HABITAT/VARIATIONS AT BAC GENEVA

exhibition design by Pablo Leon de la Barra

HABITAT/VARIATIONS
A project by María Inés Rodríguez, independent curator (Paris) In collaboration with Juan Herreros and Pablo León de la Barra At the invitation of the Centre d’édition contemporaine and the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, Exhibition produced jointly with La Casa Encendida, Madrid

Exhibition at the Bac – Bâtiment d’art contemporain, Geneva
28, rue des Bains et 10, rue des Vieux-Grenadiers, 1205 Genève
Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 11 am to 8 pm
June 23, 2007 - September 2, 2007
Friday, June 22, 2007, from 6 pm
Symposium: Saturday, June 23, 2007, from 2 to 7 pm
http://www.bac-ge.ch/

Where to live and how? This exhibition proposes a reflection around projects by artists and architects whose work investigates the living environment. The projects presented are derived from various contexts which lie at the intersection between architecture and art, utopia and reality, individual and collective space.

With: Alexander Apóstol, Pablo León de la Barra, Ronan et Erwan Bouroullec, Sergio Cabrera, Raúl Cárdenas, Santiago Cirugeda, Jimmie Durham, Didier Fiuza Faustino, Yona Friedman, Jakob Kolding, Josep María Martín, Hans-Walter Müller, N55, Maria Papadimitriou, Marjetica Potrč, Tercer un Quinto, Pedro Reyes, Pia Rönicke, Gabriel Sierra et Barbara Visser.

A symposium, directed by the architect Juan Herreros, will take place on Saturday June 23, from 2 to 7 pm, at the Bac. With : Santiago Cirugeda, Philippe Rahm, Kees Christiaanse, Anne Lacaton, Salvador Pérez Arroyo.

Where and how to dwell, to inhabit and to live? This exhibition proposes an overview of a series of projects by artists and architects, who reflect on the subject of the habitat and that by doing so, complicate this issue through their work. The projects that will be presented in the exhibition come form a rather diverse range of contexts and are situated in the intersection between architecture and art, utopia and reality. Some of them account for very active, emerging urban forms, and pose very complex economic, political and social questions that escape the traditional notions of art, architecture and urbanism.

If we are to think the city as the "assemblage of settlings and style assimilations, of icons and of cultural practices that congregate the construction of the past, the tradition as well as of the projects, that is to say, its idea of the future1, it would be interesting to see if the different projects presented can actually transform or at least question the way in which the problematic of the habitat is taken on by the specialists, the State and the users.

In this way, as pointed out by architect Juan Herreros, "social lodging cannot longer be conceived within a systematic perspective of expulsion towards the edges of the city. The lodging programmes can become an engine of transformation of the usage and the image of public space so that the issue is not limited to the construction of buildings. It is in this way that habitat and political space becomes a double component that has to be taken into account when experimenting with these variables, the limits of which we still have to take on”2

Establishing the connections and creating the exchange networks between the concerned agents (artists, architects, political decision makers and inhabitants) can produce new strategies in terms of the habitat.

For this project, in collaboration with artist/curator/architect Pablo Leon de la Barra, we have conceived a working space that we will call Activation Zone (zone d'activation). This AZ is presented as a device that gathers all the elements that constitute the project: exhibition, library, working table and seminar space (conferences and film club). Each of these elements is indispensable and constitutes part of the ensemble.

notes:
1 Romero, Jorge, Tres lecturas de la cultura moderna en América Latina, (mitos y reflexiones de un planteamiento), in Modernidad y posmodernidad, Caracas, Museo Alejandro Otero, p. 109.

2 Presentation floating workshop "INFRAESTRUCTURAS RESIDENCIALES DE USO PÚBLICO" directed by Juan Herreros at the edge of the Naumon ship. Barcelona, Fundación MIES VAN DER ROHE. 2004.