May 15 - August 29, 2009
The Global Polis: Interactive Infrastructures
Exhibition at Center for Architecture, New York
What is infrastructure? For much of the twentieth century, the answer to this question was guided by the ideology of functionalist urbanism, a school of thought that said that all "healthy" cities served four major needs: work, housing, recreation, and transportation. Today, we no longer take this view for granted, for it is a perspective that makes no provisions for community, identity, or history. At the same time, we still lack an alternative model for visualizing a city that can deal adequately with the public health and quality-of-life issues that the early functionalists sought to address. Arguably, our capacity to balance urban development with ecological and social need has only worsened in recent decades, and this exhibition asks whether the trend can be reversed.
Specifically, the show documents a series of contemporary experiments in planning, architecture, and design that seek to treat the city and its environment in holistic terms - not just as an assembly of buildings, roadways, bridges, pipes, and tunnels (although each of these is important), but as a complex social, political, and ecological nexus that sustains life in the broadest sense.
Infrastructure cannot be divorced from the infrastructure of democracy, from the environment at large, and many of the contributions to this exhibition seek to highlight the important role that community, communication, participation, and the sharing of knowledge can play in informing our understanding of the urban fabric.
The exhibition will be accompanied by several different events, including a panel discussion entitled "What is happening to public space", which will take place at the ACFNY on June 23rd.
Center for Architecture
536 LaGuardia Place, New York, NY, 10012
www.aiany.org/centerforarchitecture
AUSTRIANS at the ISCP
Brooklyn, New York
May 8 - May 11, 2009
A four-day exhibition of international contemporary art, OPEN STUDIOS presents works by the 27 artists and artist groups currently in residence at ISCP. Among them are the two Austrian artists Maria Bussmann and Michael Höpfner.
May 29 - June 27, 2009
ON THE TECTONICS OF HISTORY is an exhibition tour that will be making its final stop at the ISCP in Brooklyn. The show exposes historical traces of the 1930s and 1940s which are still evident in the present, and reflects on how society deals with the Nazi era today. The idea behind the exhibit is to put reproductions and reprints of the artworks shown during the tour on the walls and juxtapose them with works by Boris Lurie, one of the founders of the NO!art movement in 1960s New York. Artists include among others: Martin Krenn, Lisl Ponger, Klub Zwei and Peter Weibel.
International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP)
1040 Metropolitan Avenue, 3rd Fl.
Brooklyn, NY 11211
www.martinkrenn.net/tectonic
www.iscp-nyc.org
May 23 - July 11, 2009
The Poet, Apocalypso, and I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire
Gallery medianoche, New York
Florian Schmeiser and Susanne Schuda will present recent works focusing on individual perception of public reality constructions.
The Poet, a video installation by Susanne Schuda, is about racism, loneliness, auto aggression, and love among right extremists. In her work, Schuda uses digital photomontage, animation, text, and sound. Susanne Schuda is represented by Galerie Dana Charkasi.
In Florian Schmeiser's sound installation I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire, visitors put on a pilot helmet and become both isolated and part of the installation. The music inside the helmet is an acoustic fusion of the words of a 1940s song and a 19th-century composition by Franz Schubert. Biedermeier escapism meets post-nuclear escapism.
medianoche
1355 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10029
www.medianoche.us
