The Architects

Amie Siegel 

April 1st – May 30th, 2015

Opening Reception: March 31st, 2015 at 7 PM

Commissioned by Storefront for Art and Architecture as part of Office US

 

The stories of architects have historically been portrayed and understood through singular figures and monographic narratives. However, the human and logistical edifices behind each of these individual figures is oftentimes less singular and more homogenous than usually depicted. What is the portrait of the collective body of architects building globally today?

 

On March 31st, 2015, Storefront for Art and Architecture will host an exhibition featuring The Architects, a film by artist Amie Siegel originally commissioned by Storefront as part of OfficeUS, the United States Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Biennale of Architecture. The Architects examines and analyzes the drivers, protocols, and implications of architectural production in an era marked by globalizing forces. The film embodies the efforts made by OfficeUS towards the understanding of practice and accountability within architecture.

 

The Architects cuts transversally through the city of New York, producing a continuous image of the global architecture office today. Moving through several architecture studios—from Fifth Avenue to Downtown to Brooklyn—the film depicts the operational territories and landscapes of worldwide architectural production from New York. As a singular unfolding visual, the film deploys silent conversations among the architectures, locations, objects and characters that inhabit its frames, raising questions of scale, agency, and power.

 

Parallel tracking shots through the working offices chart their typologies of sameness and difference, revealing reappearing elements of the spaces of architectural production: long horizontal desks, screens, renderings, and models. The film frames a wide spectrum of practices, from large firms to smaller studios in a collective new whole. It positions itself from a vantage point that places the lens of the camera between the spaces of production and the world, which is always, and only, just outside the window.

 

The Architects was made possible through the generous support of Storefront’s Board of Directors and Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown.

 

Ranging from photographs, video, film installations, performance and feature films for the cinema, American artist Amie Siegel’s work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions including Amie Siegel: Provenance at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, as well as solo and group exhibitions at MoMA/PS1, NY; MAXXI, Rome; Hayward Gallery, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Walker Art Center, MN; CCA Wattis, San Francisco; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. Her films have screened at the Cannes, Berlin, New York and Toronto Film Festivals, The Museum of Modern Art, New York and The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. She has been a fellow of the DAAD Berliner-Künstlerprogramm, Guggenheim Foundation, and the recipient of a Sundance Institute Film Fund award and Berlin Film Festival award. 

 

Amie Siegel, The Architects, 2014, HD Video, color/sound

Producer: Andrew Fierberg

Co-Producer: Martina Klich

Production Manager: Tina Piccari

Cinematographer: Christine A. Maier

1st Assistant Camera: Bayley Sweitzer

Digital I Tech: Henry Prince

Sound Recordist: Timothy Wong

Key Grip: Mark Solomon

Grip: Dan Stenzel and Wil Hamlin

PA: Nir Bitton and Matthew Town

Color Correct and Conform: Post Republic, Berlin

Sound Mixer: Gisberg Smialek

Storefront for Art and Architecture: Eva Franch i Gilabert, Kara L. Meyer, Melissa Weisberg, eynep Goksel, Piotr Chizinski, Carlos Minguez Carrasco  

OfficeUS: Eva Franch i Gilabert, Ana Miljacki, Ashley Schafer

Special Thanks: Simon Preston Gallery, New York

 

About OfficeUS

As the commissioner of the 2014 United States Pavilion at the 14th Biennale of Architecture in Venice, Storefront for Art and Architecture presented OfficeUS, a global experiment in the making of architecture, history and work.  OfficeUS in Venice focused on the ways in which the space, structures, and protocols of the U.S. architectural office have participated in the construction of Modernity. OfficeUS was curated by Eva Franch, Anna Miljacki and Ashley Schafer with the support and collaboration of more than 300 individuals. To learn more go to   www.storefrontnews.org

 

OfficeUS is expanding to New York, and will serve as an active, global, experimental architecture institute. As an ongoing reimagination of the concept of the office, OfficeUS will revisit the history of architecture, its relationship to politics and power and the premises and conclusions of modern and contemporary projects, to construct an agenda for the future production of architecture today. To learn more please contact ny@officeus.org.

 

General support for Storefront’s exhibition and programs are made possible by Arup; F.J. Sciame Construction Co., Inc.; the Foundation for Contemporary Arts; The Greenwich Collection Ltd.; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; The Peter T. Joseph Foundation; and by Storefront’s Board of Directors, members, and individual donors.