Archinect - News

Recalling Philippe Petit’s World Trade Center high-wire act after 50 years

2024-08-09T19:03:00-04:00

The walk can never be repeated, but it also can never be undone. You cannot fly a jetliner into a memory. In hindsight, the so-called art crime of the century has become a tribute to the lives of the 2,753 who were killed in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, and whose stories, too, will always live on. When I see a photo of Mr. Petit in the air, it suggests to me that the lost were able to bridge that distance, too.

Philippe Petit’s early morning stunt on August 7, 1974, helped sway public opinion in favor of the recently opened NYC World Trade Center towers, which struggled financially until the Port Authority changed course and allowed financial services companies to begin leasing space by the end of the decade. The 75-year-old is currently on a media tour promoting his two-day performance at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, where his daughter’s ashes are interned.

At the time of their 1973 opening, architect Minoru Yamasaki had said his towers were "a representation of man's belief in humanity." Fans have said this notion also courses through Petit’s life and art in the most serene and apparent, life-affirming ways.

Nick Cave collaborates with Studio Gang for "Here Hear Chicago", commissioned by Navy Pier

2017-08-23T15:03:00-04:00

A collaboration between the sculptor and performance artist Nick Cave and the architect Jeanne Gang on a site-specific work for Chicago’s Navy Pier is part of the ongoing transformation of the historic waterfront space from tourist trap into cultural destination.

The performance will involve dancers wearing Cave's silver-colored Soundsuits while interacting with objects designed by Studio Gang as a part of the setting. Fabricating a changeable stage that could be used for other performance groups, Gang was inspired by the idea of a clearing for traditional dances, deciding to define the space through designed objects, instead of treating the stage as an object in itself.

Since the pier extends 3,300 feet into the lake, buoys began to figure into Gang’s thinking. “Buoys move back and forth but they are on water; how do you do that in the land?” That led to the physics of self-balancing objects. The objects needed be soft, friendly, large-scale, and to fall down but not stay down. “Everything has an impact on the movement,” said Gang. “The visual impact of it, and the height, and the weight—it is all a balance.”

The collaborative artwork of Cave and Gang is a part of Here Hear Chicago, a performance series which opens on the pier during the fai...

A giant robotic spider climbed around a cathedral in Ottawa, and local Catholics called it "demonic"

2017-08-07T14:59:00-04:00

But as Canadian Catholic News reported, some individuals were far from impressed with the 65-foot-long spider, which rises 18 feet when at rest and over 42 feet when in motion. Critics expressed their outrage on the archbishop Terrence Prendergast’s Facebook wall, with one woman reportedly describing Kumo as “disturbing, disappointing, and even shameful.” Others apparently referred to it as “demonic” and “sacrilegious.”

Canada celebrated its 150th anniversary over the weekend of July 27th. Part of the celebration featured giant robots put on by La Machine, a street theatre company that constructs unusual objects for performances in public spaces. The company built two robots, a mechanical dragon-horse hybrid and a giant mechanical spider, that spent the celebratory weekend walking around Ottawa and engaging in dramatic battles.

Found via La Machine's facebook.

As part of the performance, La Machine installed the spider on the top of Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica. The Cathedral, led by archbishop Terrence Prendergast, had agreed to feature Kumo, the mechanical spider, when approached by the theatre company, seeing it as a way to cooperate with the city and be a part of the celebration. The Cathedral also sits opposite the National Art Gallery and the famous Louise Bourgeois bronze arachnid, "Maman," making it the perfect location to feature La Machine's very own arachnid.

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Vito Acconci, pioneering artist and architect, is dead at 77

2017-04-28T13:35:00-04:00

Vito Acconci, pioneering conceptual artist and architect, passed away today at the age of 77. After starting his career as a poet, Acconci gained recognition for his influential performance and video works. A man of many parts, he then transitioned into working with audio/visual installations before beginning to work primarily as a landscape architect and designer.

