MARINA GARCIA-VASQUEZ
Marina Garcia-Vasquez is a New York-based writer and editor of lifestyle and culture content, now focused on design and architecture.
Learning and Innovation Network, Mexico City
(Architectural Record, 2012)
“We wanted the construction to be very straightforward since, for many people, this would be their first encounter with technology,” notes Mexico City architect Iván Hernández Quintela of his community tech hubs. To create classrooms, information centers, and cafeterias, modular units are inserted into existing community centers. Hernández says the units were inspired by “cimbras,” the makeshift scaffolding found at local construction sites. For example, two-by-fours form the structure for a classroom’s polycarbonate walls (left). Now, 72 of Hernández’s computer centers are open around the city, offering classes to all ages for about 15 cents each.
ARCHITECT: Ludens (Iván Hernández Quintela and Norma Maldonado).
BUDGET: About $33/square foot.
CONTEXT: The project repurposes existing community centers on Mexico City’s densely populated and impoverished fringes.
See the article published online here: http://archrecord.construction.com/features/humanitarianDesign/Latin-America/Learning-and-Innovation-Network.asp
Moving Pictures:
Re-Engaging Space with Film, Meaning, and Substance
(Australian Design Review, 2011 )
As digital becomes part of our everyday vernacular, we look to video art as a growing medium of expression, one that has the power to intensify meaning and gratify our need for information. Film traditionally has always had this potential, but only in bold experimenting has video art really pushed through in recent years. Only recently, for example, have greater audiences begun to value Bill Viola as much as his long-supporting and partnering curators.
Since art form is meaning, architecture as it relates to video art becomes a study of how art is contextualised in a public space for a viewing audience. Everything is concentrated within a film, and even more so sometimes when we consider this kind of video art. We investigate the details of process: scale/proportion, spatial sequence and, of course, presentation. The architecture itself becomes the vessel of this meaning, the organizational work for the artist to present his or her moving images. It is almost too easy to take the work of a video artist for granted, since the messages and meanings are often so outwardly enticing, entertaining and inviting.
Looking at the work of two video artists who received a great deal of attention at the latest Art Basel in Miami, it’s nearly impossible not to praise the works of London-based Isaac Julien and the Italian, New York-based, Marco Brambilla. These two artists approach video installation from disparate perspectives, but have their common denominators. They were born in the same year, studied film at a very young age and ultimately both decided to diverge from their filmmaking careers in pursuit of making art in video segments – very particular and concentrated segments.
Julien’s segments are works that make up a strong narrative-driven series of homages, all packed with symbolism. Brambilla’s, on the other hand, are that of a more chaos-driven collage void of any specific storyline. Their current body of work is a derivative of their early filmmaking experiences. Julien’s were mostly docudramas that explored diasporas and identity, while Brambilla’s were more Hollywood big-budget films like Demolition Man.
The comparison notes that these artists have been working in the medium of moving images for a great deal of time, marrying technology, fine artistic merit with the craft of true filmmaking. The quick and fluid action of these films is, in fact, an extremely produced process, like any other in film – taking up to months, if not years, to research and edit from inception to reception. Once under the umbrella of architecture, however, the shift from film to video art becomes clearly apparent. The two artists take painstaking considerations of space and process in creating their vision from project to project, but only in the final presentation does half the work unfold.
Isaac Julien’s latest spectacle Ten Thousand Waves (TTW) is an epic nine-screen video installation that links images of China’s past to the present. The installation’s world premiere was greatly received at the 2010 Sydney Biennale. The dramatic 55-minute film experience investigates the context of Chinese immigrants who get smuggled into the UK and lose their lives in Morecambe Bay. Julien spent roughly four years researching the incident and developing the beautiful overture we see today.
The success of TTW is how emotive the presence of each screen becomes in the viewing of all nine collectively, loading our peripheral sights – large screens that counter each other in meaning through visual crescendo and audio unison. Each moving part further creates a sense of wonderment through images rich in historical and cultural complexity, notions of spirituality, modernity, nationality, politics and sexuality. We are all anchored in the varied sense of inclusion and expulsion as a reaction to the movement on the screens.
