Exhibiting Portuguese Architecture. Twentieth-century Curatorial Strategies

A relevância contemporânea da curadoria de arquitetura, em Portugal, está manifestamente comprovada pelo significativo número de exposições promovidas, nacional e internacionalmente, pela fundação e intensa atividade de instituições dedicadas à arquitetura e pela recente oferta formativa em curadoria. Esta investigação tem como objetivo identificar a origem das atuais práticas curatoriais e discutir a sua relevância no campo da arquitetura. Apesar do reconhecimento de relevante investigação concentrada em curtos períodos específicos da história da arquitetura portuguesa, onde algumas das exposições marcantes no panorama arquitetónico português são integradas como sintomas ou efeitos colaterais de determinadas questões políticas ou arquitetónicas, não existe ainda um escrutínio das relações estabelecidas entre si nem uma narrativa construída a partir desse panorama alargado. As exposições de arquitetura portuguesa não são particularmente específicas nem correspondem a momentos pioneiros no quadro global da história das exposições, no entanto, constituem um conjunto complexo e extenso de abordagens curatoriais que justificam um exame dedicado da exposição enquanto entidade autónoma. Nesse sentido, a investigação parte das origens da participação ativa da arquitetura em contexto expositivo, manifestada pela presença da arquitetura nos salões de belas‑artes, até ao reconhecimento do seu valor enquanto produto cultural altamente mediatizado, no início do século XXI. Através da identificação de aproximadamente trezentos eventos, entre 1867 e 2004, foi possível reconhecer a correspondência entre exposições particularmente relevantes e momentos de charneira histórica, política ou arquitetónica, comprovando o seu papel enquanto instrumento de comunicação, plataforma de discussão e dispositivo de produção de conhecimento. A afirmação internacional da arquitetura portuguesa, assim como momentos fundamentais relacionados com o debate identitário ou movimentos de afirmação geracional, estão intensamente interligados com a evolução das estratégias curatoriais. Enquanto que as exposições de arquitetura representaram oportunidades extraordinárias para a inscrição da produção nacional num panorama alargado, o contato direto com um amplo campo de práticas curatoriais estimulou o desenvolvimento dos processos de produção de exposições e a consideração do espaço expositivo enquanto produtor ativo de experiências. A investigação pretende ser um contributo para a construção da história de exposições de arquitetura, em Portugal, enquanto procura a sua inscrição num quadro internacional de referência. A afirmação internacional da arquitetura portuguesa, assim como momentos fundamentais relacionados com o debate identitário ou movimentos de afirmação geracional, estão intensamente interligados com a evolução das estratégias curatoriais. Enquanto que as exposições de arquitetura representaram oportunidades extraordinárias para a inscrição da produção nacional num panorama alargado, o contato direto com um amplo campo de práticas curatoriais estimulou o desenvolvimento dos processos de produção de exposições e a consideração do espaço expositivo enquanto produtor ativo de experiências. A investigação pretende ser um contributo para a construção da história de exposições de arquitetura, em Portugal, enquanto procura a sua inscrição num quadro internacional de referência.The contemporary relevance of architecture curation within Portugal may be demonstrated by the significant number of exhibitions held, both national and internationally, the establishment and intense activities of institutions devoted to architecture, and the increase in educational programs specific to the field. This dissertation aims to identify the origin of current architecture curation practices, and discuss their relevance and role within the field of architecture. Despite the existence of much research concentrated on specific short periods in Portuguese history, which examine some significant exhibitions and may be read as symptomatic of a given period's central political or architectural questions, there has been no scrutiny of the connections between them or surveys linking the main milestones into a cogent narrative. Although not pioneering nor particularly specific or avant‑garde, exhibitions showcasing Portuguese architecture present a complex and extensive set of curatorial approaches that justify a dedicated examination of the exhibition as an autonomous entity. Therefore, this research starts with the origins of architecture's active participation in the exhibition context, as manifested by the presence of architecture in art salons, through to its recognition as a highly visible cultural product in the early twenty‑first century. Through a survey of approximately three hundred events, it has been possible to recognise that major or groundbreaking exhibitions have consistently corresponded to historical turning points in either politics or architecture, thereby demonstrating the active role of exhibitions as communication instruments, discussion platforms, and knowledge‑production devices. The international recognition of Portuguese architecture, as well as critical moments of identity debates or generational uprisings, have been intensively interwoven with the evolution of curatorial strategies. On the one hand, the exhibitions were extraordinary opportunities for foreign exposure and the inscription of national production in the international landscape. Conversely, direct contacts with a vast field of curatorial and display experimentation have challenged exhibition‑making processes while encouraging the consideration of the exhibition space as an active producer of experience

