Course 2: Architecture Exhibitions and the Politics of the Temporal
by Marina Otero Verzier
5 – 8 August, 2019
Course Description:
All architecture is temporal: it changes over time and is subject to continuous material transformations, circulatory processes and shifting receptions and practices. And yet, some works seem less permanent than others. Installations, exhibitions, pavilions, biennials and other interventions inscribed in the accelerated and inescapable dynamics of creation and destruction resonate with imaginaries and expectations of innovation and constant flux. Recalling the practices of the 1960s and 1970s, contemporary cultural institutions are drawn to, as Archigram wrote about their Instant City, “the loveliness of the idea” of an architecture “appearing out of nowhere, and after the ‘event’ stage, lifting up its skirts and vanishing.”
This course focuses on the temporal architecture of cultural institutions, their exhibition models, curatorial practices and social experiments, as well as their impact and political implications. We will examine the recent expansion of the architectural exhibition apparatus and how institutional borders circulate from the gallery space to permeate the city. We will analyze the resulting reconfigurations of the relations between space, power and politics in the urban space including new forms of control and consumption, changing conditions for inclusion and exclusion, as well as the emerging modes of engagement and political agency that are rendered possible by these transformations.
The sessions will be structured around a series of cases studies, including alternative spaces, architecture biennials and triennials, and commissions and temporary projects by major institutions such as MoMA PS1 Young Architect’s Program (YAP), the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, the BMW Guggenheim Lab, and the Centre Pompidou Mobile, among others.
Biography
Marina Otero Verzier is an architect and the director of research at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. She leads research initiatives such as “Automated Landscapes,” focusing on the emerging architectures of automated labor and “Architecture of Appropriation,” on squatting as spatial practice. Recently, she curated the exhibition Steve Bannon: A Propaganda Retrospective by Jonas Staal (2018), and co-curated the exhibition “I See That I See What You Don’t See” at La XXII Triennale Di Milano (2019).
Otero is part of the Artistic Team for Manifesta 13 in Marseille (2020). Previously, she was the curator of “Work, Body, Leisure,” the Dutch Pavilion at the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale (2018), Chief Curator of the 2016 Oslo Architecture Triennale together with the After Belonging Agency and the director of Global Network Programming at Studio-X- Columbia University GSAPP (New York). Otero is a co-editor of Unmanned: Architecture and Security Series (2016), After Belonging: The Objects, Spaces, and Territories of the Ways We Stay In Transit (2016) and editor of Work, Body, Leisure (2018).
Otero studied at TU Delft, Columbia GSAPP and ETSA Madrid, where she completed her PhD. Her thesis 'Evanescent Institutions' examined the emergence of new paradigms for cultural institutions. She teaches architecture at RCA in London.
Participation
10 participants will be selected to participate in this course. Eligible participants must read the Terms, fill out the application form, upload the required documents and submit the application form. Incomplete applications will not be considered.
Scholarships are available for participants from Kosovo.
A limited number of scholarships, that cover the participation fee, are available for international participants.
by Marina Otero Verzier
5 – 8 August, 2019
Course Description:
All architecture is temporal: it changes over time and is subject to continuous material transformations, circulatory processes and shifting receptions and practices. And yet, some works seem less permanent than others. Installations, exhibitions, pavilions, biennials and other interventions inscribed in the accelerated and inescapable dynamics of creation and destruction resonate with imaginaries and expectations of innovation and constant flux. Recalling the practices of the 1960s and 1970s, contemporary cultural institutions are drawn to, as Archigram wrote about their Instant City, “the loveliness of the idea” of an architecture “appearing out of nowhere, and after the ‘event’ stage, lifting up its skirts and vanishing.”
This course focuses on the temporal architecture of cultural institutions, their exhibition models, curatorial practices and social experiments, as well as their impact and political implications. We will examine the recent expansion of the architectural exhibition apparatus and how institutional borders circulate from the gallery space to permeate the city. We will analyze the resulting reconfigurations of the relations between space, power and politics in the urban space including new forms of control and consumption, changing conditions for inclusion and exclusion, as well as the emerging modes of engagement and political agency that are rendered possible by these transformations.
The sessions will be structured around a series of cases studies, including alternative spaces, architecture biennials and triennials, and commissions and temporary projects by major institutions such as MoMA PS1 Young Architect’s Program (YAP), the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, the BMW Guggenheim Lab, and the Centre Pompidou Mobile, among others.
Biography
Marina Otero Verzier is an architect and the director of research at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. She leads research initiatives such as “Automated Landscapes,” focusing on the emerging architectures of automated labor and “Architecture of Appropriation,” on squatting as spatial practice. Recently, she curated the exhibition Steve Bannon: A Propaganda Retrospective by Jonas Staal (2018), and co-curated the exhibition “I See That I See What You Don’t See” at La XXII Triennale Di Milano (2019).
Otero is part of the Artistic Team for Manifesta 13 in Marseille (2020). Previously, she was the curator of “Work, Body, Leisure,” the Dutch Pavilion at the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale (2018), Chief Curator of the 2016 Oslo Architecture Triennale together with the After Belonging Agency and the director of Global Network Programming at Studio-X- Columbia University GSAPP (New York). Otero is a co-editor of Unmanned: Architecture and Security Series (2016), After Belonging: The Objects, Spaces, and Territories of the Ways We Stay In Transit (2016) and editor of Work, Body, Leisure (2018).
Otero studied at TU Delft, Columbia GSAPP and ETSA Madrid, where she completed her PhD. Her thesis 'Evanescent Institutions' examined the emergence of new paradigms for cultural institutions. She teaches architecture at RCA in London.
Participation
10 participants will be selected to participate in this course. Eligible participants must read the Terms, fill out the application form, upload the required documents and submit the application form. Incomplete applications will not be considered.
Scholarships are available for participants from Kosovo.
A limited number of scholarships, that cover the participation fee, are available for international participants.