Julien is revered in art film and academic circles as a formal thinker. He cares a great deal about commenting on societal norms. He says that TTW is a paradigm shift for him as an artist, a grand spectacle to further the importance of the content. “The question of immersive relations, the kind of architectural relations, how the screens in the space are positioned – also attention to colour, and also attention to design… It’s interesting how you think these things are invisible. It’s very precise, the immense labour that gets involved with making those projects.”
He says the film’s meaning is a starting point. The works on the screens are a product of years of visual and academic research. Within the production of TTW you will find actors, poets, calligraphers, fictional scenes and a narrative present. “I think, retrospectively, lots of my works still have the old habits of a filmmaker,” he says. “There’s still the question around narrative. There’s still the question around duration. And one of the things I have been trying to push in that space is really attention to work which is installed – and the environment for the installation becomes just as important as the content and the form of the film itself.”
He notes that artists like Marcel Duchamp and Doug Aitken have done this before, considered the architecture and the moving image. He believes artists and architects are coming closer together. “If we think of someone like Olafur Eliasson, it’s very much about how one can think about a parallel montage,” says Julien. “The way the spectator reacts within that relationship.”
In TTW he says you don’t know the piece without moving around it; the goal was to break the ontological gaze of the spectator. “What is different is the way that the digital technology and the architectural technologies are developing in a particular way to enable this kind of experience where the viewer is beginning to have a more haptic experience with the image.” He considers this new vantage as breaking down our normative ways in which we experience moving images. With absolute freedom to move around the video installation, the viewer and the works become symbiotic, and the liberty of experience and cognitive processing become more available.The indicators of meaning: the spans of moving people, the sprawl of metropolis, the recording of languages, the mysterious seascape all become more accessible.
In New York City, Marco Brambilla’s ‘Civilisation’ videos are installed in each of The Standard Hotel’s elevators.The experience is the epitome of an urban chic environment and yet, suddenly, one is lured into Brambilla’s world. The video collages, reminiscent of a digital Hieronymus Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights”, live within the walls of the elevators. As a hotel guest ascends from the lobby, looped images of heaven are displayed and, on the ride down, a hellish dark comedy spirals on the screen. This unexpected meeting of art in a seemingly public space has garnered Brambilla a great deal of unexpected attention. It’s actually how the rapper and producer Kanye West stumbled on his work, as a guest at the hotel. He ultimately commissioned Brambilla to create an art montage for the song ‘Power’ on West’s latest album. Both in ‘Power’ and Civilisation, we see Brambilla’s now trademark signature of layering video images to explore the topics of commercialism and symbolic dualities in light and dark.
“I am not telling people what to think,” he says. “It’s a visceral narrative. My personal view comes across as sensory overload.” His recent work Evolution, Megaplex builds on this notion of overloading us with a horizontally scrolling three dimensional video that pulls images from 600 different feature films. It is both dizzying and hypnotic in its redundancy, but that is the point.
Brambilla likens his explosive video works to painting with video. He gives equal weight to audio, environmental and installation aspects. In his experimenting, he is re-expressing something he has read in the news and he scours iconic films for images that he will later string together. “By removing the emotional content from something, by making it more sensational, more impactful, more of a spectacle, it calls into question the nature of how films are today,” he says. “It has become more about the delivery of something than the content of something.”
Brambilla says his works are anchored by the apocalyptic and sci-fi movies of the ‘70s, as well as earlier filmmakers who inspired him like Ken Russell, Federico Fellini, Stanley Kubrick, Michelangelo Antonioni and Woody Allen. He also credits David Lynch for his visual operas. “I like films that have virtually no structure and don’t really have a specific storyline. So that you can kind of careen through the film and superimpose something you feel onto the film. So hopefully by making work that has no narrative, you open the viewer up to interpret things in many different ways.”
When Brambilla considers his space, he is engineering the images within the confines of the video screen. Many of his collaged works spiral in, are panned in a panoramic sense, through portals with mirrors. He is always looking for ways to freshen his perspective. This year alone, he is producing a 360-degree three-dimensional projection of Evolution to be shown in a non-gallery space in New York City, as well as developing a point of view (POV) piece using iPhone cameras. “My work deals with technology, so the technology itself becomes the method of making it happen,” he explains.
