Venice: 14th
International Architecture Biennale
– Fundamentals.
Arsenale – Mondo Italia. The 14th International Architecture Biennale,entitled Fundamentals is directed by Rem Koolhaas and chaired by Paolo Baratta, it is open to the public through November
23. Rem Koolhaas describes Fundamentals as
an exhibition that consists of three main components: Absorbing Modernity 1914-2014 in the National Pavilions, Elements of Architecture in the
Central Pavilion and Monditalia
in the Arsenale. “In a moment of crucial political change, we decided to look
at Italy as a “fundamental” country, completely unique but also emblematic of a
global situation where many countries are balancing between chaos and a
realization of their full potential. The Arsenale presents a scan of Italy,
established by 82 films, 41 architectural projects, and a merger of
architecture with la biennale’s dance, music, theatre, and film sections. Each
project in Monditalia concerns unique and specific conditions but
together form a comprehensive portrait of the host country.” Writes Koolhaas.
Mondoitalia. Special Mention –
Intermundia – Lampedusa – Ana Dana Beros. Echoing the
ongoing tragedy of Lampedusa, the project evokes, with new documentation and
through an immersive experience, the reality of migration and border-crossing
from the South to the North as a defining element of today's European
societies.
photo by Francesco Galli - courtesy
la Biennale di Venezia
Intermundia
– Ana Dana Beros
photo by Francesco Galli - courtesy
la Biennale di Venezia
Intermundia
Seen at the Arsenale William Sawaya
and Paolo Moroni
Mondoitalia. Italian Ghosts - Bengasi
- DAAR. DAAR's
(Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency) "Italian Ghosts" about Italy's "colonization,
decolonization, and revolution" in Libya. The confessional form references
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's 2008 apology for 30 years of Italy's
military occupation. In a peace agreement signed in Benghazi at the time of the
apology/confession, Italy agreed to pay Libya billions of Euros in exchange for
Libya cracking down on illegal immigrants venturing to Italy.
Mondoitalia – Legible Pompei –
Pompei - Lucia Allais, MOS. “A global archaeological laboratory, a city
half-buried in a mound of lava, a sinkhole for cultural funds, a cipher for
Italy’s cultural disarray, Pompeii is all of these things, but it is also a
testing ground for preservation theories and practices. Since the
Enlightenment, every mission to ‘discover’ the city has been followed by the
invention of techniques to repair and stabilize it. The installation describes
and performs the problem of preserving Pompeii. The Data Fresco diagrams the
history of Pompeiian conservation experiments in order to make the site legible
to the visitor again. The Souvenir Pile offers ersatz Pompeiian matter, cast in
resin blocks, to the Biennale public, as a material record of the site and a
souvenir of the Italian cultural experience.” Storefront
for Art and Architecture.
Mondoitalia – All the Roads Lead to
Rome. Yes, but Where Exactly – Roma - Teresa Cos. Piazza del Campidoglio is not
the center as any other, it is “The Center” by definition. It is Italy’s Kilometro Zero, and as such its
conveniently designated point of gravity.
At the same time it is a place where emblematic events juxtapose in
space and time within a dispersed network of relations. This apparent contradiction, which becomes
exemplary if we search “The Center” through the Wikipedia, epitomizes the limits,
which spring from the norm, by showing the impossibility to reduce history and
national identity into categories that fail to map “a complexity”, where the
particular is always the universal.
All the Roads Lead to
Rome. Yes, but Where Exactly
Mondoitalia – Superstudio, The
Secret Life of the Continuous Monument – Florence - Gabriele Mastrigli. Founded in Florence in 1966, Superstudio were
one of the neo Avant-garde groups that formulated the most severe critical
response to the Modern Movement’s claim of redemption. However, through the metaphysical dryness of
its projects, Superastudio advance towards the most symbolic and ultimate measure
of architecture: to dissolve under the
drops of time. As La moglie di Lot
declares: “Architecture exists in time as salt exists in water.” The only possible architecture, then, is our
own life.
Superstudio, The
Secret Life of the Continuous Monument
Seen in the Arsenale MoMa’s Paola
Antonelli
Mondoitalia – The Business of People
– Torino - Ramak Fazel. As a measure of
the wealth of a nation, industry is kept under constant observation. The monitoring detects changes in a number of
economic indicators that make it possible to “photograph” the situation at any
given moment. These “photographs”
however create an environment where individuals recede into the background, so
much so that it almost seems uninhibited territory. The Business of People explores how to
communicate with the actors of the “photograph” displayed by the data
matrix. Rather than taking the unified vision
of an aerial view, this project focuses on the pixels of the “photograph”, a
mosaic of fragmented images from which industry, labor, emerges as a reflection
of the human condition.
The Business of People
Mondoitalia – Il Deserto Rosso -
1964 – Michelangelo Antonioni/ Ravenna
Mondoitalia – 8 ½ - 1963 – Federico
Fellini/Terme di Chianciano and Montecatini
Mondoitalia – L’Ombrellone – 1965 –
Dino Risi/Rimini
Designboom’s Brigit Lohmann and Massimo Mini
Mondoitalia – The Tomorrow – Amos
Gitai and Stefano Boeri. The Tomorrow is a journal about the future. It is made of two things: a public calendar
and a public conversation made of letters.
The calendar and the letters are tools to reflect on the times, the spaces
and the language of the contemporary and polycentric European metropolis.
Mondoitalia – Dance. Dance, Music,
Theatre and Cinema with the programs of the directors of the respective
Biennales; Virgilio Sieni, Ivan Fedele, Àlex Rigola and Alberto Barbera
participate in the life of the Mondoitalia section, with debates and seminars
for the six-month duration of the exhibition.
Mondoitalia – Effimero: or the
Postmodern Italian Condition – Venezia – Lea-Catherina Szacka. Between the late
1970s and the end of the 1980s, Italy experienced a proliferation of events
using ephemeral structures as a response to the socio-political turmoil of the
previous decade known as the anni di piombo (literally, the years of
lead). The utopian spaces of the
theater, the performing arts, and other forms of entertainment became catalysts
for a collective imagination while giving rise to new ideas of spectacle. Effimero is both an archive documenting five
study cases of ephemeral architecture, and an installation designed as a
reminder of those collective spatial experiences.
Art directors and designers of the
Effimero exhibition; U67 Angela Gigliotti and Fabio Gigone
Mondoitalia – Immediate
Surroundings. Residences of Italian Mafia Organizations – Milano – Tommaso
Bonaventura, Alessandro Imbriaco, Fabio Severo. Immediate Surroundings is a
photographic documentation of the places of residence of the members of mafia
organizations, past and present: the streets and buildings of the neighborhoods
in which they lived or still live, the views from their homes confiscated over
the years. The diversity of places reveals the evolution of the practice of
criminal groups, such as the suit land and the manufacturing that have
colonized, as they choose to show or hide in anonymity. The map of these residences tells a widespread
and diverse geography, crosses the past and the present of the Mafia hierarchy,
puts in front of a colonization is no longer limited to certain regions, now
spread over most of the country.
Seen at
the Arsenale Sahir Erozan, Marina Pahomova and Angelo Bucarelli