During the early ‘80s, Acconci created works like Instant House, a sculpture that assembles into an inhabitable structure when a person sits on a swing, with each interior wall covered in an American flag, and on each exterior wall, a Soviet flag. In 1983, Acconci made his first permanent installation, Way Station I (Study Chamber) at Middleburg College, a sculpture so controversial (it likewise juxtaposed the flags of capitalist countries with communist states) that it was burned down. Later, it was reinstalled.

By the late ‘80s, Acconci had founded Acconci Studio and focused on designing furniture as well as theoretical d...

The unusual tale of how Luis Barragán became a diamond

2016-07-26T15:28:00-04:00

Magid agrees with those who argue that the Barragán archive should be open to the public and returned to Mexico, but she insists that this is not her focus. “If that’s what my intentions were, I don’t think I’d make art,” she told me. “I’ve always called the archive her lover. To marry one man, she negotiated owning another man, whom she’s devoted her life to. It’s a weird love triangle, and I’m the other woman.”

“‘It intrigued me as a gothic love story,’ [Magid] said, ‘with a copyright-and-intellectual-property-rights subplot.’”

A fascinating story about “architectural preservation” that focuses on an artist's elaborate negotiation to open Luis Barragán's tightly controlled archive to the public in his native Mexico — and the unusual “love triangle” behind it. The story begins with conceptual artist Jill Magid, whose work questions the boundaries of institutional power and law. In her latest performance art piece, Magid had Barragán's ashes compressed into a 2.02 carat diamond, which was transformed into an engagement ring for architectural historian Federica Zanco. Magid would then “propose” to Zanco in exchange for Barragán's entire archive.

Zanco first received the archive as a gift from a Swiss businessman who purchased it and the copyrights for $3 million in 1995, in lieu of an engagement ring. Since then, everyone from architects to students to museum staff members have been denied acc...

Studios Kabako from Congo wins 2014 Curry Stone Design Prize

2014-10-20T15:12:00-04:00

Congolese performance and theater group Studios Kabako from Kisangani was announced as the 2014 Curry Stone Design Prize winner this past weekend at an awards ceremony in Brussels...Studios Kabako was established in 2001 to address the various emotions linked to the aftermath of civil war. Located in a city that is isolated geographically and culturally, the studio has provided its community a safe creative haven of dance, theater, and music through its urban interventions and cultural programs.

Studios Kabako will start a U.S. tour including in New York from October 21 to November 1, 2014, with two performances at the BRIC theater in Brooklyn.

The studio will receive a $100,000 grant prize, and were also featured in a short documentary by the Curry Stone Foundation, which you can watch entirely below.

Performing the ghosts of the Gamble House

2014-10-02T17:35:00-04:00

Wanting to stretch one's fascia, the wood wanting to expand, and the people inside being very minute in comparison with the wood's needs. It's almost as if the house itself is turning and emptying out all the residue of the people, wanting just to be free, free of the people, free of... the spoilage is the word that I'm getting, I just want to keep pushing out further and further and further, and as I do my own body just feels much much more relaxed.

Aside from being an emblem of the Arts and Crafts movement and an historical landmark, it turns out the Gamble House in Pasadena, California is also haunted. Or, so it would seem according to performance artist Asher Hartman, who communed with former generations of Gambles in his "psychic reading" performance of the House. Filmmaker David Fenster captured Hartman's performance in a beautiful short piece, while also languishing on a few elements of the House's rich craftsmen style.

"Psychic Reading of the Gamble House" is part of The Machine Project Field Guide to the Gamble House, a slew of ongoing art and performance pieces put on by Machine Project, a maker, teacher, artist and hacker event space in Los Angeles. The Field Guide puts different instances of contemporary art practice in the midst of the Gamble's exemplary early 20th century architecture, creating some interesting counterpoints in the process. Hartman has previously performed for The Machine Project’s Field Guide to L....

Did YouTube Kill Performance Art?

2011-08-19T15:57:57-04:00

The ubiquity of digital spectacles and curiosities today is one reason performance art has had its thunder stolen.