Category: architecture

SPATIAL SATURDAY

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New York City: tomorrow is the launch party for Geoff ‘Bldgblog‘ Manaugh’s incredible new book!

“On Saturday, September 26, Manaugh will be joined by many of the writers, thinkers, and practitioners whose work is featured in The BLDGBLOG Book, in a day-long event of back-to-back presentations at Storefront for Art and Architecture. It is free and open to the public.”

Things kick off at 3pm and go til 8. At 3:30 Geoff and I will discuss The Shining in Dubai, and further explore some topics raised by Geoff’s interview with me in the book: cities as musical instruments; urban radio; how a city defines its own sound (if it has one), etc.

If you haven’t been to Storefront, now’s the time! The space itself is fantastic, and this promises to be a fun afternoon…

POST PRODUCTION

Nicolas Bourriaud’s Post Production book (the follow-up to Relational Aesthetics), is online as PDF. Excerpt from intro:

These artists who insert their own work into that of others contribute to the eradication of the traditional distinction between production and consumption, creation and copy, readymade and original work. The material they manipulate is no longer primary. It is no longer a matter of elaborating a form on the basis of a raw material but working with objects that are already in circulation on the cultural market, which is to say, objects already informed by other objects. Notions of originality (being at the origin of) and even of creation (making something from nothing) are slowly blurred in this new cultural landscape marked by the twin figures of the DJ and the programmer, both of whom have the task of selecting cultural objects and inserting them into new contexts.

It’s fascinating to hear an art guy thinking through DJ culture, although, like so many of these texts, Duchamp presides over it all as if the blurry emergent (post-postmodern?) cultural mush of recent years needs a stately father figure. It doesn’t. We don’t.

Elsewhere, Claire Bishop offers a rich critique of Bourriaud: Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics (PDF). On a basic level, her PDF is better because it contains pictures. And a nuanced support of Mexico-based Spanish artist Santiago Sierra, whose works make me think:

sierra img lg7

[Santiago Sierra – Line Tattooed on Six Paid People]

+ + +

in NYC post-Postopolis news:

Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG is speaking this evening at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, 6pm, free. Which dovetails nicely with the opening reception of a new exhibit at Storefront for Art & Architecture @ 7:30pm.

Geoff talks fast – noticeably faster than most West Coasters – because he’s got volumes of impressive information and speculation to convey. He says:

The title of the lecture is a bit heavy-handed, but it’s called “Designing the Post-Terrestrial.” Expect everything from Native American mound builders to applied geosynthetics to the architecture of Vicente Guallart, by way of weather control during the Beijing Olympics, muon detectors in the rain forest, and Viking archaeology.

L.A. ART WEEKEND

A ridiculous amount of things are happening in Los Angeles this weekend (so many that I’m afraid I won’t be able to return to Mashti Malone’s for more faludeh & rose saffron ice cream).

In addition to ongoing POSTOPOLISMO, tweeted here , there is a wealth of For Your Art’s LA Art Weekend events. Like Lucky Dragons performing at LACE’s Resonant Forms festival!

plus a handful of art openings such as

Gallery Glue Paper Scissors

and this one

[Carolyn Castaño, Pablo and Virginia]

“These new works depict portraits of the amorous adventures of Latin American guerrillas, drug lords, presidential candidates and beauty queens.”

POSTOPOLIS: day 1

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[image from Storefront for Art and Architecture]

Engaging discussion on the role of the vernacular in contemporary architecture and considerations of public vs private space with an eye towards designing for negotiating flows within each… as 80s pop songs from the other side of this design hotel rooftop compete with Yo-Ichiro Hakomori’s voice, each occasionally interrupted by the blocky roar of news helicopters overhead.

Fritz Haeg chronicling the use of his geodesic dome home for an open-ended school. ‘Edible Estates’, we learn, began when he was looking at the 2004 US Presidential election map (blue edges, thick red center) and decided to do something in the center, in Kansas, that could work there and elsewhere. The lawn as a repressive space, a flatterer of architecture it frames. Talk of gardens.

Michael Dear on the Postborder City, fueled by personal vignettes. He drove 4000 miles, journeying along each side of the U.S./Mexico border. Dedication & long-term realness exposure. At some point Nguzu Nguzu arrives with stellar fish tacos. The conversation will have to continue from Dear’s book:

In Latin America, urbanism is also a rejection of discipline, a miracle of order in spite of everything, an uncertain combination of strength and fragility, eating itself from the moment of birth… The availability of physical space is declining because of the demographic explosion of people and poverty; in the social arena, the public and private are merging and, despite everything, they intensify the geography of exclusion and inclusion. Is there is a utopian sentiment, it is that of purchasing power…

… & lots more. come on up!

