FRI | JAN 20, 2012 | Azra Akšamija – National purification through religious architecture

photo: Ahmet ef. Rahmanovi

DATE: 20.01.2012

TIME: 19:00

LOCATION: IG-Architektur, Gumpendorfer Straße 63b, 1060 Vienna

LECTURE: Azra Akšamija – National purification through religious architecture
Vortrag im Rahmen des Schwerpunktthemas Solidarität - Wie entstehen demokratische Räume?

Mosques in Bosnia-Herzegovina 1992–2010

Forgetting and violence, as French philosopher Ernest Renan has argued, are integral factors of national formations. This lecture explores the spatial aspects of forgetting and violence within the process of nationalist division of Bosnia-Herzegovina through the lens of religious architecture. More specifically Akšamija investigates how the nationalist extremists seized on cultural heritage and religious monuments during the war of 1992–1995 in order to facilitate the realization of their expansionist projects. While all ethno-national groups in Bosnia experienced significant war losses, Bosnian Muslims suffered the greatest human and architectural casualties. The lecture will show how the extent and the genocidal nature of war violence against Bosnian Muslims has transformed the meaning of the mosque from a place of worship and religious-ethnic identity to a place of the ethnic body of the Bosniak nation. The lecture highlights the significance of ethnic symbols, long-term cultural factors and global cultural flows in the formation of nations. (Text: Azra Akšamija, http://www.azraaksamija.net/)

Azra Akšamija is a Sarajevo-born Austrian artist and architectural historian. She received her doctorate in History of Islamic Art and Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is currently Assistant Professor at the “MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology”. She also holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in architecture from Graz University of Technology (Austria) and Princeton University (USA). Akšamija’s Ph.D. dissertation explores how Bosnian Muslims construct their identity through the lens of rebuilt or newly built mosques following the systematic destruction of religious architecture during the Bosnian War 1992–1995. In her interdisciplinary practice, Akšamija works with different media, such as sculpture, video and textile. Her work investigates identity politics in art and architecture, with focus on representations of ‘Islam in the West’ and the transformative conflict-mediation through cultural education and pedagogy. Her work has been shown internationally.

-Press release

WED | Jan 11, 2012 | Seungkoo Jo – Between Transformation and Evolution: Growth, Globalization, and People

source

LOCATION: University of Applied Arts Vienna, Lichthof 2

DATE: January 11, 2012

TIME: 7 p.m.

LECTURE: IoA Sliver Lecture | Seungkoo Jo, Architect, Busan South Korea:
Between Transformation and Evolution: Growth, Globalization, and People
Seungkoo Jo – Between Transformation and Evolution: Growth, Globalization, and People

Cities have been analyzed in historical and theoretical terms. There is a close relationship between urban society and formal and spatial con- figurations of cities in Korea. Urban form is not previous to the social phenomena. It is a product, it is built history. The city was redefined and built from scratch. Society would accommodate itself to its proposals, and it had to be persuaded to live within the new or old social formal context. During the past 30 years, urban change and transformation in Korea occurred at a very radical pace. Unlike European Cities, urban transformation and evolution seem to be an ongoing process in which strong interventions are involved in Korean Modern architecture. Buildings are not built one framework, they are a succession of frame- works over time; growth, globalization, people. In this sense, buildings in Korea can be read and understood from two perspectives: The first looks at buildings as a result of a continuous process, the other as a product of a certain moment in history.

-Press release

LINKS:
http://www.i-o-a.at/

http://aaac.at/

DEC 2011-FEB 2012 | David Maljković – Exhibition for Secession

credits: David Maljković, Exhibitions for Secession, Exhibition view

 

DATE: December 2, 2011 – February 5, 2012

TIME: see website

LOCATION: Secession, Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Vienna

EXHIBITION: David Maljković – Exhibition for Secession

The collages, films, and architectural mises-en-scène of the Croatian artist David Maljković form part of the current critical engagement with modernism. Maljković turns his attention to sculptural and architectonic symbols that, against the backdrop of Yugoslav socialism, signified the dawn of a new era. He renegotiates these on a historic, cultural, and theoretical level by relating it to the present and the future. In his exhibition at the Secession he takes a different path: He reflects his own previous ideas by giving many of his existing works a radical restaging. Objects developed as presentation structures for other contexts and contents will be cleared out and emptied. Maljković arranges these objects in the main exhibition hall and accents them only with minimal marks and interventions like fog or sounds.

-Press release

DEC 7, 2011-APR 22, 2012 | ENVISIONING BUILDINGS. Reflecting Architecture in Contemporary Art Photography

DATE: December 07, 2011 – April 22, 2012

TIME: see website

LOCATION: MAK Vienna (exhibition hall), Stubenring 5, 1010 Vienna

EXHIBITION: ENVISIONING BUILDINGS. Reflecting Architecture in Contemporary Art Photography 

ENVISIONING BUILDINGS: Reflecting Architecture in Contemporary Art Photography is an exploration of the agency of contemporary art to influence thinking about architecture as an interrelated discipline.ENVISIONING BUILDINGS reflects the MAK’s commitment to producing exhibitions and publications that engage art/architecture/design and conjoin them in a way to test whether, and how, they can be transformed.

-Press release

TUE | DEC 13th, 2011 | Carme Pinós

DATE: Tuesday, 13.12.2011

TIME: 19:00

LOCATION: TU Wien, Audi Max

Lecture: Carmen Pinós

Carme Pinós graduierte 1979 an der ETSAB und eröffnete 1982 in Partnerschaft mit Enric Miralles ihr Büro in Barcelona. Die bekanntesten Projekte aus dieser Phase sind das Gemeindezentrum in Hostalets, der Friedhofspark von Igualada und die Sportanlage für die Bogenschießbewerbe der Olympischen Spiele in Barcelona.

1991 eröffnete Carme Pinós ihr eigenes Büro, in dem seither zahlreiche Projekte zu unterschiedlichen Bauaufgaben von der Parkgestaltung bis zum Schul- und Bürobau entstanden: die Fußgängerbrücke in Petrer (Alicante), die Juan Aparicio Waterfront in Torrevieja (Alicante), die La Serra High School in Mollerussa, die Volksschule in Castelldefels (Barcelona) sowie der Cube Tower in Guadalajara (Mexico), mit dem sie einen neuen Typus des Bürohochhauses geschaffen hat. Derzeit arbeitet sie an mehreren Projekten, unter anderem dem Sitz der Katalanischen Verwaltung in Tortosa, dem Verkehrsmuseum und dem Stadtpark in Málaga, dem La Gardunya-Platz im historischen Zentrum von Barcelona, zu dem neben der Platzgestaltung das La Massana-Zentrum für Bildende Kunst und ein Wohnbau gehören, dem Caixaforum in Saragossa und dem Cube 2 Tower in Guadalajara (Mexico). In Wien entsteht ein Institutsgebäude für den neuen Campus der Wirtschaftsuniversität.

Carme Pinós ist eine der weltweit renommiertesten Architektinnen mit Gastprofessuren an der University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1994-1995), der Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf (1996-1997), der Columbia University in New York (1999), the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne (2001-2002), der ETSAB in Barcelona (2002), der Università Degli Studi di Sassari in Alghero (2002-2004), der Harvard University Graduate School of Design (2003), der Accademia di Archittetura di Mendrisio in der Schweiz (2005-2006) und der Universitá di Roma Tre (2007-2008).

-Press release