platform: www.futurearchitectureplatform.org
Co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union and the Office of the Federal Chancellor in Austria (Margarete-Schütte-Lihotzky-Projektstipendium 2016)
More information
Architecture After the Future
The symposium Architecture After the Future is part of the eponymous exhibition at the House of Architecture in Graz. The primary goal of the conference is to enable the authors of the exhibited projects to present their work to the Graz public and explain the theoretical concepts underlying their architectural research and practice, thereby initiating a public discourse on architecture of the post-futurist era. In addition, in the last of the three lecture blocks, architectural researcher Michael Klein and philosopher Armen Avanessian will examine the possibilities of overcoming the current crisis of future-oriented imagination with a particular focus on architectural design and urban planning. The symposium will end with a round-table discussion moderated by art historian and architectural theorist Anselm Wagner.
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