Cultural Maps, Networks, and Flows: The History and Impact of the Havana Biennale 1984 to the present

Since 1984 the Havana Biennale has been known as "the Tri-continental art event," presenting artists from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. It also has intensely debated the nature of recent and contemporary art from a Third World or Global South perspective. The Biennale is a product of Cuba's fruition since the Revolution of 1959. The Wifredo Lam Center, created in 1983, has organized the Biennial since its inception. This dissertation proposes that at the heart of the Biennale has been an alternative cosmopolitan modernism (that we might call "contemporary" or "post-colonial") that was envisaged by a group of local cultural agents, critics, philosophers, art historians, and also supported by a network of peers around the world. It examines the role Armando Hart Dávalos, Minister of Culture of Cuba (1976-1997), who played a key figure in the development of a solid cultural policy, one which produced the Havana Biennale as a cultural project based on an explicit "Third World" consciousness. It explores the role of critics and curators Gerardo Mosquera and Nelson Herrera Ysla, key members of the founding group of the Biennale. Subsequently, it examines how the work of Llilian Llanes, director of the Lam Center and of the Biennale (1983-1999), shaped the event in structural and conceptual terms. Finally, it examines the most recent developments and projections for the future.Using primary material, interviews, and field work research, the study focuses on the conceptual, contextual, and historical structure that supports the Biennale. It presents from several optics the views and world-view of the agents involved from the inside (curators and collaborators), as well as, from an art-world perspective through an account of the nine editions. Using the Havana Biennale as case study this work goes to disentangle and reveal the socio-political and intellectual debates taking place in the conformation of what is call today global art. In addition, recognizes the potentiality of alternative thinking and cultural subjectivity in the Global South

Détour and Retour: Practices and poetics of salt as narratives of relation and re-generation in Brixton

Drawing on the work of Martiniquan poet Edouard Glissant and his ‘poetics of Relation’ (1990), this practice-based PhD explores how salt features in relationships of migration and change in urban places, in particular the context of Brixton, an area of London with a strong migrant identity. Following Glissant’s notion of détour and retour, this thesis moves between geographical locations through a series of four narrative journeys from Brixton, outwards to South Africa, Eastern Europe, Portugal, and Haiti, returning each time to Brixton as a ‘homeplace’. Each chapter is arranged as a détour and retour, developing a practice and poetics of salt that offers a productive reading of Brixton’s current regeneration. I explore salt’s use in offering forms of protection, preservation and reawakening through re-enacting rituals found in everyday and religious practices from across different diasporas. I engage with auto-ethnographic research into my family history and Jewish cultural customs around salt, as well as engage with others’ stories and salt products that link to specific places through migration. Using practices that perfomatively engage with the materiality of salt, I build on work by artists including Robert Smithson and Sigalit Landau. Overall, this thesis argues that practices and poetics of salt can be linked to processes of migration and regeneration. The thesis shows how salt practices can be used to understand the particular poetics of salt and how salt acts as an index in artworks that point to ideas of migration and diaspora. These material and poetic qualities of salt make it a rich vehicle for alternative approaches to regeneration, particularly in sites such as Brixton. I argue for a renegotiation of the language of regeneration of these sites, instead proposing a ‘poetics of regeneration’ through a re-reading of Glissant’s terms of détour and retour as well as his poetics of Relation

Midterm evaluation Research 2016-2018:

The research of TU Delft’s Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment (Faculteit Bouwkunde) covers the full spectrum of design, engineering, planning, and management of the built environment. Its research portfolio comprises the research that is conducted by four departments: Architecture Architectural Engineering + Technology (AE+T) Management in the Built Environment (MBE) Urbanism The faculty’s research focusses specifically at improving the design and performance of buildings, districts, cities and regions in order to better meet the requirements and expectations of their users and communities. From that perspective, much of the research that is conducted can be understood as applied science, appealing to the curiosity and the needs of other researchers, practitioners and the broader public alike. The research is a blend of humanities, social and engineering sciences. The humanities are strongest represented in the Architecture department, social sciences in the MBE and Urbanism departments, while the engineering sciences find their strongest representation in AE+T

