Archinect - News
2024-11-14T16:03:07-05:00
https://archinect.com/news/article/138809240/cutting-across-the-chicago-architecture-biennial-andr-s-jaque-s-superpowers-of-ten-performance
Cutting across the Chicago Architecture Biennial: Andrés 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 Andrés Jaque, founding architect of the Office for Political Innovation, in his "Superpowers of Ten" performance – 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’ 1977 “Powers of Ten” film</a> (the same year the Biennial’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, “Superpowers” is staged like a super-polemical elementary school play: a narrator guides actors, dressed in cartoonish cardboard or papier-mâché costumes, through stories of 20th century design history. The opening act plays direct homage to the Eames’ film, recreating the zooming in and out on the...</p>