Demolitions, Empty Lots, Wastelands
Lecture by Lara Almarcegui within the frame of the lecture series "Built and Un-built Utopias - The Politics of Conversions" organized by the Institute for Art and Architecture in winter term 2010/11.
The work of Spanish artist Lara Almarcegui is concerned with the planned and unplanned use of urban space, focusing on rediscovering abandoned or overlooked sites. She has spent weeks revealing the ‘memory’ of a market that was going to be demolished in San Sebastian (Restoring the Gros Market some days before its demolition, 1995) and in 1997 renovated a train station, turning it temporarily into a free hotel (Hotel Fuentes de Ebro, Zaragoza). In 2004, she performed an ‘invisible archaeological’ inspection: excavating the floor of the Sala Montcada, Barcelona, and restoring it to its original state, all before the opening of her exhibition. Now she is working in projects consisting in preserving wastelands undeveloped for many years.
Her Work often explores neglected or overlooked sites, carefully cataloguing and highlighting each location's tendency towards entropy. Her projects have ranged from a guide to the wastelands of Amsterdam, to the display
– in their raw form – of the materials used to construct the galleries in which she exhibits.
Recent group exhibitions include Portscapes, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2010), Radical Nature, Barbican Art Centre London, (2009), Athens biennale (2009), Taipei and Gwuangyu Biennale in 2008, Sharjah Biennale (2007) Momentum, Nordic Festival of Contemporary Art, Moss (2006), The 27th São Paulo Biennial, San Paulo (2006) , the 2nd Seville Biennial, Seville (2006), (Public Act) Lunds Konsthal, Lund (2005). Solo exhibitions include Secession, Vienna and Ludlow 38, New York (2010), Ruins in the Netherlands, Gallery Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam (2008), the Malaga Centre of Contemporary Art, Malaga (2007), the FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon (2004) and INDEX, Stockholm (2003). She is represented by Gallery Pepe Cobo in Madrid and Gallery Ellen de Bruijne in Amsterdam.
Built and Un-built Utopias - The Politics of Conversions
Modernism has produced some of the largest single buildings of our times.
Today architects continue to speak of their achievements in terms of size and square meters. City developments are measured in hectares and acres, when concerning emerging economies even in square kilometres.
Le Corbusier's allegorical ocean liner became the normative and even litteral reference in many debates on the city and its architecture. Megastructures, as autonomous systems of dense living, working and existence became the basis of many architectural theses. The metabolists, the archigram group, the situationists and many other thinkers/architects such as Rossi and perhaps to the present time Koolhaas have described through various models the potential of projecting in cities.
The lecture series Built and Un-built Utopias will explore the Modernist belief in architecture's capacity to absorb the city scale. It will do so by presenting various speakers who are addressing the issue from different foci. Architects re-formulating Modernism's legacy, filmmakers documenting its failure and success, academics re-thinking city scale architecture, landscape architects re-generating abandoned and dilapidated infrastructures.
The Academy of Fine Arts, Institute for Art and Architecture will throughout the 2010-11 academic year debate and suggest new ideas in order torevisit the cultural heritage of modernism, its Built and Un-built Utopias.