Arts festival as a global cultural product

PhDIn this thesis, I address ephemeras – namely temporary displays in the form of festivals and exhibitions belonging to the field of contemporary art. The most appropriate criterion with which to select and discuss the ephemera, i.e., the data in which I analyse in this thesis, is the notion of the ‘event’. ‘Event’ is a philosophical concept, and therefore does not belong to artistic or aesthetic categories. However, two main characteristics are particularly relevant in considering it, and these are also pertinent to the field of art. Firstly, the tandem contingency and necessity. Secondly, the fact that no one can control the reach and impact of an event, which is also the case with an artwork and its interpretation. In this thesis, I am creating a confrontation between what is usually described as abstract thought (a work of philosophy for example) and the production of contemporary art, which is so often culturally and economically dependent on the art market and hegemonic power structures such as institutions, as well as the apparatus of historians and experts to evaluate and legitimise it. Furthermore, it is also necessary to state my understanding of art. This latter has strong propinquities with that defined by Kant when he coined the term ‘fine art’, namely a cultivated, context-aware and sensitive art, one’s reflection on which provides pleasure exceeding the pure enjoyment or satisfaction produced by erudition or technical virtuosity. Secondly, the artistic manifestations that I discuss are always produced by a collective, group or organisation of which I am part. Consequently, what unfolds is an organisational discourse originating in my praxis of art. Finally, the very fact that I am a member of the group of people whose activities are discussed leads logically to autoethnography, a field of inquiry that I am also contributing to

Made to music : interactions of music and art, 1955-1969

textThis dissertation examines the methods by which postwar American and European visual artists engaged with aspects of music in their work. Focusing on four case studies spanning from 1955 to 1969, I look to artistic interest in composition, musicianship, music theory, and sensory experience. These artists are tied culturally through their communities, performances, and exhibition histories; I further show how their mutual interests in Eastern mysticism and poetry forge an even more profound connection among them, and this dissertation offers an alternate cultural history for understanding modes of postwar abstraction in the United States. Chapter one explores the early conceptual art of American Minimalist composer and Fluxus performance artist La Monte Young. Young’s two series of typeset event scores from 1960-1961 opened up the arena of musical performance to non-musicians and visual artists. This chapter positions Young as an interlocutor between the worlds of avant-garde music and art in exploring a cultural history of the event scores, their adaptations, and Young’s role in the discourse on intermedia. Chapter two looks at the musical systems and styles that served as stimuli for two abstractionists, Larry Poons and Leo Valledor. Whereas Poons used a quasi-musical and mathematical system in composing his dot paintings, Valledor improvised upon the qualities of the jazz music he most admired through color experimentation. Chapter three provides an analysis of the eight volumes of the German music periodical Die Reihe, a close look at the composition techniques of Die Reihe’s co-editor Karlheinz Stockhausen, and the response to these ideas within the early serial sculpture of Sol LeWitt. Die Reihe, a journal of postwar serial music, was an important source for American artists in the 1960s, but has been little studied. This chapter offers an alternative reading of LeWitt’s projects in terms of new music theories. The last chapter considers the sound sculpture of Greek kinetic artist Vassilakis Takis. In his efforts to capture the “music of the spheres,” Takis’s sound-producing sculpture combined his interests in Zen Buddhism, physics, magnetics, and sound waves through the use of various metals and magnets.Art Histor

