VILLAGE ONE LAND TWO SYSTEMS Malkit Shoshan
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PLATFORM PARADISE Maurizio Bortolotti
PLATFORM PARADISE
TWO LETTERS Dear Nico, I hope my message find you very well. I write to you because, in order to finalise the book about Platform Paradise, I would like to have an exchange of emails with you about your project with Helena Sidiropoulos for this show in the Palestinian village of Ein Hawd. I’d like to include this correspondence in the book together with the pictures documenting the project. My invitation to you and Helena was motivated by the fact that I had to organise an international show in a Palestinian village which existed illegally for 60 years. This was really an experiment, a lab dedicated to a collaboration with villagers in order to create a show in this small urban centre, where art can take part in a process of realising the desires of the inhabitants to have a place for their community. Could you briefly summarise your idea for a project for this specific context in reply to this email? I’ll get back to you soon. Maurizio Dear Maurizio, Nice to hear from you. I hope you are doing fine. Here all and everything is ok. The project that I — together with Helena — propose for your exhibition in the Palestinian village of Ein Hawd is first of all related to a series of very specific works that we developed together since 2004, strongly based on architectural ideas. The first work — a mural painting —happened as an intervention in the collection of the museum in Nantes in 2005 upon invitation of Corinne Diserens, and in relation to a photographic document from the archives of Belgian architect René Heyvaert. The second work —again a mural painting —happened within the context of your exhibition project in Ein Hawd, and relates to a drawing of Belgian architect Kris Kimpe. The idea for us was to share with the local people in this village a drawing that could become a generator for developing a series of mural paintings decorating the village. A starting point for the people there to use the architecture of their houses and the city as a potential canvas for creating works of art. It also reminds us for example of Yona Friedman’s urban carpet of 1975, decorating the street surfaces in Saint Germain de Prés in Paris with paintings. Many greets, Nico
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PLATFORM PARADISE
MERZSTRUKTUREN The project Merzstrukturen by Yona Friedman is part of his recent research into ‘irregular structure’ — a concept which fascinates him because it frames the city as the outcome of infinite relationships between people and different social groups, and their creation of space in everyday life. Migratory flows and precarious economic conditions introduce new social aggregations which modify the face of the city, creating the conditions for an undetermined planning. The spontaneous birth of architecture on the margins of major cities and the emergence of new settlements create fresh conditions of life. Friedman therefore supports the idea of a simple architecture that can be produced by every citizen with the basic need to live within a community. For Ein Hawd, he proposed that people should realise models of simple architecture, which could help them to finalise a new kind of building, starting from their real needs for living in a small community. This architectural model traces its origins back to Schwitters’ Merzbau, referencing the fact that this architecture is the product of casual relationships founded on the unpredictable, which is for Friedman the real engine of creation by human beings. The people of the village collected simple materials and produced the Merzstrukturen as the realisation of new concepts that can be applied to building in the future.
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