In this installment of Cross-Talk #9 — The Architecture Play, Anthony Morey explains why the constant stream of exhibitions and their hashtags may be doing more damage than good and how the solution could be to sit one out and reevaluate instead.
The role of Archinect’s series Cross-Talk is to bring forward the positive aspects of the polemic and allow for the resulting conflict to bring to life an otherwise still and comfortable climate of creativity—if there can be one. Cross-Talk attempts—if to only say that it did—to allow text the freedom that the image has accepted and embraced. Cross-Talk attempts to force the no, to contradict itself, to anger, to please and then anger again, if only to force a stance, to pull out the position of the self, of the discipline and of the hour as a means to begin and maintain conversations moving forward.
With the reveal of this year’s Chicago Architecture Biennial theme— "…and other such stories” (September 19, 2019 - January 5, 2020) —whose title follows close on the heels of Sylvia Lavin’s recently curated show at the CCA-Canadian Center for Architecture “Architecture Itself and Other Postmodernist Myths” (November 7, 2018-April 7, 2019), the time has come to think critically about the role, format, and reason of audiences engaged with one of the discipline’s arguably most exploited means of contemporary relevance-production: the exhibition. At a moment when our discipline is shook by a cascade of disparate explosions (politics, technology, etc.), impacting not solely our creative production but infiltrating our ways of thinking, a certain state of instability seems to have been taken advantage of by the sheer number of exhibitions beings orchestrated by architects or for an architecture audience.
The exhibition has become the preferred mode of discussion and likewise end goal for many studios, workshops, and offices. Today, being a part of the next Biennial, collective exhibition, or ornamenting the galleries of academic institutions all over the globe is seen uncritically as being valued by the discipline as its knighted representatives. Once upon a time, however, the role of exhibitions was to showcase a sample of the work of an architect to an audience that exceeded the usual trained pairs of eyes, addressing a public that could contribute to the discussion from another socio-cultural position and serve as a Petri dish of actual work that would thereupon be built, experimented with, and/or questioned further.
Today's constant stream of shows, in contrast, increasingly suffers from an exhibitionary symptom that teases the audience with unfulfilled promises, serving as previews of the next exhibition, which itself is a preview of the next—a never-ending string of ideas that are condemned to flame up momentarily as gallery text and week-long social media explosions before being buried by the next short-lived thread. No longer breaching disciplinary confines and reaching out to obtain feedback from new voices, these shows target a pool of contributors that are similarly the audience of but the same recycled voices that participate in them. A condition upon which this preview-syndrome relies heavily.
The progressive endeavor of architecture exhibitions is constantly veiled by an intrinsic fear of being condemned as art-lite, which paradoxically leads to shows that present chimeric objects, neither art nor architecture, with little or no gained value for the larger socio-cultural project at hand. Without daring to expand the conversation, architecture’s exhibitions are left impotent at building anything of value outside of its own disciplinary topography.
Who then is the audience for the work that the discipline produces? Is our work destined to be constantly shuffled between the gallery, the academic hallway, and Instagram tags?
As someone for whom exhibitions are a key part of the daily thought process, I find it imperative that such questions surface and be discussed. Witnessing and—what is more disconcerting—contributing to such a dilemma is one that has caused me much concern, warranting the need to take stock and begin to break it down, to experiment.
The work within the exhibitions has the potential to become insignificant. The only imperative function of the shows could become the ability to tag and exist in the production itself. It is as if the ego of those who exist within the discipline has infected the production aspect of the discipline, all motivated by an extreme and contagious sense of FOMO. One must never not be invited, if one is not invited then one is not relevant. The relevance of our ideas is only as significant as the most recent post or exhibition invitation.
8 Steps to Produce a Contemporary
Architecture Exhibition
1. create buzzword heavy title
2. make empathetic curatorial abstract
3. disregard abstract and public
4. invite everyone so no one questions anything
5. social media attack
6. take photos
7. add to CV
8. repeat tomorrow
It may be that the best thing to do in a time of FOMO is to be left out for a bit, to allow one to jump out of the current and take a moment to see if the current is even leading in a direction one wants to be swept in. The role and reason for exhibitions should be examined and recalibrated to fulfill their most imperative function, to educate and disseminate knowledge, not to present and promote a circuit of the same work over and over solely to find justification for the next. The role of architecture should not be destined to produce a collection of podiums, of hanging drawings, or propped up models that represent nothing but itself, directed inwards, but to question how we engage with the public, directed outwards.
Various momentary glimpses into the symptoms of these effects have been felt. Last year’s Chicago Architecture Biennial with its title “Make New History” unintentionally revealed a dirty truth: all the objects in the show faltered under its foretold premise in the pursuit of making history by regurgitating it. The exhibits appeared as orphaned artifacts that—with teary eyes—longed for disciplinary adoption rather than plotting to forge their own path. Venice’s 2018 “Dimensions of Citizenship” focused on the ability of architecture to tackle the ’citizen’ persona and yet we must wonder, how many citizens make it to Venice to witness such engagement? How many have the access, fortune, or ability to fly and walk into a reality so detached from their own to be educated on architecture’s role in their life? If these are the thresholds that we hope to have architecture exhibitions blur, we must do better.
