Architecture can hardly be defined as a purely artistic or a purely technical practice. The point of departure of our architecture ≠ art programme is the question of whether architecture is or is not art. By posing this question, we enter the very core of the problem of architectural creation - that is, we question the very definition of architecture. How should we think of architecture today? How (if at all) does architecture enter the field of art, and how (if at all) does art enter the field of architecture?
Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, +MSUM, Ljubljana
Tuesday, 27 May 2014, at 7 pm,
The starting point of the lecture is the definition of architecture, which might actually seem to tell us nothing at all: architecture = architecture. However, my thesis is that this is the most precise definition of architecture. This definition tells us that the constitutive element of architecture is something that can't be determined by any predicate: a void of meaning, a nothingness. But a paradoxical nothingness: a nothingness that isn't null, as it is constitutive, indeed crucial for architecture. Architecture is successfully realized when it comes closest to this paradoxical nothingness - as Mies would have it, when it is "beinahe Nichts". As a result, one could argue that architecture is one of those practices which constantly has to be re-defined (anew), and which only appears in the world in the form of such re-definitions, expressed as concrete material objects such as buildings, drawings, texts. From this point of view architecture isn't actually different from art. The difference between art and architecture, however, is that each of these practices defines itself in its own, specific and intrinsic way. In the lecture I will try to show how the practice of architecture is doing just that.
Petra Čeferin, Ph.D., is an architect and professor at the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana where she teaches architectural theory and criticism of contemporary architecture. She is the author of books Constructing a Legend and Transforming Reality with Architecture: Finnish Case, and co-editor of Architectural Epicentres (with C. Požar, Ljubljana, 2008) and Project Architecture (with J. Bickert and C. Požar, Ljubljana, 2010). She is also the author of several critical articles and essays on modern and contemporary architectural production, and an editor of the book series Theoretical Practice of Architecture.
The dilemmas regarding the relation between architecture and art have not always been on the agenda; the need to clarify this relation arose with the industrial revolution and the changed production and consumption patterns. Two paths developed: one sought to base architecture on the rationalism and functionalism of machine production, the other swore by the autonomy of architectural creation in the spirit of the "art for art's sake" motto. The postmodern age seems to have led to a conciliation and coexistence of both views. This was enabled by a changed understanding of the concepts of added value and creativity - in the spirit of the apotheosis of the free market, which allows for a pluralism of even the most opposing ideas. With its separability from its architectural base, the artistic invention as a surplus, as "something more", becomes an independent marketable good, while "creative" architects become cheap producers of this added value. Is contemporary art then necessarily condemned to the role of a development department of capitalism?
Miloš Kosec graduated from the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana in 2013 with his master's thesis Ruševina kot arhitekturni objekt (The Ruin as an Architectural Object), for which he received the Plečnik Student Award and the Prešeren Student Award of the Faculty of Architecture. His eponymous book was published by the Praznine publishing house the same year. In 2007, he cooperated in the preparation of a monograph about the architect Edvard Ravnikar and in the organisation of an exhibition on Ravnikar's work at the Jakopič Gallery in Ljubljana. He creates architectural, landscape and set designs. He cooperates with Praznine and Arhitektov bilten, writing about architectural theory and history.
Locations:
Museum of Architecture and Design, Fužine Castle, Pot na Fužine 2, Ljubljana
Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Maistrova 3, Ljubljana
Moderators: Maja Vardjan (Museum of Architecture and Design) and Urška Jurman (Igor Zabel Association for Culture and Theory)
Programme managers: Vid Zabel and Urška Jurman (Igor Zabel Association)
The Architecture ≠ Art programme is being prepared by the Igor Zabel Association for Culture and Theory in collaboration with the Museum of Architecture and Design and the Museum of Modern Art + Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova. The programme is supported by the ERSTE Foundation.