 

PRE POSTOPOLIS INFO

Postopolis will be streaming online as well (panoptipostopolismo!)

It begins in two hours. Here’s a complete SCHEDULE of the week’s speakers

Location of the event will take place at The Standard Downtown LA. The following lineup of speakers for Postopolis! LA was curated by the authors of the six host blogs.

TUESDAY 31

05:00 : Fritz Haeg Artist and Writer
05:40 : Patrick Keller Architect and Principal, Fabric
06:20 : Yo-Ichiro Hakomori Architect and Principal, wHY Architecture
07:00 : BREAK
07:20 : Dwayne Oyler Architect and Principal, Oyler Wu Collaborative
08:00 : Michael Dear Professor of Geography, USC
08:40 : Jeffrey Inaba Architect and Principal, Inaba Projects
09:20 : BREAK

The evening will end with brief back-to-back presentations by the organizers and host blogs:
09:40 : Joseph Grima Storefront for Art and Architecture / Bettina Korek ForYourArt
10:00 : Geoff Manaugh BLDGBLOG / David Basulto Plataforma Arquitectura / Bryan Finoki Subtopia
10:20 : Jace Clayton mudd up! / Dan Hill City of Sound / Régine Debatty we make money not art
10:40 : OPEN QUESTIONS

WEDNESDAY 1
05:00 : Mary-Ann Ray Architect, Writer, and Principal, Studio Works Architects
05:40 : David Gissen Theorist and Historian, CCA
06:20 : Whitney Sander Architect and Principal, Sander Architects
07:00 : BREAK
07:20 : Sarah Johnston & Mark Lee Architects and Principals, Johnston MarkLee
08:00 : Robert Miles Kemp Designer and Principal, Variate Labs
08:40 : Freya Bardell & Brian Howe Principals, Greenmeme
09:20 : BREAK
09:40 : Ted Kane Architect and Writer
10:00 : Stephanie Smith Founder, Ecoshack

THURSDAY 2
05:00 : Austin Kelly Principal, XTEN Architecture
05:40 : Orhan Ayyüce Architect, Blogger, and Senior Editor, Archinect
06:20 : Ava Bromberg Just Space(s)
07:00 : BREAK
07:20 : Ben Cerveny Strategic and Conceptual Advisor, Stamen Design
08:00 : Steve Roden Musician and Artist
08:40 : Gary Dauphin Writer and Critic
09:20 : BREAK
09:40 : Benjamin Ball & Gaston Nogues Architects and Founding Partners, Ball-Nogues Studio
10:00 : Mike the Poet Poet and Writer

FRIDAY 3
05:00 : Michael Downing LAPD
05:40 : Bryan Boyer Organizer, Helsinki Design Lab 2010
06:20 : Ari Kletzky Founder, Islands of LA
07:00 : BREAK
07:20 : Eric Rodenbeck Founder, Stamen Design
08:00 : Matthew Coolidge Director, Center for Land Use Interpretation
08:40 : Christopher Hawthorne Architecture Critic, Los Angeles Times
09:20 : BREAK
09:40 : David Burns, Austin Young & Matias Viegener Founders, fallen fruit
10:00 : Ken Ehrlich Artist and Writer

SATURDAY 4
04:20 : Benjamin Bratton Architect and Theorist
05:00 : Christian Moeller Artist
05:40 : Sean Dockray / Dan Goods / Daniel Rehn / Jay Yan
06:20 : Media Panel (Architect’s Newspaper, Curbed LA, Alissa Walker, Greg J. Smith, Christina Ulke)
07:00 : Photography Panel (Catherine Ledner, Misha Gravenor, Dave Lauridsen, Tom Fowlks, Gregg Segal)
07:20 : BREAK
08:00 : Paul Petrunia Founder, Archinect School Bloggers Panel
08:40 : Magazine Panel Sam Grawe DWELL, Zach Frechette GOOD & t.b.d
09:20 : CLOSING PARTY

& some more useful news::::

“The venue, as many of you will already know, is the Standard Hotel in downtown Los Angeles – but after 9:00pm each night, we will begin moving down from the roof deck to a conference room on the 2nd floor. To get there, just go up the escalator in the lobby… and it’s right there. Note that that is only after 9pm.

