- What is the main idea behind the Architects' Voices & Visions exhibition project?
- The idea is to generate new ideas. Architecture as art is constantly in need of new ideas, theories and visions. Without this, there can be no progress. I am interested in just such an architecture, which is asked new questions and is constantly in search of new solutions. The question "what is architecture?" has no absolute or universal answer. Nevertheless, every architect must ask this question and answer it in his own way. Any answer is just an attempt to define your position at the moment. It is important to understand that architecture is not created for centuries: it is built into its own time and place and then changes along with its environment, no matter how we try to preserve it.
My task as a curator and designer is to come up with a stimulating environment and provoke some kind of transformation in consciousness, open my eyes to what architecture can be ideally. I don't want to instruct anyone on how to create modern architecture. I do not know this, and I am not at all interested in knowing it. It is interesting for me to follow the creative process of the leaders of the profession, to present their projects and implementations, and to voice their own explanations. It is possible that they are all just lying to me and wishful thinking. But I don't care what is really going on with them. What matters to me is what they dream of and what they strive for. You cannot judge by the result alone; must be judged by aspirations.
The main goal of my project is to provoke new questions that architects would ask in their work. Once at my exhibition, you enter a stream of ideas. All of them are taken out of context and intertwined with each other. The idea is not to remember Eisenman's or Siza's biting phrase, but to come up with your own answer, ask your own question. And I am not at all trying to find a certain consensus. Consent does not lead to discovery. You shouldn't go to the exhibition for answers. Any phrase is just the beginning of a conversation. Some phrases confuse people, some help to realize something. These quotes are outside the discipline. For example, Tom Maine, to my question about what drives him, replied: "It was not the ego that moved me, but the fear of being nothing."
What do audio and video interviews give to their audience compared to the usual publication of a transcript of the conversation?
- Both are presented at the exhibition. And if you compare them, you will come across a mismatch between sound and recordings. Many conversations cannot be transferred to paper in principle. I have to construct many phrases myself, after which I always coordinate them with the "authors". Therefore, any interview is a work from both sides. The key to a successful interview is when the one who asks is fluent in the topic, and the one who answers has no idea what he will be asked about. I never record my interviews on video. Even a person accustomed to a camera will never say in a video interview what he dares to do in a normal conversation. All my interviews are ordinary conversations, albeit quite tense: I do not let go of my interlocutor until he answers the question. Nobody believes me, but I had 4-6 hours of conversations with the world's leading architects. In January of this year, Alvaro Siza smoked at least 30 cigarettes in front of me! He expressed the following aphorism: “Rationality is not enough; I am trying not to solve the problem, but to get around it. " And also: "What is really beautiful is functional."
The project has already been exhibited three times, there are new shows ahead. Does the exhibition have the same design, the same name, etc., or are they changing? Does the cast of the heroes of the project change?
- Everything changes - the name, design, the composition of the characters. There were three exhibitions in total - in Sydney, Chicago and Mexico City. The next exhibition will take place in Buenos Aires in October, and another exhibition is planned in Manhattan's Chelsea in November. It all starts with a striking phrase that sounded in one of about 250 interviews that I have been doing since 2002. For example, the phrase Something other than a narrative in the title of an exhibition in Mexico City is a quote from my interview with Peter Eisenman. He said that his architecture always moves away from representation, and it does not carry a specific semantic load. Therefore, it can be read in different ways. One of Eisenman's projects, the Memorial to the Perished Jews in Berlin, served as a prototype for the design of the exhibition, where I used 16 steles - according to the number of participants. Half of the participants are the leading architects of Mexico City, the rest are famous architects of the world. I usually include between a dozen and 16 heroes.
Usually architectural exhibitions are quite static: photos, drawings, texts. How do viewers react to the interactivity of Architects' Voices & Visions? Do they provide any "feedback"? And what is the attitude of the characters of the interview to the “media” format of the interview? Are they not embarrassed by the impossibility of the usual edits for journal publications, etc.?
- I inform my heroes about exhibitions, and many treat them with understanding. In addition, I warn them that their answers are taken out of context and might be misunderstood. This is normal. After all, even if I returned my questions and their answers to the original context, their answers today would still be different. I am interested in the very reasoning of my hero at the moment when he was asked a question. It is appropriate to compare this with a film - does it really matter what the actor thinks about his role in the film he played 15 years ago? We are discussing the film. And the actor or even the director may have had completely different intentions. As for the edits … you're right - everything comes out on the first try. The word, as they say, is not a sparrow … But this is the beauty of living voices. The format of the exhibition allows you to present the conversation either in full, as it was in Sydney, or in 15 minutes, as it was in Mexico City. The transcriptions are also much longer than those that can be published in the press. But the main thing is the presentation: everything said and written is deliberately taken out of context and mixed. And the visitor has a choice - either to fly from one conversation to another, or to follow one chosen conversation - each architect is represented by his own color and each conversation is read from left to right, stepping over many parallel conversations.
In Mexico City, I left a review log for visitors to write down their questions and answers. I suggest that Archi.ru readers do the same.
