I The sphere of art today consists of two parallel complementary processes. First, the exposé, a complex time-based spectacle of art objects and performances of bodies. Second, the constant exercise of unsalaried artistic production, conditioning precarious nomadic forms of life. These processes together with the expanding idea of artistic work—including performances and time-based media as opposed to only objects—has resulted into an indistinct border between the artists’ activities of living and production. The growth of mega-institutions with the aim to seemingly support artistic processes has only been feeding the same growing precarious forms of life. This normalized condition is key to revisit the notion of the Museum. What if these two complementary processes meet within the very elegant, regulated, and yet open space of the museum; instead of showcasing objects, be a space for housing the process of artistic practice: livings of artists. Here practice seizes all artistic actions into one, understood from its greek root: prassein, ‘to do’. The museum as a space housing the praxis of the artist would no longer merely showcase ‘perfectly curated’ artistic products, but instead, frame the performances of artistic production. II Let us suggest to think of the museum as an actual ‘space of possibility’. Not a spectacular shape, but a box with a rigorous grid; condition of continuity and repetition. Within the inclusive system of the grid, the plinth is a stage for the performance of artistic production. Additionally, there are series of walls, inhabitable frames, each enclosing one piece of decontextualized and appropriated fragment copied from an existing Guggenheim museum – the production of a new difference, repetition but with difference. This archipelago of ‘quotes’ from history in a sea of performances of living-working is composed by: the walls of the big box enclosing the whole plinth, itself composed of minimum artist living-working units, and the repeated fragments for basic infrastructure: auditorium, archive, offices, restaurants. The living-working units enclose the open space of the big box, simultaneously a space for exhibition, working, living, coexistence, collective actions; the precarious artist’s ordinary performances of living rituals inhabit and frame the museum. Re-territorializing the museum.
Competition entry for International Competition, Guggenheim Helsinki 2014 Authors: WORKNOT! – Golnar Abbasi, Arvand Pourabbasi Room for Architecture – Shreyank Khemalapure Altiplano – Pedro Aparicio, Felipe Guerra, Felipe Velasquez
WORKNOT! 