On Friday and Saturday, meanwhile, after 7pm, the Standard will begin charging $20 admission to their roof deck – leading to the unfortunate need to recommend that if you are coming on Friday or Saturday, then either show up before 7pm to avoid the $20 charge or after 9pm, to join us for free on the second floor (up the escalator on the right). Yes, it’s weird… and out of our control.

Finally, consider bringing a picnic blanket for the rooftop events, simply as something to sit on – and bring a coat! Or someone to hug. It could definitely get a bit chilly up there.

For those of you not in Los Angeles, or simply hoping to watch things from home, a live web feed of the proceedings will also be available through the Storefront website and ForYourArt. And we’ve now got a public Flickr pool through which we can all share images of the event. Reminders and such like will be coming up as things proceed! Hope to see many of you soon. “

LA DAY & NIGHT

I can’t believe I’m A) back in America B) back in LA and C) still awake.

But all these things seem to be true.

Postopolis kicks off today, and tonite I’m playing WILDNESS. BOTH EVENTS ARE FREE, LA.

Today’s ‘Postopolis pick’ is Fritz “Edible Estates” Haeg, who will be our very first speaker, at 5pm. Fritz’s long story made frightfully short: imagine if American lawns were transformed into food-bearing community gardens?

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him & more… to come.

Then from 10pm-2am. join us @ Wildness! myself, Tammie Brown, and the Wildness crew @ SILVER PLATTER 2700 W. 7TH. They say: “Wildness is a self sustaining event. our mission is to invent new ways of visualizing, physically experiencing, and talking about complex identity politics that surround our queer lived experience through late night art-making and party having.” free forever libre para siempre

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POST POSTOPOLIS

had a very nice chat w/ Geoff @ Postopolis today, covering lots of ground around music, migration, urban identity, spaces of possibility. although my favorite part was after the Q&A (which eventually turned to my impressions of NYC as a site for musical activity) when i went downstairs with Jess & some other staff and one of the women said “great talk. but do you really think that Dipset has fallen off?”

i’ll be back there (with Harlem beats to the contrary?) to drop tunes at the closing party — 7-9ish this saturday. you are invited. i imagine the free bass & free booze wont last 4 long, but the space — as you can see below — is incredible, spilling out into the street. cut-n-pasted details:

Facade

POSTOPOLIS!
Closing Party
Saturday, June 2, 2007 at 7pm
with DJ Rupture and DJ N-ron

After three days of near-continuous conversations, interviews, pecha kuchas and discussions at Storefront hosted by BLDGBLOG (Los Angeles), City of Sound (London), Inhabitat(New York City), and Subtopia (San Francisco), Postopolis! moves towards the closing party on Saturday, June 2, with music by DJ Rupture, author of Mudd Up! blog, and DJ N-ron.

(In case you missed them, you can view videos of the first three days of Postopolis! on Storefront’svideoblog and on the Postopolis! Flickr pool)

Storefront

URBANISM CHAT, BASS CHAMP

a brief reminder that tomorrow (thurs. 1:30pm) i’ll be speaking at Postopolis, the 5-day event “of near-continuous conversation about architecture, urbanism, landscape, and design,” held @ The Storefront for Art & Architecture in downtown NYC.

a week from today, my WFMU show will start off right with a live live live performance from Drop the Lime.

his myspace says ‘NYC HeavyBass CHAMPION’, and the crazy thing is, it’s true. You can hear it in his increasingly focused production (which has come a loooong way since his slippery breakcore days, mutating into a a sort of grimey electro bass rave) and in the increasingly popular parties he spearheads with the Trouble & Bass crew. 1555457909_l.jpg

last but not least, another drum & bass classic – by my book at least. Thunder. This epic atmospheric track clocks in at nearly 10 minutes, suffused with nostalgia even when it was brand new. A powerful restraint is at work here, tensioning the lightness with the heaviness so that the 10 minutes flow like water, tidal, washes up on the listener slowly. the amen break doesnt drop until about 3:30, followed by overweight subs a few bars later.

Bass weight par excellence plus saudade

The Rood Project – Thunder (22 MB, 320kbps)

WED. 7PM

stay tuned: my radio show, Mudd Up! (one name fits all), will be Wednesdays, 7-8pm, starting in June. ive already got a bunch of INCREDIBLE guests (musical & otherwise) lined up but it’ll take a few days b4 i can sort who’s-on-when…

i think i’m talking at a thing at harvard next saturday on Free Kulture but can’t quite be sure.

i’m definitely talking at Postopolis at NYC’s Storefront for Art & Architecture the week after next (thurs 31st, around 4pm).

in Dubai hence the brevity