From around a modern house

The lecture will narrate with pictures, video material and text passages "around Chandigarh", but mainly concentrating on the architect Minnette de Silva. On the basis of her first house, the "Karunaratne House" (1948-51, Kandy, Sri Lanka) I will try to map influences and interconnections between de Silva, Chandigarh and CIAM in the 1950's. In my artistic approach i often focus on the relationship of architecture, film, representation and biopolitical implications within architectural modernisms of the 20th century. Following this examination the lecture will be outlined by a description of a film Minnette de Silva wanted to make.

Moira Hille is an artist, performer and researcher. Since 2012 she works at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna at the PhD in-Practice program as artistic research staff. She was part of the artistic research project 'Model House - Mapping transcultural Modernisms' at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna funded by the WWTF from 2010-2012 working on the case-study 'around Chandigarh'.

Parallax Views on Architecture

Parallax is the displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object caused by a new line of sight. We all use this difference to gain depth perception. Astronomers use it to define the distance and outline of far away objects. Meanwhile Slavoj Zizek argues that the parallax gap causes not only an "epistemological" shift in the subject's point of view, but always reflects an "ontological" shift in the object itself, as subject and object are inherently mediated.

In seeking the oscillation between focus and productive indeterminacy, this year's lecture series at the Institute of Art and Architecture examines the production of space from multiple points of view. And as nearby objects have a larger parallax than distant ones, we invite artists and researchers working in our immediate proximity-artists and researchers within the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna-who look at the subject of architecture and urbanism implicitly or explicitly in their work. As a result the lecture series will offer an array of alternate positions coexisting within the Academy and create a platform for transdisciplinary discussions at the intersection between art and architecture.  (Stefan Gruber)

Lectures:
18.03.2013 Elke Krasny, Curator
15.03.2013 Andreas Spiegl, Theorist
25.04.2013 Nicole Timm, Scenographer
27.05.2013 Franz Pomassl, Sound Artist
10.06.2013 Moira Hille, Artist

18.03.2013
Elke Krasny, Curator
Curating Architecture

Exhibitions of architecture are at once discursive, spatial and aesthetic operations. As a format, exhibitions are temporary. As a discursive constellation, exhibitions drive the making of architectural history and architectural theorization, and equally important, contribute to the general understanding and the theorization of the field in its current discussions.

In this lecture I will draw both on historic and contemporary references of exhibited architecture addressing the issues of curatorial knowledge production on/of/with/about/alongside with architecture and the issues of scale with regard to different modes of exhibiting. The examples include my own work, in particular the research processes for The Force is in the Mind. The Making of Architecture (Architecture Centre Vienna 2008) and its consequent transformation into Penser Tout Haut. Faire l'Architecture (Centre de Design, UQAM, Montréal)as well as Hands-On Urbanism 1850-2012. The Right to Green (Architecture Centre Vienna 2012 and Venice Biennale 2012) I will reflect on my own practice as a curator of architecture and urbanism to discuss my role as the curator as an ethnographer and what I would like to call the conversational turn in curating. Exhibitions are sites of exchange that require curators to (re)think and (re)shape the processes of knowledge production in dialogue with the architecture, the architects and the public.

Elke Krasny is Senior Lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. In 2006 she was Visiting Professor at the University of Bremen. In 2012 she was Visiting Scholar at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal.

Her research-based practice deals with contemporary architecture, urban transformation, politics of remembrance, socially engaged art practices, feminist historiography, and politics of migration. The results are presented in exhibitions, walks, symposia, essays and books.

In 2008 she presented The Force is in the Mind. The Making of Architecture at the Architecture Centre Vienna (Architekturzentrum Wien) which led to Penser tout Haut. Faire l'Architecture (Thinking out Loud. The Making of Architecture) at the Centre de Design de l'UQAM in Montréal and Dalhousie University in Halifax.

As curator-in-residence of the Hongkong Community Museum Project in 2011 she realized the walks Hongkong City Telling. As artist-in-residence she curated the exhibition Mapping the Everyday: Neighborhood Claims for the Future in collaboration with the Downtown Eastside Women Centre at the Audain Gallery Vancvouver in 2011-2012.

In 2012 her exhibition Hands-on Urbanism 1850-2012. The Right to Green was presented at the Architecture Centre Vienna and subsequently invited by David Chipperfield to partake in the Central Pavillion of the Architecture Biennale in Venice in 2012.

