Recycling: Kim Adams' research photographs

Un millier d’images. C’est ce qu’a accumulé l’artiste canadien Kim Adams depuis les années 1970 au gré de ses pérégrinations. Cette recherche photographique qui nourrit le travail de sculpture de l’artiste, présente toutes sortes de créations humaines : des accumulations d’épaves, des abris improvisés à partir d’éléments de récupération, des voitures customisées, des magasins sur roues, des caravanes intégrées dans des habitations… Nées d’une tradition de la mobilité particulièrement forte au Nord de l’Amérique, elles célèbrent l’habilité des êtres à transformer leur environnement en fonction des contingences. Une esthétique de la customisation post-industrielle, à la fois ingénieuse et parfois délirante.

Celebrating : Wonderland in Limassol, Cyprus

Christodoulos Panayiotou, Wonderland, 2008. 80 color slides, realized with the collaboration of the Municipal Archives of the City of Limassol, Cyprus.

“(...) I have never participated in the carnival's organized activities, nor have I ever joined in the parade. I never understood the motive nor did I feel the festive impulse that many carnival participants can describe so comfortably. To be honest, I have never believed in it because I have never quite seen this impulse realized, especially in the parade, which was the focus of my last work. My own observations and my research in the related photographic archives have made something evident: in the past few years, the preparations for the carnival have become a kind of imposed and somehow covered up melancholy. This feeling becomes, I think, even more intense in the children. It might be a projection, but I get the impression that the carnival parades of Limassol have acquired the rehearsed character of our own archaeology. The parade is a kind of revelation of everything we would like to be, of everything we know we cannot be, and of everything we cannot afford to accept that we are.”

Extract from a conversation between Christodoulos Panayiotou and Nicos Charalambidis published in Art Papers Magazine.

Wonder Land is the outcome of extensive research in the historical archives of the city of Limassol pointing out the “obsession” of limassolians to disguise into Disney's characters during the annual carnival parade. The work covers the period from the late 70s up to present and renegotiates the historic and political narrative of this important social event.

Christodoulos Panayiotou's website
Christodoulos Panayitou's blog

Recycling: Ball-Nogues' canopies

Copper Droop Scape, Coachella Music and Arts Festival, 2008

Liquid Sky, PS1, Long Island City, NY, 2007

Skin + Bones, Paralell Practices in Fashion and Architecture, MOCA, Los Angeles, 2006

"Ball-Nogues Studio is an integrated design and fabrication practice that creates experimental built environments to enhance and celebrate the potential for social interaction through sensation, spectacle and physical engagement while striving to infuse the matter of the built environment with a downstream purpose. To achieve these results, we work with unusual materials, develop new digital tools, and apply architectural techniques in unorthodox ways. We share an enthusiasm for the fabrication process as it relates to the built object both physically and poetically by letting the properties, limitations, and economic scenarios associated with a material guide a structure’s ultimate form while developing methods to extend the intertwined boundaries of a material’s aesthetics, physical potential and lifecycle.
We seek opportunities to build that are outside the treacherous restraints of the conventional architectural milieu so that we may more tightly focus our energies on research and practice that directly addresses the experiential realm of the physically constructed world and the transition of material from an architecturally scaled structure through its dismantling and beyond. Our design process is a carefully orchestrated collaboration between partners – one focused on digital development, the other using a hands-on approach to fabrication research. Scale models, computer models, and full scale mock-ups inform one another in a cycle of feedback so we may study all aspects of a design at various scales and through various media. While this approach is not a new development in the field of architecture we feel that it is essential given the rapid evolution of computer modeling techniques, CNC fabrication capabilities and exciting material discoveries. We do not seek to distance ourselves from the built environment through the use of digital tools…rather we seek to master their use, reinterpret their capabilities and adapt or modify them to suit our intentions."

http://www.ball-nogues.com/

Recycling: Büro Detours, Operaen, Arhus, 2008

http://www.detours.biz/

Collecting: J. Deller & A. Kane's Folk Archive

" Joseph Grimaldi Egg", The Clowns Gallery, Dalston, London.

"Tractor Painting on Van", Delabole, Cornwall, 2002.

"Skull Crash Helmet", 2000, by Stuart (Sam) Hughes of Bikeart, Charlton, London.


"Cigarette Funeral Wreath", by Andy McCaren / Kent News and Pictures or KNP.

"Snowdrop the Mechanical Elephant", 2004, The Clare Family, Egremont, Cumbria.


"St John’s Ambulance Pin Cushion", Yorkshire 1999, by Rachel Williams.

"From our two small collections of modest objects and pictures and an ensuing conversation about the Millenium Dome’s corporate representation of the UK, the question arose for us as to what might constitute present day folk art. Some seven years later, Folk Archive is our response to this question and our celebration of the creative life of Britain.

[...]."

Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane, Preface to Folk Archive, Book Works London, 2005.

Marjetica Potrc: building strategies

Tirana House
Building materials; energy, communications, and water-supply infrastructure, 2009New CitizenshipsLingen Kunstalle, Lingen, Germany
Tirana House is a case study of a family house in present-day Tirana, Albania. After the political changes of the 1990s, the Tirana cityscape exploded. A new city built by the citizens themselves celebrates a multiplicity of personal architectural styles, astonishing constructions, and richly decorated facades. Here, patterns turn the facades into a living surface, the skin and shield of the building. As former Mayor Edi Rama said: 'Facades are not like a dress or lipstick. They are organs.' Patterns and numerous staircases merge in an Escher-like landscape, expressing the many voices that make a new democracy. In a city in transition, the building facades give visual expression to the construction of a new social contract, a new citizenship.

