June 23 to July 21 - Museum Without Building: Chapter 1
Museum Without Building
by Yona Friedman
June 23rd to September 15th 2019
Sunday, June 23, 2:00-9:00pm / chapter 1 inauguration
Saturday, July 27 and Sunday, July 28 / chapter 2 inauguration
Saturday, August 24 / chapter 3 inauguration
Chapter 1 participants: Théodora Barat, Dépense Défensive, Lydia Eccles, Thomas Adam-Garnung, Nicholas Vargelis, and all those who will improvise in the garden.
Curated by Sylvie Boulanger (CNEAI) and Nicholas Vargelis (LPV)
Museum Without Building is a collaborative and itinerant proposal by Yona Friedman, pioneer of the concepts of mobility and improvisation in architecture: the construction of an architectural structure, open to fonctions, creations, activations, workshops and research. The modules of Yona Friedman also function as "stages" for a living artistic ecosystem.
"Starting in the late 1950's, I began with the idea of a 'mobile architecture.' It was important that the inhabitant and user could be able to design by themselves their own living quarters. This program involved a technique which allowed to easily move all parts of the structure (walls, ceilings, floors) in any position, as simple as moving furniture. The technical solution I proposed was called 'Spatial City,' made up of a spatial skeleton: 'the infrastructure,' in which living spaces were inserted. This concept was guided by the improvisation of the inhabitants, replacing traditional planning with a process of 'trial and error' for both architecture and urban design."Yona Friedman, Biosphere, 2018
Starting on June 23rd, chapter 1 of the museum will be activated by several artists. Théodora Barat proposes an installation that combines scavenged materials from construction sites with engineer stones and Nicholas Vargelis will construct an electrical infrastructure for the museum. For the opening on June 23rd the artistic collective Dépense Défensive will read a poem written for the museum. Also on June 23rd the museum will feature a display of text and pictograms from Yona Friedman along with the construction of "furniture +" made from scavenged and recycled materials.
Chapter 1 of Museum Without Building continues on July 13th at 8:00 pm with Thomas Adam-Garnung performing The Hazardous Encounters. And on July 21st at 8:15 pm Lydia Eccles presents her video diary Through the Intimacy of My Own Mistakes.
Museum Without Building is a co-production between Centre Nationale Edition Art et Image (CNEAI) and LPV. Activities related to Museum Without Buildings continue throughout the summer: The Center For Architecture AIA (June 21st and 22nd), The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (August 28th), and the Emily Harvey Foundation (September 5th).
Chapter 1 artists:
The work of TheÌodora Barat appears as a "terrain" where film, sculpture and installation mingle. Working in a permeable manner between these different media, she brings narrative to one, volume to another. TheÌodora is interested in degraded or changing environments, she captures their plastic peculiarities, restores them and puts them in a scene, thus trying to recreate their Aura.
Dépense Défensive is an artistic co-operative and publishing house founded in Paris in 2017 by artist Louis Somveille and graphic designer Martin Desinde. Through alternative economic systems, they produce and diffuse editorial projects, multiples and unique pieces. Influenced by anti-authoritarian theories and practices, 19th century French literature, the Gekiga and the Shōnens, Dépense Défensive seeks to foster a free and accessible culture of protest for all.
Lydia Eccles has been a Test Human for Universal Aliens Transcendental Phenomenological Research (no human cruelty) for the past 20 years. In her participatory-anthropo capacity, she records her own experiences on earth and reports in various media, thereby often redeeming otherwise unworthy episodes as objects of study. Â She both appreciates and wonders about inclusion of this work within a garden devoted to Art.
Yona Friedman is an architect, artist, philosopher, sociologist and anthropologist. He has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge University, Harvard University, the University of California, the University of Michigan, Princeton University.
At the same time teacher in philosophy and visual artist, he left both to devote himself to the theater. He founded and directs a troupe, Les Débutantes, composed of amateur and professional artists, actors, dancers, videographers, musicians and visual artists in a spirit of openness and perpetual and fruitful frictions. He first staged classical plays such as Shakespeare's Macbeth or Aeschylus' Oresteia, before designing more and more hybrid projects between dance and theater. His last three plays have been performed in Paris and France, but also in Brussels. In parallel with his stage productions, he conducts video work around dance.
Nicholas' work combines various contemporary practices, social organisation, technological development, narrative histories, the iconography of forms (such as the history of the light bulb), with the artist as trickster or "situation inventor" who alters contexts to provoke different orders of thought. Nicholas' practice is often collaborative and is, above all, influenced by a social network of artists, writers, architects and other thinkers.