AA HTS 3 / WINTER 2012 / WEEK 7 John HEJDUK vs.DILLER + SCOFIDIO (+1 BODY)/(+2 THEATRE)

Zenobia: The Wheel of Death by John Hejduk

K. Michael Hays -The subject of (modernist) Human-ism is the “controlling and originat-ing agent of meaning” - therefore, the subject imparts meaning onto the object it confronts (or constructs)- this is known in philosophy the subject-object problem (the “I think, therefore I am” of Descartes)

subject & object are distinctly separate bodies

Citta Ideale by Leon Battista Alberti, stemming from writing in his work On the Art of Building in Ten Books

Citta Ideale by Leon Battista Alberti, stemming from writing in his work On the Art of Building in Ten Books

invention of single-point perspective by Brunelleschi projecting an image of the Florentine Bapistry

Etienne-Louis Boullee’s Cenotaph for Newton, image of the night sky inside the Cenotaph

Le Corbusier’s masterful hand over a model for the ‘total’ plan of Plan Voisin in Paris in 1925

Etienne-Louis Boullee’s Cenotaph for Newton, image of the night sky inside the Cenotaph

Tschumi’s Advertisements for Architecture, image of Le Cor-busier’s Villa Savoye as it is decaying (no maintenance)

Tschumi’s rotten place -The space where “spatial praxis” meets “mental constructs”, the “convergence of two interdepen-dent but mutually exclusive aspects”

This is due to the separation between the praxis of architecture (object-hood) and the intellectual activity of architecture.

In this ‘rotten place’, this distinction is threatened.- distinction has existed since before Aliberti, in Greek literature (like in Plato’s The Statesman)

Plato - architect is a “ruler of work-men” and does not contribute “manual labour”

Tschumi’s rotten place -The threatening of this dis-tinction between praxis and theory espouses the “soiled remants of everyday life” - example used by Teyssot is Jim Jarmusch’s 1989 film Mystery TrainGirl: “Jun, why do you only take pictures of the rooms we stay in?”

Jun: “Those other things are in my memory. The hotel rooms and the airports are the things I’ll forget.”

This espousing calls into question the condition of the architect’s economy and politic (as it is defined by this distinction) - aka you are a practicing architect, or you are an academic

Corbusier, Eisenman, etc - Capitalised on this dis-tinction - can be seen as a form of defensive measure against the “profane”- reaffirms the separation of defined by the Humanist subject and object

* distinct bodies * the master/slave * the master/client * mind/body * genders (ie male/female) * profane/polite

American, 1929-2000John HEJDUK’s work did not attempt to reaffirm this dichtomy- Vidler states, Hejduk’s “project(s) [...] is presented as a whole [...] as a material to be submitted to the life and consuming power of the context”

Here we see Hejduk with an interest to see what could emerge from “the belly of the monster”- term borrowed from Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto”

- clip from Metropolis (1927) by Fritz Lang, when Freder enters the city of the workers

Piranesi’s The Round Tower

The approach -A means through with to engage with the profane, perverse and rotten is through a technological approach- Hejduk and Diller + Scofidio both use this although they are different approaches

Both approaches originate from the concept of the “hybrid”- The “hybrid” is one which can be read asbeing a feminist construction (for example, the women drives Freder into the city of the worker’s in Metropolis, it is her place)

The approach -A technological approach which espouses the “everyday” exposes the female and the realm of the feminine “private” - what goes on behind closed doors (domestic)- Soren Kierkhaard -19th c Danish philosopher) was the first to theo-rise “privateness”

- Teyssot stated that paintings in the genre of Hummel’s represent-ed space as an inner world which holds personal feelings and acts of private thinking

Johann Erdmann Hummel’s Drawing Room in Berlin, 1820-25

Donna Haraway -The hybrid can be used as a metaphor to conceptu-alise objects that result from the uncovering the perversity of the private- the hybrid expresses suppressed desires - sex, irony, hedonism, fetishism, death, intimacy, war

Image from Daryl Wein’s Sex Positive

Donna Haraway -The hybrid for Haraway is called the cyborg- the cyborg has 3 requirements:

*must be a cybernetic organism (- aka intelligent, systemic)

* machine AND organism (- aka it must be mind AND body, subject AND object)

* must be a creature of fiction AND of lived social reality

A painting by Lisa Foo (said to be a cyborg)

Rachel from Blade Runner (1982)

Six Million Dollar Man (1970s)