How not to return to normal

In a March 2020 article published in Le Monde, Bruno Latour defined the Covid-19 emergency as "the big rehearsal" for the larger disaster to come: one that extends to all forms of life on Earth. The ongoing crisis, in his eyes, becomes both a risk and an opportunity to trial and develop new action plans necessary for the continuation of life. "The pandemic is a portal," wrote author Arundhati Roy a few days later, calling for a more equitable and sustainable post-pandemic future. The pandemic is an opportunity for un-learning and changing direction, particularly in how we approach risk and disaster. The dominant narrative for politicians and the media, however, is one of “returning to normal” as soon as possible, bouncing back, relying on established models of resilience based on the management of economic risk. They are also rehearsing, or modelling, worst- or best-case scenarios. Artists, designers, and institutions are shaping discourses around the growing extinguishment of our resources, but also performing, visualising, simulating and modelling responses to possible risks and imagining resilience differently. Design and art can foster new visions, pilot new modes of communication and knowledge sharing, and drive the interdisciplinary collaborations necessary to address common issues. This panel explores ways in which art and design practices can be mobilized to transform current approaches to risk and disaster in imaginative, sustainable and equitable ways. The papers selected for this session reflect a need to reassess, reframe, and reimagine the roles of museums, art and design, and thus contribute to a space for critical reflection to inform action, strategy, and practices. It is important to remember that our fields are far from immune from being complicit in the creation and reinforcement of the kinds of inequalities and injustices that have been made even more unmistakably clear in the last year: as Sasha Costanza-Shock, author of the book Design Justice, has pointed out, designers are ‘often unwittingly reproducing the existing structure of [...] who's going to benefit the most and who's going to be harmed the most by the tools or the objects or the systems or the buildings or spaces that we're designing.’ The urge to respond in an emergency, whether it's a design challenge in the context of COVID 19 or exhibition on climate change, requires space for critical thinking, inclusive conversation and production. This necessity comes across on the three papers brought together for this panel, and in the opening presentation by Emily Candela and Francesca Cavallo

Cities' Identity Through Architecture and Art

Intended to be a guide for academics, scholars, and interested leaders, this book was designed to critically assess issues related to architectural identity, the city as a scene, the city as an organism, the city as a subject, and the planning or rather approaching of one. A pressing issue for many researchers in the field, the book discusses the negative repercussions resulting from globalization. Studies have indicated that globalization, despite all the positive effects, has resulted in a loss of identity within a city. As a city develops over time, its identity is evolving as well and may even be lost due to rapid and constant changes it is subjected to. Discussed as well are examples and tendencies in dealing with urban identities as well as the transformation of cities and urban cultures mentioned in terms of form, identity, and art. This book is a combination of innovative research submitted to a conference on Cities’ Identity Through Architecture and Arts (CITAA) whereas scholars from all over the world gather in one venue to discuss cultural, historical, and economic issues of the city. Thus, the book offers a collective and global solution that is applicable on a universal level. The research presented in this book was conducted by authors, or rather participants of the conference from, three different continents of the world and organized by IEREK. It was a distinct opportunity for them to share their thoughts with leading scholars and professionals in the field of Architecture, Arts, and Planning. The research and materials in this book are directed at those who are actively engaged in the decision-making processes and to a heterogeneous audience who has an interest to critically examine all the new literature available in the field. A special word of thanks should be made to the editors of this book and to all the authors and co-authors of the chapters who collectively provided the academic community with unique and increasingly valuable literature

Proceedings of the 21st International Congress of Aesthetics, Possible Worlds of Contemporary Aesthetics Aesthetics Between History, Geography and Media

The Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade and the Society for Aesthetics of Architecture and Visual Arts of Serbia (DEAVUS) are proud to be able to organize the 21st ICA Congress on “Possible Worlds of Contemporary Aesthetics: Aesthetics Between History, Geography and Media”. We are proud to announce that we received over 500 submissions from 56 countries, which makes this Congress the greatest gathering of aestheticians in this region in the last 40 years. The ICA 2019 Belgrade aims to map out contemporary aesthetics practices in a vivid dialogue of aestheticians, philosophers, art theorists, architecture theorists, culture theorists, media theorists, artists, media entrepreneurs, architects, cultural activists and researchers in the fields of humanities and social sciences. More precisely, the goal is to map the possible worlds of contemporary aesthetics in Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa and Australia. The idea is to show, interpret and map the unity and diverseness in aesthetic thought, expression, research, and philosophies on our shared planet. Our goal is to promote a dialogue concerning aesthetics in those parts of the world that have not been involved with the work of the International Association for Aesthetics to this day. Global dialogue, understanding and cooperation are what we aim to achieve. That said, the 21st ICA is the first Congress to highlight the aesthetic issues of marginalised regions that have not been fully involved in the work of the IAA. This will be accomplished, among others, via thematic round tables discussing contemporary aesthetics in East Africa and South America. Today, aesthetics is recognized as an important philosophical, theoretical and even scientific discipline that aims at interpreting the complexity of phenomena in our contemporary world. People rather talk about possible worlds or possible aesthetic regimes rather than a unique and consistent philosophical, scientific or theoretical discipline