Organized by
Center for Contemporary Art, CCA Kitakyushu in collaboration with Storefront for Art and Architecture
Curated by
Akiko Miyake / CCA Kitakyushu
Joseph Grima / Storefront
Participants
Ruben Coen Cagli / Neuroscience
Trisha Donnelly / Visual Art
Didier Fiuza Faustino / Architecture
Joan Jonas / Visual Art
Lisa Kaltenegger/ Astrophysics
Kazuo Okanoya / Cognitive Science
Damon Rich / Urban Design
Anri Sala / Visual Art
Kevin Slavin / Information Science
BRIDGE THE GAP? aims to create an ongoing forum between artists, scientists, designers and thinkers of the humanities in which ideas are exchanged and reciprocal stimulation and influence can occur. The first BTG?, held in 2001 in Kitakyushu (Japan) brought together 30 specialists from the arts, sciences and humanities (www.btgjapan.org); t... read more
AGENDA is an architecture book that occupies the territory between a monograph, a diary, and a collection of essays, interviews, and conversations. At its most harmless AGENDA is a catalog of 365 days, like a diary or journal: a collective narrative, personal and subjective. It documents the work and thinking of JDS Architects over a specific year marked by crisis, beginning on September 15th, 2008, the day that Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. The form of the book exploits the double meaning of its title, presenting the absurdities of day-to-day architectural practice while also staking our intent.
Rather than a definitive direction, our agenda is a definitive attitude - of eagerness, enthusiasm, and optimism, of criticality and concern, of fun and inquiry. It is a directive, a motivation to act, at times without clear knowledge of where our agenda will lead. “Change,” the buzzword of the last U.S. presidential campaign, is the order of the day, and ... read more
Shortly after Storefront for Art and Architecture was born in 1982, founding director Kyong Park began circulating what he described as a "newsletter" among the gallery's friends and followers.
This newssheet, sent out by mail to a list of up to 3,000 people, served a dual purpose: as an update on exhibitions, events and programs in the gallery, and also as a "reader" of sorts, offering critical contextualizations to the exhibitions on display in the gallery. In the mid-Eighties, the newsletters evolved to acquire a precise format: large sheets of double-sided monochrome newsprint, folded down to the size of a postcard and distributed either by mail or for free in the gallery. Each show in the gallery has its own newsprint, and the tradition continues to this day.
Over time, the archive of Storefront's Newsprints grew to become the most complete historical documentation of the gallery's programs since its earliest days. Storefront Newsprints 1... read more
The transformation of the urban landscape within the last decades has increasingly been dominated by the demands of capitalist utilization. Due to the current crisis, however, which goes far beyond a mere crisis of the real estate and financial market, these neoliberal politics and attendant forms of production of space have been subject to a loss of legitimation. For this reason, not only do the dominance and promises of the privatization model, the free market and private property have to be questioned, but also the conventions of the space-producing professions that follow and materialize these pol... read more
7 pm
Presentation of the publication "The way between Prishtina and Belgrade has 28000 un-proper build objects. So, never it will be an autobahn!", edited by Albert Heta and Vala Osmani.
Public reading of texts:
‘The State and Contemporary Art?' by Branimir Stojanovic,
‘Society of civil opportunism’ by Besnik Pula and
'Speculative Provisionality' by Albert Heta.
Introduction by Vala Osmani.
"The way between Prishtina and Belgrade has 28000 un-proper build objects. So, never it will be an autobahn!" includes: transcripts from the seminar "Cultural Policies as Crises Management?" designed as a challenge not only to the Kosovar cultural and political scene but also to the European intellectuals to help them see the political process in Kosova as a European process that concerns not only politics and politicians but also thinkers and culture workers in Europe; and texts.
Landscapes of Quarantine is an independent, multi-disciplinary design studio, based in New York City, consisting of eight evening workshops, from October 6 to December 5, 2009, in which 17 participants will gather to discuss the spatial implications of quarantine. Quarantine is an ancient spatial practice characterized by a state of enforced immobility, decontamination, and sequestration; yet it is increasingly relevant—and difficult to monitor—in an era of global trade, bio-engineering, and mass tourism.
Studio participants will explore a wide variety of spatial and historical examples, including airport quarantine facilities, Level 5 biohazard wards, invasive species, agricultural regulations, swine-flu infected tourists confined to their hotel rooms, lawsuits over citizens' rights to resist involuntary quarantine, horror films, World Health Organization plans for controlling the spread of pandemics, lunar soil samples, and more.
Read by millions since its launch in 2004, BLDGBLOG is the leading voice in speculation about architecture, landscape, and the built environment. Now The BLDGBLOG Book distills author Geoff Manaugh’s unique vision, offering an enthusiastic, idea-filled guide to the future of architecture, with stunning images and exclusive new content. From underground exploration to the novels of J.G. Ballard, from artificial glaciers in the mountains of Pakistan to weather control in Olympic Beijing, The BLDGBLOG Book is “part conceptual travelogue, part manifesto, part sci-fi novel,” according to Joseph Grima of Storefront for Art and Architecture.
“BLDGBLOG is something new and substantially different from anything else I have seen. Secretly, I had always hoped it would become a book. Geoff Manaugh has provided... read more
Storefront for Art and Architecture will host a lecture and book launch by Dennis Oppenheim.
