ARCHITECTURE & …

On November 21, 2013, 8 pm, the Akademie opens the group exhibition »Architecture & …« with contributions of fourteen current and former fellows 

Andreas Quednau, professor for architecture at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design, will open the exhibition with a short introduction. Subsequently, Evan Gardner’s new version of his composition Variations on a Theme by John Cage for piano and electronics will receive its premiere.

With works by Ellie Abrons, architect, Boston/USA, Ursula Achternkamp, visual artist, Leipzig/Germany, Joshua Edwards & Lynn Xu, writers, Marfa/USA, Patricia Esquivias, artist/filmmaker, Madrid/Spain, Martin Knöll, architect, Stuttgart, Rebecca Loewen, architect, Winnipeg/Canada, Mitch McEwen, architect, New York/USA, OFFSEA (Anuschka Kutz/London/GB & Andrea Benze, Berlin/Germany), Studio UMSCHICHTEN (Lukasz Lendzinski & Peter Weigand), architects, Stuttgart with Roberto Santaguida, filmmaker, Toronto/Canada, Katharine S. Willis, architect, London, and Alan Worn, architect, London.

Architects have endorsed various other disciplines in their practice of production and in the perception of space long before other artists »incorporated« the social and exact sciences, and thus expanded the field of art in the course of the 20th century. The group exhibition »Architecture & … «, in which fourteen fellows of Akademie Schloss Solitude participate, shows some of the many ways in which architecture and other techniques, sciences or art forms can be combined.

»Architecture & … Illusion«
Ever since antiquity, architects have found ways to create spaces by means of illusion. The project Peep Peep by Ellie Abrons resumes the historical techniques of machines that create illusions, such as dioramas or those of the catoptric theater of Athanasius Kirchner. 

Similarly, Rebecca Loewen’s Concave Door, can be perceived as either two- and three-dimensional. Her construction becomes a place of alienation and fiction, a place that invites the observer to stay and contemplate or to pass through.

»Architecture & …  the Urban Condition«
In the early 70s, sociologist Henri Lefebvre described the Condition Urbaine, i.e. the complex systems of everyday life, and the manifold interactions between humans and their surrounding spatial, economic and social infrastructures. In the film made ahead of the exhibition opening with a group of children from Stuttgart, Martin Knöll scrutinizes what kind of Condition Urbaine diabetic children, whose life is constantly conditioned, considering location and situation, by the management of their illness, experience.

In their urban portraits, Andrea Benze and Anuschka Kutz (OFFSEA) introduce everyday tactics of elderly people, whose Condition Urbaine consists of habits, rituals and memories. How do they react to the permanent transformations of their environment they are confronted with? Both projects explicitly refer to Stuttgart and its inhabitants.

In an intervention for the music theatre project Der Turm zu Babel (performed for the first time November 16, 2013 at Theater Rampe, Stuttgart/Germany) Peter Weigand and Lukasz Lendzinski have constructed a mobile stage, which can be activated and moved by the participants, and thus becomes a symbol of social interaction in an urban context. Their contribution documents this action with photos, sketches and film material. The stage itself is part of the exhibition.

»Architecture & … Traces«
What is to be projected into the future of a project that is yet »in mere thoughts«? In their collaborative project Architecture for Travelers Lynn Xu, Alan Worn and Joshua Edwards plan to document an upcoming 1,000 km long hike through the USA with photos, texts, sketches, and a publication. They will present sketches and ideas they think of in advance as traces of the future.

Thin and impermanent drawings that seem to mark the boundaries between the ability of self-location and being lost will remain as traces of the walks, of which the routes can be determined with the help of GPS. From this both technological and poetic statement Katharine S. Willis developed an app for kids that allows them to discover the forest anew (in this case the forests around Stuttgart).

Finished buildings can also be seen as traces of architecture, which testify to a different time, when architecture endorsed progress and modernity. The artist Patricia Esquivias sees strange tracks, both nostalgic and naive, clouded by the memory of the Franco dictatorship in the partially empty buildings of the Spanish architect Fernando Guarrido, whose naive radicalism seems outdated to us today.

»Architecture & … the Design Process«
In this section, the pairings of »Architecture & …« correspond to the conventional procedure of architects, for whom the production of space is still limited by form and material. With the prototype of an interactive wall system using the specially developed software Primate, Mitch McEwen shows a transparent surface, of which the structure responds to hand movements, and which can deform, open or close depending on the gesture. Thanks to this technology, gesture, lighting, density, and transparency come along with individual and social experience.

With her collective Chicks on Speed Ursula Achterkamp used the lives of the chickens in the chicken coop as a metaphor to take a different view on the devastating consequences of industrialization and the simplification of architectural language. The visitors of the exhibition will get »an insight into the ideas of the original plans of the 1920s and into the present construction of housing estates from a bird’s-eye view,« the artist says.

Alan Worn’s works Components, which are part of a larger series of sculptures, explore fundamental issues of geometry, repetition and color. Thus, Alan Worn creates an inherent language that asserts itself as such in the autonomy of his sculptures, or later on in his architectural designs.

The exhibition comes with a series of performances, readings and workshops in which the participants will work on the topics »Architecture & … Sound«, »Architecture & … Long Distances« as well as »Architecture & … Regional Developments«.

Duration of the exhibition: November 22, 2013 to January 22, 2014 (closed from 21.12.2013 until 06.01.2014).

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ACCOMPANYING PROGRAM

»Architecture & … Long Distances«
Friday, November 22, 2013, 8 p.m.
Artists’ talk via Skype
With Joshua Edwards & Lynn Xu, writers, Marfa/USA and Alan Worn, architect, London/GB.
 

»Architecture & … Muitas Vozes (Many Voices) or How to Build Localities« 
Thursday, November 28, 2013, talks 2 p.m., performance 7 p.m.
An Interdisciplinary Dialog on Regional Development with Talks, Discussions, and Performances.
With Marcelo Cardoso Gama, theater director, Vienna/Austria, Aleksandar Bede, architect, Novi Sad/Serbia, Cristina Toth Sydow, economist, São Paulo/Brazil, Prof. Dr. Celina Souza, Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Social and Political Sciences, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro/Brazil, Dr. Thomas Stahlecker, Head of the department regions and cluster, Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI, Karlsruhe/Germany, PD Dr. Dieter Rehfeld, Director of the Research Program Innovation, Space & Culture, Institute for Work and Technology, Gelsenkirchen/Germany, Nina Fritz, project manager Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum, Stuttgart and the Babel Collective.

In the context of the art, science & business program.
 

»Architecture & … Ruins«
Thursday, 5 December 2013, 8 p.m.
Performance »in,fi,nie«
With Anne Kawala, writer, Nantes/France
 

»Architecture & … Ways out«
Wednesday, 11 December 2013, 8 p.m.
Performance Evening
»Spinoza in China. Ernesto November 3, 2011«
With Marc Perrin, writer, Nantes/France

»CPR Practice« (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Practice)
With Geumhyung Jeong, performer/choreographer, Seoul/South Korea
 

»Architecture & … Sounds«
Thursday, December 19, 2013 , 8 p.m.
Concert
The members of the ensemble ]h[ iatus present improvisations and works by Peter Jakober, composer, Vienna/Austria and Jennifer Walshe, composer, Dublin/Ireland.

The project »Architecture & … « was designed and coordinated with the participation of Marlène Perronet, fellow for art coordination, Leipzig/Germany and Patrick Ritter, coordination fellow in the art, science & business program, Tübingen/Germany.