2024-04-30T22:08:36-04:00 https://archinect.com/news/article/138809240/cutting-across-the-chicago-architecture-biennial-andr-s-jaque-s-superpowers-of-ten-performance Amelia Taylor-Hochberg 2015-10-12T18:45:00-04:00 >2018-01-30T06:16:04-05:00 <img src="https://archinect.gumlet.io/uploads/li/li0t9aojf1928vhc.jpg?fit=crop&auto=compress%2Cformat&enlarge=true&w=1200" border="0" /><p>A sausage as tall as you are. A skin cell the size of a dinner plate. The universe, in a glittery fan. These are a few of the props used by Andr&eacute;s Jaque, founding architect of the Office for Political Innovation, in his "Superpowers of Ten" performance &ndash; a play staged on the ground floor of the Chicago Athletic Association during the opening weekend of the Chicago Architecture Biennial. Inspired by the <a href="https://vimeo.com/75568649" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Eames&rsquo; 1977 &ldquo;Powers of Ten&rdquo; film</a> (the same year the Biennial&rsquo;s namesake conference was held), the under-an-hour performance investigates the power of design to scale up, or down, into historic social and cultural sea changes.</p><p>Initially developed for the <a href="http://archinect.com/news/tag/333773/lisbon-architecture-triennale" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Lisbon Architecture Triennial</a> in 2013, &ldquo;Superpowers&rdquo; is staged like a super-polemical elementary school play: a narrator guides actors, dressed in cartoonish cardboard or papier-m&acirc;ch&eacute; costumes, through stories of 20th century design history. The opening act plays direct homage to the Eames&rsquo; film, recreating the zooming in and out on the...</p>