Review by
Joseph Nechvatal for Thing.Net
R&Sie(n)s exhibition Ive
heard aboutɩ opened on the 6th of July at the Musee dArt Moderne de la Ville
de Pariss temporary space at the Couvent des Cordeliers - and I think it is one
of the most relevant exhibitions to what is going on in art today that is of
importance. R&Sie(n) is an investigational architectural firm consisting of
Franois Roche, Stphanie Lavaux, and Jean Navarro; working here with Benot
Durandin. Together, they utilize generative heterogeneous mutations in the
creation of proposed utopian city spaces. In fact what they propose at the
Musee dArt Moderne is the artificial growing of extruded urban housing
(generative & robotic) - where new cities are constructed via robotic
processes by feeding off the carcasses of older dying cities. Very viral.
Envisioned is an approach to city planning based on growth scripts and open
algorithmic procedures. Towards these ends the show itself includes some subtle
audio tracts, model-sculptures, a fully immersive hypnosis chamber with video
monitors, booking services, 3D movies and robotic drawings/plans that
reveal the source code of the generative program at the heart of their work.
There is a definite tangled and
intertwined approach to the city vector that reminds me of the dithyrambic
visual hyper-logic which has manifested in all modes of decadent artistic
periods; from the Hellenistic and Flamboyant Gothic, to the Mannerist, Rococo,
and Fin-de-Sicle - as they all opposed dogmatically imposed ocular paradigms
with hyper-engendering strategies of form. The multiplicity of its interwoven
experiences challenges the now bogus idea of simplicity a
modernist-minimalist idea which has taken on the intensity of a righteous injunction
in many cities where the implied equation between simplicity, surveillance and
goodness obscures a less evident function: that of cognitive constraint. Such
constraint runs counter to what Georges Bataille considered to be the
non-hypocritical human condition, which he took as being roused non-productive
expenditure (threshold excess) entangled with exhilaration. For the finest
comprehensive overview of Bataille's thought in this regard, see his book
Eroticism - but also Denis Hollier's book on Bataille's general postulates,
Against Architecture.
Given the organic-like, biomorphic
architectural forms R&Sie(n) spawn by their generative program, I could not
avoid thinking about the Palais Idal of
Ferdinand Cheval (1836-1924) - which to my eyes appeared to be one huge budding
edifice when I visited it a few years ago - as if the stupendous mannerist
grotto-faade at villa Borromeo had been left to grow untrimmed and run amok.
However, the Palais Idal was constructed by the postman Cheval alone and by
hand in the Hauterives (Drme) (near Lyon) between the years 1879 and 1912; the
result of 93,000 man hours of hard labour. R&Sie(n) rightly prefers
the work to be accomplished through a computer programmed emergence via artificial intelligence which
directs robotic execution. Why should humans physically work when we might
better be playing and dreaming?
The other inescapable reference for
R&Sie(n)s work is the visionary city-planning put forth by the
Situationists. One thinks immediately of Guy Debords essay On Wild
Architecture, for example. Like the Situationists, for R&Sie(n), the urban
form no longer depends on the arbitrary decisions or control over its emergence
exercised by the elite few. Ultimately R&Sie(n) leads us towards juicy Situationist-like
complexities and engagements by way of immersion into an open-ended multiplex
conceivable as a virtual environment: the
Virtual Reality experience.
As R&Sie(n) say themselves,
Many different stimuli have contributed to the emergence of Ive heard
aboutɩ and they are continually reloaded. Its existence is inextricably
linked to the end of the grand narratives, the objective recognition of
climatic changes, a suspicion of all morality (even ecological), to the
vibration of social phenomena and the urgent need to renew the democratic
mechanisms. Fiction is its reality principle Ahhhhh, the domain of decadent art, VR and artifice. Against
Nature.
What has been somewhat poorly
determined however is the degree a dweller feels totally immersed in an
optically excessive space. And this depends to a large extent on personal
psychological need and adaptability in accord with the proposed spatial depth
cues. Cognitive-aesthetic space has to be coordinated phenomenologically with
the proprioceptive space of the eye - and R&Sie(n)s only failure is in
maintaining the evident structural seams of the immersive faux-hypnotic chamber
(the only enterable structure and the highlight of the show) because what the
entire show is proposing is a seamless immersion into generative totality, and
the visual seams take us out of that exquisite fantasy. So they are denied the
loveliest of triumphs.
A pity, as one might otherwise
imagine oneself totally immersed there somewhat like a 21st Century dandy. As
at the birth of the 20th Century, this new hyper-dandy constantly might affirm
his or her originality down to the decorative details of the home. In that the
robots are doing the algorithmic planning and building, this work definitely
proposes a new form of dandyism - if dandyisms defining characteristic is
remembered to be the making of ones person a work of art while extolling
laziness and displaying contempt for work. Evident here are the
Baudelairean/Duchampian dandy ideals of impassivity, nonchalance elegance, and
inscrutability. What matters are the triumphs of a radical contempt for ones
hand.
