Months later than usual, the US State Department Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs has finally announced that the exhibit for the 2018 Venice Biennial will be put together by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Chicago. Titled “Dimensions of Citizenship”, and organized by UC's Niall Atkinson, SAIC's Ann Lui and the Los Angeles-based independent critic Mimi Zeiger, the show will tackle the controversial question of what it means to be a citizen.
The pavilion will present both—newly commissioned projects created in response to the subject and already existing work, featuring entries from theorists, historians, and artists in addition to architects and designers. Commenting on the choice of the theme, Lui noted, “We thought that citizenship was a very urgent topic right now, both within national and global conversations. We noticed that architecture was often squarely in the center of these conversations, whether it was the border wall, or about more unexpected spaces like an airport lobby or monuments in the park.”
“I think questions of citizenship are charged now, but it’s important for us to realize how charged they have been over history. From redlining to gerrymandering, architecture has long had a tangible impact on individuals’ rights as citizens in the US." — added Bill Brown, the chair of the provost’s arts steering committee at the University of Chicago.
The Pavilion will be on view May 26 through November 25, 2018.
God is in the details. I trust these folks who have deep architecture backgrounds. Most of the time it's hacky political people and big urbanists claiming to speak on architecture or cities (like the NYT) instead of architecture experts speaking on these issues creatively and proactively (which we need more of). Gerrymandering, etc could use architecture thinking
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THIS IS SO EXCITING!!!!
really? I find it rather depressing that as architects we are spending our collective time talking about social and political problems (while drawing paper castles) instead of refining our craft to the point that its urgency and relevance to contemporary modes of living and working cannot be denied. (and actually gets built so that it can impact people's lives)
why not both?
I see the best path to affecting meaningful change as actually building projects, addressing issues of shelter and space through innovative design, detailing, and integration with technical expertise in materials, logistics, and geometry. Yes you can extend the idea of "space" to include territories, borders, and the people therein, but in doing so we lose the immediacy that build projects bring to the profession.
sounds great. I hope the curators are able to illuminate the architecture inside of these political issues -- many times politics can be too disembodied, abstract and narrative-map based (like what we see in so-called progressive critics at CityLab and the NYT). Think people react negatively to politics in architecture because few are able to strike the right balance. Good luck!
if we're going the hyper-politicization route for architecture, I suggest the US Pavilion curators mass resign and leave the pavilion blank, just like the culturally bankrupt country we are now.
Some projections before seeing the outcome or the development here.
Yep. After a similar theme in Venice last year i have to say that the most exciting pavilions for me were the ones who totally ignored it and did their own thing.
Do you know the content?
The content these three curators are proposing? I do not. However I do know these three curator's work and pedagogy so I'm making an informed, albeit extremely grumpy, projection.
Most of this sounds like a knee jerk reaction. I remain open to the potentially great theme. Biennales have built-in interest in the times they are staged. As an architect, I don't think nuts and bolts of architecture is more important (not saying it's negligible) than the socio political context the World is occupied at the moment. I don't understand the disdain for political content or pigeon holing it. Discussion of it brings a lot of issues to the table and I welcome them. Plus, nuts and bolts issues of architecture I think you are referring to, already has huge multi national platforms in the form of trade magazines and other publications. The techtonics of buildings covered endlessly. I rather like to see the less traveled territories in architecture as they have more generative nature and immediate and needed voice. There are many biennales, maybe one of them will host what you are talking about. I think couple of binnales ago in Venice Koolhaas tried. There is a reason political issues coming forward in these times because world has never seen this much injustice in wealth distribution, racial isolation and hatred, and other dire situations like housing, climatic problems, agriculture, so on. Architecture as part of humanities can not turn blind eye to these. Some commentators cry out for criticality here but when they smell it, they feel nostalgic about window details.
Yes, the nuts and bolts are covered endlessly (or are they? trade magazines don't reach the public, and we don't hear about infrastructure in depth until a crisis). I don't think you can blame people for reacting negatively when politics are so toxic now (and they keywords used here are political--citizenship, etc--though they claim will bring back to a tangible product.... we'll see. I'm interested. As I said, architecture offers a better vocabulary to think about politics, but the general bad trends i see in the discourse are a kind of watered down, wide and shallow perspective instead of a focused and deep view that architecture is uniquely able to offer... otherwise what's the point.
What I'm most afraid of is a large group of architects spending all their time critiquing trumps dumb wall instead of proactively offering a better vision of the future that addresses these same problems with better solutions.
"We'll see" is right. I also hope some of that shallowness is surpassed. For example, people talk differently about the wall in Tijuana than they talk about it here on this side of the border. They are able to localize and capture the economic conditions and bring the debate into more tangible areas like industry, nation state vs. borderless mega region of trans border zones and trade/labor, technology, rather than the dominating benevolency arguments common on the north side of the border. I do think it is easy to blend toxicity of politics with frustration and it is also to avoid and bury some of the 'difficult' discussions public thought they were not part of. It has been very revealing few months of discovery, to say the least.
"There is a reason political issues coming forward in these times because world has never seen this much injustice in wealth distribution, racial isolation and hatred" except for, you know, the entirety of human history preceding WW1. I don't buy this argument.
It's ok with me. That's not the most crucial part of my point but to indicate the dreadfulness of the existing problems today.
Great job!
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