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Volume Magazine

Cover: Alicia Framis

Volume Magazine #14: UNSOLICITED ARCHITECTURE
Out now!
VOLUME is a collaborative project by Archis + AMO + C-Lab + …

http://www.volumeproject.org

‘Perhaps the time has come to design not as solicited by client, site or available budget, but to design unsolicited architecture and find clients, sites and budgets for it.’
Ole Bouman

Volume presents the UNSOLICITED practice - a powerful idea generator, a solid business plan and an idealistic design approach.

In order to actively grapple with the questions and challenges of our age, architects have to redefine their role, transform themselves from extremely competent executors of assignments into entrepreneurs and producers.

At the end of the 20th century the architect’s social position slipped away from him. The architect as social engineer, as organizer of social relationships, as the one who inspires political decisions, as a professional power player in the game of spatial distribution appears to be a remarkable intermediate phase in architecture’s century long development. His professional choice in recent decades has been reduced to supplying designs and assembling materials in a spatial configuration with a certain
esthetic quality.

But is there still or once again the desire, the possibility, the need for an engaged attitude? Recent years have seen an increasing number of initiatives by architects and artists which could easily be gathered under the moniker of ‘unsolicited architecture’. There is an ocean of problems and possibilities to discover and chart, that know no natural responsible parties.

Courage demands leaving the safe and trusted logic of the assignment behind in order to tread the field of venture development.

This issue of Volume discusses essential tools to permit architects to reclaim their professional autonomy. In the first part, Volume sits ‘Around the table’ with forward-thinking practitioners who see a different role and responsibility for architects compared to a few decades ago. The central part of the magazine presents the portfolio of the Office for Unsolicited Architecture founded by Ole Bouman in collaboration with students of the MIT. All projects introduce a new form of practice that pro-actively seeks out new territories for intervention, addresses pressing social needs and takes advantage of emerging opportunities for architecture. The third part marks the unsolicited world according to young architects and artists from around the globe.

Special supplement: The second issue of Noise magazine by Studio Beirut

Volume 14 was conceived and edited by Archis.

Upcoming events
**18th January – Rotterdam, Volume in conversation with Liam Gillick and Dominic Molon at the opening of Gillick’s exhibition at Witte de With ‘Three perspectives and a short scenario’
** 7 February- Maastricht, editor in chief Arjen Oosterman lectures at the ‘Research on Research IV: Urban Research’ symposium at the Jan van Eyck academy
** 15-18 February- Naples, Volume and Domus execute an open editorial meeting
**March – Rotterdam, Series of gatherings at the NAi (Netherlands Architecture Institute) on Unsolicited Architecture

FACTS
Editor in chief: Arjen Oosterman
Contributing editors: Ole Bouman, Rem Koolhaas, Mark Wigley
Features editor: Jeffrey Inaba
Editorial consultants: Carlos Betancourth, Thomas Daniell, Markus Miessen, Kai Vöckler
Design: Irma Boom, Sonja Haller
Format: 26.7 x 20 cm, 160 pages
Publisher: Archis Foundation
Distribution: Europe, Asia and USA by Idea Books and IPS Pressevertrieb GmbH
ISBN: 978-90-77966-14-3

Press Contact: Niloufar Tajeri, +31 (0)20 3203926, nt@archis.org

Iniva

Jeanette Chávez
Autocensura / Self-Censorship, 2006
Video, 2:52 min
Image courtesy of the artist

States of Exchange:
Artists from Cuba
23 January - 22 March 2008

Iniva
Rivington Place, London, EC2A 3BA, UK
Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday:
11am–6pm.
Late Thursdays: 11am - 9pm, Saturday: 12noon - 6pm
+44(0) 020 7729 9616
institute@iniva.org
http://www.iniva.org

Artists in Exhibition: Iván Capote, Yoan Capote, Jeanette Chávez, Diana Fonseca, Wilfredo Prieto and Lázaro Saavedra

Artists in Screenings: Raychel Carrión, Javier Castro, Alexis de la O Joya, Laimir Fano, Adonis Flores, Alex Hernández, Jesús Hernández, Luis o Miguel, Gustavo Pérez, Renier Quer, Alina Rodríguez, Lázaro Saavedra, Asori Soto and Manuel Zayas.

Curated by: Gerardo Mosquera and Cylena Simonds

States of Exchange: Artists from Cuba, Iniva’s first major exhibition at Rivington Place, provides a dynamic and thought-provoking exploration of the complexities of economic and information exchange in contemporary Cuba.

At a time when borderless communication is assumed to be the global norm, Cuba is a country caught in flux. With two legal currencies, minimal internet access, and divisions between those who can and can’t access external resources, the residents of Cuba have become experts at negotiating the complexities of exchange between each other and the world.