Indeed one can say that Ive heard
aboutɩ favorably extolled artificiality, indifference, impassiveness - the
reign of an ironic causality and knotted ambivalence, while staying open to all
transactions. Most importantly, a-life forms are embedded within it and its
growth is artificial and synthetic. So R&Sie(n) maintains a version of
transcendental phenomenological idealism, but they do not disavow the extant
actuality of the material sphere. Instead they seek to elucidate the sense of
the world-as-is today - that is viractualized by stressing the embodied
nature of human and artificial consciousness and bodily existence as the
original and originating material premise of sense and signification.
All told, the show is well done as
proposition. However this proposition inevitably turns the mind to the actualized imposing suavity of Antoni Gauds
fully realized wavy architectural shapes in Catalonia. Although he did not
travel about Europe, Gaud was aquatinted with fin-de-sicle Belgium/French
avant-garde movements because of the intimate relationship between Barcelona
and France and with the pre-modernistic movements of Arts and Crafts, Gothic
Revival, and Impressionism which were discussed in the intellectual
proto-modernist circle which he frequented. But it was Victor Horta's Art
Nouveau movement that influenced Gaud the most, stimulating him to experiment
with new materials and new fluid shapes that appear grown. Gaud's version of
Art Nouveau is characterized by an overwhelming proclivity for the organic
nature of women, beasts, and plants which he translated into immersive
utility.
Antoni Gaud
is a chief exponent of R&Sie(n)-type open algorithmic building procedures precisely with his 1906 building Casa Batll
located at 43, Passeig de Grcia, Barcelona - noticeable for its organic
tactility of bones and shells within, and its external cocked surf faade and
chimerical roof. With Casa Batll, Gaud accomplished an astute transformation
of an existing building, transforming it into an enchanting immersive
gesamtkunstwerk as Gaud thoroughly undertook the design of every single
element of the building, from the extravagantly protuberant faade to all
aspects of the interior, including the gracefully gnarled furniture. On the
exterior Gaud was able to combine a flamboyantly surging faade (in an
ingeniously cool-color orchestration) while maintaining a dialogue with the neighboring
Casa Ametller (1900), built by Josep Puig i Cadafalch (1869-1956) four years
earlier. Powerful pillars which resemble the substantiality of mammoth elephant
legs accost the visitor at street level, protruding into the sidewalk, nigh
tripping up an unaware pedestrian. These legs are bordered by a craggy
vertebrae-like tier and the wavy faade extends upward between these two
biologically evoking forms, culminating at the roof in a gargoylesque humping
crescendo. The faade itself, coated in a layer of Montjuc stone, shimmers
seductively under the sun in multifarious chameleon-like colors; fraught with a
scattering of small roundish plates resembling fish or reptilian scales.
Affixed to this seething mass of swelling construction are a number of small,
elegantly curved balconies with oval shaped portholes.
The entire
structure feels unsharpened, flowing and smooth in opposition to the street
itself on which the arrangement sits, with the exception of a few square
windows up top. Even the walls are gently rounded in strained undulation and
contraction, as if they too have entered into the oceanic female throws of a
fluttering uteral orgasm. The walls appear to be made of a soft, smooth,
supple, leathery material and this illusion of softness is carried through by
the roundness of the inside forms of the building where one has the feeling of
being pleasantly encased in an expanse of hardened dripped honey. Turning,
lunging stair railings are met, engulfed and supplemented by softly heaving
honey-colored walls and wooden biomorphicly shaped carved doors and irregularly
shaped windows. There are no right angled corners or straight lines, which
offers an impression of being wrapped up in one continuous fluid wave motion,
complimentary with the exterior. By comparison, R&Sie(n) still has
a ways to go in achieving a like sensuality
of its avant-garde stance. But one only hopes for them an immediate success in
doing so.
Credits:
R&Sie(n)
= Franois Roche, Stphanie
Lavaux, and Jean Navarro
with Benot
Durandin
With the
production and authorship of :
-Berokh
Khoshnevis (Contour Crafting Process, USC, LA)
-Francois
Roustang (Hypnosis specialist, Paris)
-Chris
Delaporte (Film director, 3D effect, Paris)
-Christophe
Berdaguer & Marie Pejus (Artist, Marseille)
-Mathieu
Lehanneur (Designer, Paris)
-Laurent Genefort
(Science Fiction writer, Paris)
-CNRS
Grenoble, Laboratoire de Spectrometrie (Nano Particules)
-M/M
(Graphic designer, Paris)
-Gilles
Schaeffer (mathematicien, Paris)
-Michel
Boulcourt (Landscape architect, Paris)
-Alexandra
Midal (Author, Paris)
-Matthieu
Kavyrchine (Video artist, Paris)
-Sebastien
Szczyrk (Sound designer, Paris)
-Alexandre
Merlet (Video producer, Paris)
-Stephan
Henrich (Architect, Germany)
-Providence
(Singer)
Prototype /
installation / publishing
-Ufacto,
David Toppani (prototype scale 1)
-One Star
Press (neighbourhood protocole publishing)
-Christian
Hubert Delisle (prototype)
-Thibaut
Boyer (installation)
-Jean-Michel
Castagn (electronic driver)
Sponsors,
partnership
MAM
Paris-Muse (F), MUDAM (L), De SINGEL (B), USC (USA), KANAZAWA 21st century
museum (J), CNC / Dicream, (F), LAFARGE (F), Materialise (B), Next Limit
Technologies (SP), DAPA (F), University of Architecture Innsbruck (OST),
New-Territories (F)