Books:

- Hands-on Urbanism 1850-2012. The Right to Green, Elke Krasny, Architekturzentrum Wien (eds.), MCCM Creations Hongkong, 2012

- The Force is in the Mind. The Making of Architecture, Elke Krasny, Architekturzentrum Wien (eds.), Basel Boston Berlin Birkhäuser Publishers 2008

- Stadt und Frauen. Eine andere Topographie von Wien, Metro Verlag 2008

15.04.2013
Andreas Spiegl, Theorist
The rehousing of "architecture unhoused"

Recent politics of space have led to a notion of space beyond the dialectics of inside and outside. Architecturally turned into one another the paradigmatic motif of that relation between inside and outside, the house, seemed to have gone. Leaving a house dissolved into a blurred perspective of contradicting views. Seemingly the spatial opposition of inside and outside turned into a parallel notion of in and out. The outside is not behind the inside anymore but next to it, maybe identical. The house that has been architecturally "unhoused", appears to come back on the basis of a discourse on sustainability, another version of functionalism. The so called research on the conditions of architecture seems to search for the house again, to rehouse mechanisms of in and out, of inclusion and exclusion, based on the ancient "oikos" and its derived economy. Interestingly the inside tends to incorporate everything into the economical house and to create an outside, an uneconomical rest, a building of emptiness. Uncannily empty, an unhomely home, where the Social Media and virtual spaces moved in.

Andreas Spiegl is lecturer on Media Studies at the Institute of Cultural Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. His work focuses on the interface of arts, urban studies, media studies and psychoanalysis. He is member of the Office of Cognitive Urbanism (founded together with Christian Teckert in 1999) and published with it "Prospekt" (2003) and "Last Minute" (2006). He published numerous texts on contemporary arts and art and media theories.

25.04.2013
Nicole Timm , Scenographer
Ludic Drive

In her lecture Nicole Timm presents her approaches to practice as a Scenographer in theaters and in urban interventionist work in cooperation with the architects collective raumlaborberlin . She will illustrate the ludic drive being a theatrical principle and an elementary drive for humans, a proven tool for communication amongst actor and observer of diverse backgrounds and socializations in projects in the urban realm.

Nicole Timm was born 1973 in Berlin, Germany  and  studied  stage  design at Berlin University  of Arts. She works in the fields Theatre, Video/Film and Urban Interventions. Nicole Timm works with raumlaborberlin since 2007, a collective of architects that investigates strategies for urban renewal. Installations and urban interventions with raumlaborberlin throuout Europe. Since 2005 she designs sets for several music videos, e.g. for Seeed, Peter Fox, Miss Platnum, Toten Hosen.

Since 2010 Nicole Timm has a university teaching position at Berlin University of Arts at stage design department. At the moment she is a guest Professor for "Scenographie/ Stage Design" at Vienna Academy of Fine Arts.

27.05.2013
Franz Pomassl, Sound Artist
Hearing with the body

Franz Pomassl will give an introduction to his artistic approach, in his lecture he will reflect on the relation between  sound, space, perception, physics, and the body based on a selection of  his site-specific sonic installation works for the public space and beyond.

His work has been widely shown and performed in several essential exhibition projects on the contemporary art and sound scene worldwide in leading museums and public spaces such as Manifesta 2 Luxemburg (1998), Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (2002/2010), Arsenal Centre of Actual Art Nizhny Novgorod (2007), MUMOK Vienna (2008), TBA21 Vienna (2011-2012), ZKM Media Museum Karlsruhe (2012-2013) and at major festivals including ARS Electronica Linz (1997/2008), Sonar Barcelona (2002), MUTEK Montreal (2005), Sonic Acts Amsterdam (2008/2013), Steirischer Herbst Graz (2001/2012), Donaufestival and Kontraste Krems (2013).

Franz Pomassl is an sonic artist, electronic musician, sound curator, academic lecturer and researcher. He is a founder and head of  the Research Laboratories for Sound/Soundstudio at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where he is a lecturer on Sound and Art at the Institute of Fine Arts. He is a co-founder and member of autonomous research consortia ISSA (International Society for Sonic Arts) and IKT (Department of  Art and Technology), runs the record label Laton.