Curated by Cylena Simonds (Iniva) and prominent Cuban curator Gerardo Mosquera, the group show focuses on six artists living and working in Cuba today. Their work offers a witty and provocative response to scarcity and constraint, raising issues of global relevance. The artworks range from sculpture and performance to video installation, plus an extensive video screening programme featuring shorts and experimental documentaries by over 14 artists, including works never before seen in Europe.

Co-curator, Gerardo Mosquera says:
‘States of Exchange aims to show how artists in Cuba discuss contradictions, ambiguities and social negotiations in Cuban life, leading a critical culture that prevails in the country since the mid 80s. They use the semantic powers of art to create complex works whose impact goes far beyond the local context. So this is not a general show of Cuban art but a thematic exhibition on issues particular to Cuba. It includes both emerging artists that are beginning to be known internationally and more established ones.’

Works include:

Cuba’s complex system of economic exchange is summarised in Yoan Capote’s work Dinero Bilingüe (Bilingual Money, 2002), which splices together a peso with a US quarter – rendering both coins defunct. An elusive grasp of currency is also key to the video Pasatiempo (Dinero) (Pastime (Money), 2005) by Diana Fonseca in which two peso coins suddenly vanish leaving a dark stain on the
artist’s hands.

Themes of censorship are explored in Jeannette Chávez’s video performance, Autocensura (Self-censorship, 2006), she painfully ties thread around her tongue and closes her lips, her self-inflicted silence becoming invisible. In Secreter (2000) Iván and Yoan Capote collaborate to create a means to share secrets via a giant rudimentary telephone reminiscent of a handmade children’s toy. In Wilfredo Prieto’s installation Speech (1999) we see rolls of toilet paper made entirely from Cuba’s official newspaper, Granma.

Using red beans to represent people, Lázaro Saavedra’s video animations La gloria borra la memoria (Glory erases memory, 2006) and El que no sabe es como el que no ve (Not knowing is like not seeing, 2006) succinctly dramatise the tension between the official representations of life in Cuba and the actual experiences of Cubans. A sense of dreaming and longing is evoked in Cambio de Estado (Change of State, 2006) in which Chávez covers a ceiling with starred military epaulettes to create constellations reflecting the night sky of the area in which the work is displayed.

Accompanying the exhibition there is a full-colour bilingual catalogue. There is also a lively education and events programme including music, talks by the curators’ and discussions with artists. http://www.iniva.org for information

States of Exchange: Artists from Cuba is an Iniva exhibition at Rivington Place in Barclays Project Space and Project Space 2. The project has been realised with thanks to Arts Council England.

Tagged missile

‘Goodbye Vile Earth!’
Hollington & Kyprianou
South Hill Park, Ringmead, Bracknell, Berkshire, RG12 7PA

runs February 2nd to March 16th 2008
ARC gallery talk on Sunday 16 March 3pm

directions to SHP: www.southhillpark.org.uk/aboutUsTravel.jsp
artists website: www.electronicsunset.org

2008 marks the 100th anniversary of the first manned powered flight in Britain, made by former cowboy Samuel Cody over Farnborough Common. The Common became home to the now defunct Royal Aircraft Establishment, a top-secret military complex and what was one of the most important aeronautical research centres in the world.

Goodbye, Vile Earth! is the result of a residency at Farnborough Air Sciences Trust, set up by ex employees to maintain the RAE’s history.

Contained within the museum and several storage containers are thousands of artifacts, films, declassified reports and photographs- many of which will be shown in public here for the first time.

Hollington & Kyprianou use elements from the archive to create a time line of the working life and scientific projects of the RAE, combined with contemporary interviews exploring the pathology of archiving and its communication, in effect creating an archive of the archivists. A second timeline, a subjective history of modern art, will run alongside, allowing an appraisal of how discoveries and developments in both changed our perceptions of, and the actual physical and social structures of the world.

Amongst The RAE projects were the development of the Spitfire, the bouncing bomb, ejection seats, the jet engine and Concorde. The RAE was also home to the British space programme, which for a time in the 1960’s was one of the leaders in the field of rocket technology. Intrinsically entwined with this industrial history is a rich social and cultural one, including the mass mobilization of female workforces, shifting gender and class hierarchies, the secrecy and myths surrounding the site, and the question of ethics in relation to scientific industrial military research.

Goodbye Vile Earth! is a misquote of the Italian Futurist Filippo Marinetti, whose love of flight led him to see a future where humanity abandons terra forma for a life permanently in the skies. He actually wrote “Hoorah! No more contact with the vile earth!” in the Futurist manifesto, published in 1909, the year after Cody’s first flight on Farnborough Common.

Simon Hollington & Kypros Kyprianou’s previous collaborative projects have been shown nationally and internationally, including The ICA London and the 51st Venice Biennale.

Launch Event Saturday 2nd February 2-4pm.
Admission Free

Gallery open: Wednesday 7.30-9.30pm Thursday, Friday, Saturday 1-9.30pm Sunday 1-5pm

With the generous support of Farnborough Air Sciences Trust, South Hill Park, SCAN, Space Media and Distributed South.