The cyborg -Presented as virtually indistinguishable from humans despite their technological nature- clip from Blade Runner where Rachel tries to prove her humanity and is told that her memories are not her own

In architecture -The cyborg in Hejduk’s (and D+S) architecture can be the means through with the Post-Humanist subject can emerge- threatening the historical dichotomy of:

* the body from architecture * the subject from the object

*** the practice of architecture from the theory of architecture

- architecture takes on perverse, prosthetic, narrative and human-like qualities

Birth Machine (1967) by HR Giger

Hejduk’s architecture -Architectural cyborgs - note: Vidler refers to his works as vagabonds- have a form of intelligence (are systemic in narrative and in memory)

- are technological (use technique)

- are creatures both of fiction and of reality (relate to a place & to a story)

Collapse of Time erected in Bedford Square in 1986 by AA staff and students

Collapse of Time (1986) -one of 67 projects designed to com-memorate victims of the Gestapo in Berlin- they were to be built in front of the Gestapo HQ in Berlin one at a time

- Hejduk: they were signifying “incremental place and incremental time”

Collapse of Time when upright was said by Hejduk to be like a centaur (from ancient Greek mythology

Collapse of Time when at 45 degrees was a cat Collapse of Time when flat was a coffin on wheels

Berlin Masques (1981) -The masquse represent the mediation between inside , the private, the perverse and outside, the public and polite- images from his sketch book from Hejduk’s trips to Berlin

presented in Mask of Medusa

Berlin Masques showing two walled-in camps with figure/character/objects of Hejduk’s residing inside

Berlin Masques (1981) -depicts 2 walled-in camps with figures- 1 male camp and1 female camp with objects in captivity with one straddling the boundary

- have abstracted, human-like qualities (are animorphic)

Berlin Masques showing one of the objects inside of the walled-in camps with more character/figure/objects residing inside - the private space

Vladivostok (1989) -Architectural cyborgs come fully to life, exposing inner perverse worlds and the conditions of each place Hejduk has travelled to- his architectures become both collectively cyborgian and at the same time are prostheses of Hejduk himself

Vladivostok (1989) -They collectively battle the same dilemma as Rachel in Blade Runner- cyborgs are called into constantly question and repositioned

- breaks the master/slave (etc) dichotomy of the Humanist subject, utilising technological collective intelligence

Vladivostok figures in position to one another

The House of the Inhabitant who Refused to Participate in plan - house, tower, hole, bleachers

At the exact level of the Participant of Refusal’s empty cell there is af-fixed upon the campo tower a mirror, the precise elevation size of the opposite cell. When the inhabitant of the house stands in his empty room he simply reflects himself upon the mirror of the opposite tower.

Any citizen is permitted to climb the ladder and enter the stone tower. Once in the tower the citizen can see the lone inhabitant across the campo within his cell. The citizen can observe without being observed.

There is only one risk for the hidden observer. Another citizen may release the overhead tower door consequently enclosing within the tower the citizen observer. (Hejduk)

(Liz) Diller + (Ricardo) Scofidio -The human body becomes architecture’s technological, cyborgian site- narratives are performed with a physicality (this is different than Hejduk’s approach)

In 1985 designed a stage set inspired by Marcel Duchamps A Large Glass (Or the Bridge Stripped Bare by her Bachelors) 1915-23[left]- two glass panels suspended vertically, de-picting a machinic-like bride in the top gald (Bride’s Domain) and 9 bachelor’s separated from her below (Bachelor’s Apparatus) with a horizon line between (Bride’s Clothes)

A Delay in Glass (or Rotary Notary and His Hot Plate) and the stage set apparatus designed by D+S

American Mysteries (1981) and the stage set - the architecture becomes both medium and message

House of the Suicide and House of the Mother of the Suicide -Hejduk’s 12x12 cubes with metal shards pointing outsides, drawing the Mother in and the Suicide out- the gaze of the Mother is pointed inwards, inside there is a small platform, when the Mother stands on the platform she looks through a small slit to a slit in the elevation of the House of the Suicide

A Delay in Glass and the stage set during the performance, in animation, priviledging the body

A Delay in Glass and the view of the rotating door and the mirror between the bride and her bachelor

Hejduk vs D+S -D+S introduces the concept of media (through technology) as that which can transgress the sub-ject/object dichotomy, while Hejduk remains bound by architectural forms

Thanks.

A Delay in Glass and the reflection of the bride in the mirror

Vladivostok and two of Hejduk’s characters questioning andrepositioning