Public Projects, published by Charta, includes a conversation between Dennis Oppenheim, Vito Acconci, Liam Gillick and Aaron Betsky; texts by Aaron Levy, Director of the Slought Foundation, the Director of the Marta Museum in Herford, Germany Roland Nachtigaller and curator of the recent exhibition, Electric Kisses, Friederike Fast. Following the talk the artist will answer questions and encourage discussion.
Over a hundred and fifty projects and proposal photographs, drawings, model and renderings are included in Public Projects, which also documents the museum installation. It is available through Distributed Arts Publishers, with complementary signed copies available at the launch.
On July 31, to mark the close of Reef, Storefront for Art and Architecture will host a discussion among a group of practitioners whose work focuses on digital design, material logic and innovative fabrication techniques. With the crucial objective of forging new relationships between research and practice in mind, this discussion will explore how new methods of fabrication and advances in computational geometry cyclically feed into one another.
The evening will begin with each of the participants presenting images of current work and research, creating a common pool of references open to group discussion. Each participant will be asked to present 10-15 slides within a 5-10 minute period. The discussion will be followed by music and refreshments.
Presentations by:
Mark Fornes & Skylar Tibbits (THEVERYMANY)
Rob Ley (Urbana)
Yanni Loukissas
Peter Macapia (LabDORA)
Dwayne Oyler (Oyler Wu Collaborative)
read more
It is with great pleasure that we introduce you to the premier issue of eVolo. This architecture and design journal was initially conceived in 2004 by a group of graduate students at Columbia University in New York City. Following graduate school, inspired and idealistic, many of us felt the need to reach further and look more closely at ourselves and our specific strengths to figure out what we could uniquely contribute to the field of architecture. Unfortunately entering the work force revealed a scary truth; the world of architecture is a tough place, making little room to accommodate all the unique contributions that so many brilliant young architects were so eager to make. This, specifically, is the inspiration for eVolo; to provide a forum for showcasing the most innovative, the most avant-garde designs that will define architecture in the twenty-first century.
So I introduce to you, eVolo, a work ... read more
7pm: Presentation of NEW GEOGRAPHIES #1: AFTER ZERO
Edited by Neyran Turan, Stephen Ramos.
Speakers: Neyran Turan, Stephen Ramos, Hashim Sarkis
Design disciplines are challenged by the condition of the zero point. “Zero-context,” “cities from scratch,” and “zero-carbon” developments all force designers to address important questions regarding the strategic relevance and impact of a design intervention. As much as the zero point presents naďve innocence and embodies contradictory notions—such as crisis versus abundance or context versus model—it also creates a ground for doubt, self-critique, and rejuvenation for architecture and urbanism. As projects, indeed entire “new” cities, are built before they can even be imagined and then repackaged and replicated as models for any context, what do these projects suggest for the design disciplines? Beyond a focus on the vast scales and ambitions of these projects, it is important... read more
The creators of Reef, Rob Ley and Joshua Stein, discuss the work of their practices and their investigations into the use of emergent technologies in architecture.
Rob Ley is the founding principal of Urbana, an architectur... read more
Excerpt from IP phone conversation between Federico Díaz and Jeff Kipnis, April 22, 2009.
"Art and architecture, have over time, produced a highly specialized discourse.
… But let’s go back to this question of the Resonance sculptures. If you think of them as simulations, then the effect is to be fascinated by how close they imitate something else. But I have a different concept that I use, but I am not trying to impose it on this work. I have this idea that is called “re-origination”. I want to suggest the concept of Federico that helps me understand his work, it’s basically called re-origination. The idea is something like this: Let’s say you read a book, and you make a movie of it. Then I’m interested, first of all in the power of one medium to represent another medium ... read more
Films and videos on modernist architecture
Curated by Hajnalka Somogyi
With films by:
Bernd Behr, Johanna Billing, Michael Blum, Josef Dabernig, Domčnec, Miklós Erhardt, Terence Gower, Pierre Huyghe, Lars Laumann, Ińigo Manglano-Ovalle, Caitlin Masley, Ursula Mayer, Anna Molska, Sadie Murdoch, Pia Rönicke, Anri Sala, Caspar Stracke and Judi Werthein
Modernist architecture has been a strong, recurring theme in contemporary art. Way after its rise and fall, it still seems to bug artists, both as art and as social program: it provokes mixed feelings of fascination, nostalgia, rejection and disillusionment. Gets Under the Skin offers a selection of critical responses to the ideas and products of modernist architecture that neither buy the recent “grand narrative” of its wholesale failure nor join the uncritical celebration and fetishization of its masterpieces.
through Mar 28 2009
(Free admission - no RSVP required)
Saturday, February 28, 7pm
Preview Screening: China Town, a video by Lucy Raven (50')
(free admission)
Screening will be followed by an open discussion with Jiang Jun and the audience and an introduction of a 3-part film series curated by Urban China to be screened the following three Saturdays at Storefront.
China Town traces copper mining and production from an open pit mine in Nevada to a smelter in China,
where the semi-processed ore is sent to be smelted and refined. Considering what it actually means to
"be wired" and in turn, to be connected, the video follows the detailed production process that
transforms raw ore into copper wire-in this case, the literal digging of a hole to China-and the generation
of waste and of ... read more