New Orleans: Shotgun House with Rainwater-Harvesting Tank
Building materials, energy, communications and water-supply infrastructure, 2008Future Talk: The Great Republic of New Orleans. Max Protetch Gallery, New YorkHeartland, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2008
Shotgun House with Rainwater-Harvesting Tank points to two recent trends in New Orleans: the revival of the local architectural style known as the Shotgun House, and the move toward self-sustainability. Both are post-Katrina developments and correspond with the deconstruction of modernist architecture and the search for a new, 21st-century social contract for democracy. Local harvesting of energy resources points to the emergence of new environmental and, consequently, political boundaries. The two caryatids serve as reminders that New Orleans is being rebuilt by its citizens.

Prishtina House
Building materials, energy and communication infrastructure, 2006Marjetica Potrc and Tomas Saraceno: Personal States / Infinite Actives Portikus, Frankfurt/Main, GermanyThis Place is My Place - begehrte Orte, Kustverien in Hamburg, Hamburg, 2007
Prishtina House is a case study of a house in the Peyton Place neighborhood of Prishtina. It is an example of personal orientalism. After the collapse of modernism, the citizens of Prishtina began building their houses in a wide range of styles, each expressing the taste of the owner. Here personal style is accentuated to the level of kitsch. In Prishtina, the citizens have become the smallest state. Personal styles are the expression of a fragmented society. Self-sustainability is also an issue, since citizens have to rely on their own resources: a generator powers the streetlight.

Caracas: Growing House
Building materials and energy infrastructure, 2003'GNS', Palais de Tokyo, Paris
In Caracas, half of the city's population resides in the informal city in structures that are perceived as rural, not urban architecture. Called 'growing houses,' nearly every barrio dwelling has iron wires sprouting from its rooftop, as if proclaiming the vitality of the place. Anything may be recycled as building material for these houses.

http://www.potrc.org/

Accumulating: Francis Alÿs

La Havane, mai 1994. Pendant la 5ème Biennale de La Havane, Francis Alÿs (né à Antwerp, Belgique, vit et travaille entre Mexico et Londres) met ses chaussures magnétiques et se promène chaque jour dans les rues en collectant la ferraille qu'il rencontre sur son chemin.
Sifflement: Louise
Mélodie: Denis



Voir aussi When Faith Moves Mountains, un projet pour Geological Displacement de Francis Alÿs en collaboration avec Rafael Ortega et Cuauhtémoc Medina. Le 11 avril 2002, 500 volontiers ont été appelé pour former une ligne pour bouger une dune de sable qui se trouvait proche de la ville de Lima. En avançant, le peigne humain poussait une certaine quantité de sables avec des pelles, pour bouger la dune de sa position originale. Le déplacement réel de la dune était de proportion infinitésimale, mais pas sa résonance métaphorique.


En ce moment à la National Portrait Gallery, Londres: Fabiola. Il s'agit d'une installation d'une centaine de portraits représentant une sainte chrétienne du 4ème siècle, Sainte Fabiola. Les portraits (peintures, broderies et miniatures) sont tous des versions du même tableau du 19ème siècle (de Henner) et ils ont été collectés par Francis Alÿs dans les marchés aux puces, brocantes et collections privées.


Pour en savoir plus: Lynne Cooke, Francis Alÿs, Fabiola - An Investigation, 1994. (en anglais)

Merci à Christophe Kihm pour la vidéo.

Spacecraft

The design community’s preoccupation with space and building beyond the limits of classical architecture is more fascinating than ever before. The series of books Spacecraft present projects that meet the changing spatial needs of our modern lifestyles and that are simultaneously expanding our current understanding of architecture. These books showcase international projects by architects, artists and designers all distinguished by the unconventional use and creation of space.

Spacecraft feature modular ephemeral structures that exist only for a limited time, such as pavilions, art projects and exhibition spaces. They exemplify innovative interventions often found in public spaces and urban environments. It also presents projects that deal with the transient use of space such as studios, mobile habitats and pop-up stores that either adapt to their surrounding environments or are strikingly conspicuous.

Spacecraft 2 More Fleeting Architecture and Hideouts

Release: February 2009 - ISBN: 978-3-89955-233-1

Spacecraft Fleeting Architecture and Hideouts

Release: September 2007 - ISBN: 978-3-89955-192-1

Editors: R. Klanten, L. Feireiss

Publisher: Die Gestalten Verlag

Kastello. Palaces of the Roma in Romania

Kastello. Palaces of the Roma in Romania presents an architectural phenomenon taking place in Romania especially, within a marginal culture. The book intends to analyze this cultural phenomenon, typical of the Roma community, from several perspectives, in order to obtain a larger picture of a surprising style, that has the potential to evolve into a form of architecture. The photos are accompanied by comments made by architecture critics, sociologists, anthropologists and by several members of the Roma community. The purpose is to present aspects of the community's daily life, mirrored by their architectural expression.

Published by igloo Media, 2008

http://www.igloo.ro/en/collections/22/

http://www.rozylowicz.com/retirement/kastellos/kastellos.html