The goal of architecture exhibitions, cultural institutions, and collaborations is to reach further than any single voice could alone. To create a platform for access and conversation—outward ones. Architecture exhibitions need to create spaces in which the outside can enter the otherwise gated community, get their words in between the echoes of voices condensed on the inside. It is a place to take risks, produce options, take a stand and be a place where creativity, failure, success, and the unknown are presented as equals and valued as such. The constant curation of success is impossible and ends only in a constant insatiable need for more, a high that lasts less and less each time. Success needs the uncertainties in order to produce momentum, progress and effective engagement. If we are constantly hiding behind obtuse titles, empty promises, and obscure texts we may get the self-congratulatory euphoria we desire but once it fades, we will find ourselves standing alone in the room with no one left to talk to. We are running the risk of becoming not creators of content but of book covers with no body to wrap with it.
The threshold of our discipline has never been easier to blur. Never have we had more tools to present the value, power, and ability of our discipline and yet, we have fallen victim to our own reflection, to our own surface readings.
Is now the moment to shift back focus on producing work in the form of exhibitions that can carry not only their own weight but that of the larger discourse, become, dare I say it, relevant for anyone outside of architecture? Exhibitions at their best are an unparalleled way to present and provide momentum to an aspiring idea, to expand cracks in order to shed light onto previously impenetrable black boxes that challenge the self-congratulatory aesthetic pornification of its endeavors.
The threshold of our discipline has never been easier to blur. Never have we had more tools to present the value, power, and ability of our discipline and yet, we have fallen victim to our own reflection, to our own surface readings. With extremely well-funded platforms such as those in Venice and Chicago, we may be presented with renewed access to the public pulse, and it is with high hope and desire that architecture become, again, the thing critically dismantled and productively reassembled not covered tenure pursuits in esoteric guise, CV peacocking or, worse, a place where already dead objects return as beautified zombie-media, covered in a fresh layer of paint to cover the rot and a sexy, politically versatile title that is as deep as the press release it is printed on.
Architects steal; we appropriate, we borrow, we misread discourses in other disciplines and then use those acquired elements as gateways into our own. This may have fueled some tremendous leaps, conversations, and polemics but what happens when over time architecture loses sight of its own boundaries?
Architecture exhibitions should produce architecture in all its glory. They should participate in the nuances and diversity that architecture itself pursues. They should not be scared, tempered, or hesitant to take chances equal to those that may be found lingering behind every great idea. Exhibitions of architecture should be as diverse and effective at reaching out into the world as we are when it comes to being inspired by it.
Anthony Morey is a Los Angeles based designer, curator, educator, and lecturer of experimental methods of art, design and architectural biases. Morey concentrates in the formulation and fostering of new modes of disciplinary engagement, public dissemination, and cultural cultivation. Morey is the ...
5 Comments
weirdly refreshing to read such a poignant criticism of curation today by Anthony. it's truly in crisis. many friends and I have lately skipped the endless stream of watered down, self-serving, overly inbred A+D exhibits showcasing the same stanceless designers that do the same repeatable, aesthetic-focused vanity work. it's irresponsible. There has become a social club formula for how to get into A+D which I hope stops soon. we all hope A+D improves its name and saves itself from becoming just another Museum of Ice Cream. don't abuse your editorial and institutional positions to promote even more bland and frictionless worlds of power-reinforcement that only serves to consolidate and maintain existing hierarchies. this feature gives me, and i'm sure many others, hope. we'll keep you accountable and truly hope for the best, if this op-ed is anything to go by. or we'll just have to create a new platform that prioritizes the work over the quantity of socially connected names in the group show.
I am unfamiliar with 'A+D' as a term and, delightfully, Google returns a brand of diaper rash cream
Did you read the curatorial statement made by the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial? The curatorial statement and the biennial "contributors" allude to a new perspective; one that you are in fact arguing for. These folx are trying to make relevant the "broader field" of architecture and the effects of architecture. Your "8 step guide" is totally out of sync with their curatorial statement. Do we really need another BIG-d*ck-energy exhibition of models void of actual people; a space for people to be in awe of something totally irrelevant to most peoples lives?
Belching mis-informed and staunchly conservative viewpoints about a discipline founded in ego seems odd. By further perpetuating this old school "vanguard knows best" ideology is the reason why the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial is actually *more* relevant than anything you are proposing.
Do your research, bro.
"old school 'vangaurd knows best' ideology" is exactly it. also so true about the thinly veiled conservatism dressed up with a paper thin progressive facade. well put, rem
It is incredibly frustrating seeing this much effort spent on writing something that is literally arguing for exactly what these exhibitions are doing.
(PS, "architecture in all its glory" smells a lot like "Make America Great Again")
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