Unreal reality

Intimidated by the camera's precise documentation of reality, painting has moved away from figurativism. Now it seems contemporary photography is following the same trajectory. I am not sure if it is the need of artistic expression, or it's just simply boring to record things as they are. But I found these photographs really fascinating.

Ovilo Barbieri uses tilt-shift lenses to make real things look like models, defamiliarizing the familiar, such as the Colosseum, Times Square, and Las Vagas...

James Casebere builds table-size models and photographs them in his studio. His sources span from suburban homes to abstract architectural spaces.

Laurie Simmons also constructs models and dolls to represent the surreal American suburban life.

Cracks on the street

A big hole mysteriously appeared recently along the Regent's Canal bikepath in Islington, North London. It's Joe Hill and Max Lowry's 3D street art, installed as part of a campaign to remind bikers to slow down.


I did a little research on 3D street art. Here's a collection of a few famous artists and their amazing body of work.

Edgar Mueller (German), Mysterious Cave, London
Ice Age, Ireland
Lava Burst, Germany

Kurt Wenner (American)

John Pugh (American)
Julian Beever (English)

KRAZY, not crazy

The exhibition "KRAZY" at the Japan Society is rather disappointing. It misses a great curatorial opportunity to survey how the important and interesting subject - manga, anime, and video games - affects and in many ways defines the contemporary Japanese culture. Instead, the show is just a dry collection of illustration works, action figures, and animated films. In the center of the game room is just a Pac-man machine...

However, Atelier Bow-Wow, apparently among a generation who grew up with the influence of manga, put in some cute little things in their exhibition design. These objects seem even more obviously Japanese than the comics on the walls.

Atlantic Yards

Frank Gehry said during his 80th birthday interview that it would be "devastating" if the Atlantic Yards project was not going to happen. Now the official announcement finally came out that six years of hard work had been in vain. The replacement - a spiritless big box that looks like a warehouse, or an airplane hanger - was really a hard punch at the hearts of architects.

Nicolai Ouroussoff was all fired up, He described the developer's action as "a shameful betrayal of the public trust." It sent out the wrong message that "Architecture... is something decorative and expendable, a luxury we can afford only in good times, or if we happen to be very rich." Budget had won the "battle between budget and beauty," he said. I totally understand Nicolai's reaction, but his claim has arguably put budget and beauty in fundamental opposition. Does economy necessarily mean a sacrifice of aesthetics? What's the standard cost to be beautiful enough? Perhaps all those curved surfaces are really luxurious add-ons? Maybe developers are not the only ones to be blamed...

Look back to the last decade, we had a feast of hyper-formalism (iconically and ironically started by Frank himself in Bilbao). Architecture has reached an unimaginable level of extravagance. "The iconic gesture reflects the client's ambitions," architects would say. "We always try to understand the client's agenda and take it seriously." But now, clients demand something more cost-effective, everybody freaks out. "No, you are scrapping a striking addition to the city skyline! The cutback ruins the dynamic composition of tumbling glass shards!"

The most valuable aspect of Gehry's scheme though, as Nicolai pointed out, is its "fervent effort to engage the life of the city below." He enveloped the arena in the fabric of public urban life. But the concept of urban engagement doesn't lead to a certain form. It is about performance. It can be achieved in many ways. When we put performance back to the equation, budget and beauty may not be enemies. (Oh, Vitruvius was genius!) In fact, performance, as a common language, would provide a mediating middle ground between developer and architect, and even between personal profit and public good. From this perspective, the true offensive fact of the Ellerbe Becket design is not its ugliness (well, it is ugly), but the lack of public responsibility and neglect of urban needs.

Fameism

In Marxian economics, the sole source of profit in capitalist production is the exploitation of workers - taking the surplus value of their unpaid surplus labor. Exploitation exists because of the unequal distribution of property in society. A small minority in society, the capitalists, are in possession of the majority of capital, hence the means of production (the subjects of labor, such as raw materials; and instruments of labor, such as tools and machines). The non-property-owners (the workers, proletarians) cannot survive without selling their labor-power to the capitalists (in other words, without being employed as wage laborers).

In the world of architecture, what do you need as means of production to start your own office? Very few basic instruments: a computer, some model-making tools, maybe a printer - that's it. You can probably just do it from home. But the subjects of labor is the key. You need projects to work on. But it seems right now the majority of good projects are in the hands of a minority of starchitects. It's not wealth that determines who gets the project (some interns may come from a much more loaded family than the bosses). It's fame that draws in the projects. The non-famous cannot survive without selling their labor-power to the stars. That's why the low employees have to follow the game and endure exploitation.

Fame represents the non-monetary side of power. It's the practice of control and a monopolization of decision-making. The saddest fact is, power increases with the exploitation of the workers. Just as exploitation maximizes profit in capitalism, the hard work of the lower majority expedite the growth of fame of the few in the architectural practice of fameism.

Get the demon out

I went to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Annex for the "John Lennon: the New York City Years" exhibition last week. A quote on the wall caught my eyes:

"Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me."

- John Lennon

Clearly, music is an outlet for John Lennon - a vehicle to express himself. Society, politics, humanity... But for us architects, is architecture an outlet? At a discussion organized by Storefront for Art and Architecture, Micheal Webb asked, "everybody was making a city in the 60s, but why is nobody doing that right now?" Oh yeah, we are busy building stuff. Who cares about visions? The construction boom in the last decade made design merely a commission-based business operation... Building without substance. What about now? When there's not much work, architects just all go to the beach? We should take our social responsibilities a little more seriously. The starchitects should probably use their influence in a more active way than just trying to get the weirdest thing in the world built.

Having substance requires observation and insight. You need to absorb, process, dream, take a stance and have it voiced. I dug a little further into Lennon's quote and found that he actually went on and explained how it happens: "It's always in the middle of the night, or you're half-awake or tired, when your critical faculties are switched off. So letting go is what the whole game is. Every time you try to put your finger on it, it slips away. You turn on the lights and the cockroaches run away. You can never grasp them..." I guess letting go doesn't contradict the necessity of critical observation - you have to make sure there ARE cockroaches before trying to grasp them.

A descent into the maelstrom

Roxy Paine's new sculpture on Metropolitan Museum's rooftop garden is awe-inspiring. As the latest and most ambitious project of his "Dendroids" series, the sculpture resembles a huge branching tree. But this time, it's not just a literal tree standing like in Seattle, nor two trees bending and connecting like in Madison Square Park. The stainless steel pipes do not just extend in diminishing size, but sometimes come together and form a blob. It's a network - almost a becoming-rhizome organism.

The abstract network form makes the object not only a tree destroyed by some force, but the force itself. As titled "Maelstrom," it is immersive. When walking between the branches, you can feel it - a whirpool of force around you. (May the force be with you!)

Roxy Paine's tree is a fictional species. Set at the edge of Central Park, it almost gives you the feeling that it's been uprooted from the park. Yet its artificiality puts it in high contrast to the real green trees in the backdrop. But wait, isn't Central Park artificial anyways?