BEFORE/NOW/LATER 10th Architecture Biennale Concept/design/art direction: Luis Urculo Production: Germán Díaz (Viuda de Ramírez) Graphic production: Luis Urculo / Thisisgrey 35 projects 35 exhibitions 35 actions Exhibition in three times. /opening: manifesto We start with the standard panel used ‘traditionally’ to display an architect’s work: name, chosen project, explanatory text, etc., and then we cross-breed it with a living, unrelated language; the language of demonstrations, in which resources are usually improvised to express aims, issues and attitudes in urban communication scenarios such as sheets hung on balconies, pennants on motorways, homemade propaganda, etc. They all act as a short-term base and an active vehicle for ideas throughout the city. Why not use them for architecture? We want to make it obvious what the authors wish to express through their work; manifesting, displaying and publicising it. /direct composition We will speak in the past tense; the exhibition was actually held a few months ago… We decided to use demonstrators and banners as exhibition material and composition structures. A static demonstration that we installed on 35 sites, one per project. Scenarios where the exhibition was actually installed. Everything started and ended here. The photos/posters and the video are the record of that moment; tools that let us stretch, recompose and broaden those instants in order to bring architecture and its authors out of their ‘sheltered’ conventional dissemination space once again. /domestic actions and their echoes. The materials produced by the teams were presented in a
second chapter of anonymous actions, sampled from these standardised ‘cases’ in houses, public spaces, highways, shop interiors, etc. Voices guided by the manifestos and slogans sent in by the selected teams. /double scale We thought that limiting ourselves to a single space, the so-called ‘official’ space for the exhibition, seemed to be a waste of a great opportunity. The specialized language that is normally used for its dissemination rarely reaches the population that has to live with these projects. That is why we chose to use the city itself as the backing material, communicating by means of large format posters that will coinhabit the space with advertisements for concerts, theatres and language courses. The exhibition basically consists of 35 posters that will be displayed simultaneously in the exhibition hall and in the main capital cities. Using a low-cost, high-impact system, we will contract local poster agencies, the other ‘Biennial ‘assemblers’, who will be sent a complete set of the projects that will plaster the streets of Barcelona, Madrid, Seville, etc., at the same time as the exhibition goes on in the main venue. This will produce two scales of publicity: local and national; specialized and general-public. /exhibition. This is a take-away exhibition. All the contents will be available for visitors to choose, pick up and partially or totally recompose the exhibition in spaces away from the source, like their homes, institutions, etc. The boundaries of the physical space and the display of a unique exhibited object will be erased. Everything will be public and accessible. The exhibition hall will become a centre for the project’s reconstruction and autopsy. Visitors can peruse all the documentation provided by the participants and the results of the manifestos, and monitor this musical score of actions.
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