These moving images of social revolutions and denizens in commercialism take us on journeys of our past to recover the future. Meaning is explored through the viewed experience. Because of the enormity and scale of these productions, because so much technical and digital support is necessary to uphold the image, perhaps these video productions result in greater, more objective truths, not just one voice of creativity but a collective one. With the input of so many people, the message becomes more universal. With Brambilla reacting to vacancy, with Julien rearticulating history, these video artists promote the progression of humanity, by empowering the viewer with new and alternative ways to process such information. They present global truths that are both interactive and synergistic. “These are questions that are brought to bear,” says Julien. “We care about them quicker because of new technologies.”
Counter Culture
(Australian Design Review, 2011)
The kitchen is a powerful place of creation. It is at its core, the foundation of every home, where we consider how we fuel our bodies and families. In recent years, we’ve been active participants in the rising food movement, in which active food journalists, like Michael Pollan, urge us to reconsider what we eat, how we eat it, and of course, where we even buy our food. This critique of the global food industry has also stimulated smaller but quite lively environmental movements of organic and local foods — turning our kitchens into a fairly political space.
As art follows life, New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) presents Counter Space:Design and the Modern Kitchen. As a conceptual conversation, it is richly political, poetic and personal, as almost everyone has a modern kitchen these days. The collection-based exhibition pulls approximately 250 design objects, like architectural plans, archival photographs and other works of art. It is divided into three sections: ‘The New Kitchen’ (of the 20th century); ‘Visions of Plenty’ (post-war boom-time); and the artistic portrayals of kitchen activity through ‘Kitchen Sink Dramas’.
As you enter Counter Space, you begin to realise that this is a bit more than a mere exhibition of art. Rather, it is a journey of investigation. Examining the kitchen through time, it’s as though the kitchen was once uncharted territory, a science experiment.
We start with the idea of the ‘The New Kitchen’, shortly before World War I, where we see the rise in the use of electricity and the standardisation of food products. Items we take for granted, like the common sugar cube and the brown paper bag, were developed in this period. Thanks to this era of industrialisation (and processed food), we now sweeten our tea and pack meals with ease. Whether that ease has made us a bit lazier and a bit fatter is a different issue altogether, but we certainly credit this point in history having an effect on the modern way of life.
Great thinkers started to emphasise the kitchen as a ‘new space’ for experimentation,
like Frank Lloyd Wright’s kitchen model plan, focusing greater attention on the kitchen space. And the important author/reformer, Chris tine Frederick, took painstaking lengths to study kitchen toil in her book titled The New Housekeeping (published 1913). As the assistant curator of Counter Space Aidan O’Connor points out, “Her time-motion graphs measuring the kitchen workload emphasised the modernist reverence for industrialisation and mechanisation. We are trying to set up the larger picture of ‘The New Housekeeping’, tying into the new topography, the new kitchen, the new architecture.”
The most ambitious project of this time, and perhaps the star of the show, is MoMA’s newly acquired ‘Frankfurt Kitchen’ – designed by the architect Margarete Schutte-Lihotsky. From 1925 to 1935, the ‘Frankfurt Kitchen’ addressed a serious and immediate need in timesaving food preparation and was designed for widowed women who had to enter the workplace, who were often raising a family at the same time. Ten thousand of these kitchens existed at once, and it was the first time a kitchen was mass-produced. “We want to stress that the design of the kitchen, that was part of the Frankfurt building project, was very big and very small at the same time…stressed world order starting from within the home,” says O’Connor.
In the second section of the show titled ‘Visions of Plenty’, the kitchen becomes the testing ground for new materials, technologies and power sources. The kitchen re-emerges out of post-World War II, forging new national identities and women’s liberation.“Here is where we are introduced to Tupperware collections and the notion of consumer choice, validating a growing American identity as capitalistic and democratic — how everyday items became representative of the quality of life.”
We also see a great deal of dream products like the 1968 Italian mobile kitchen named ‘Spazio Vivo’, the ingenious rolling kitchen, hinged and on casters with a mini refrigerator and stovetop, compartmentalised to plug-in anywhere. The objects on display are both useful and beautiful. Take for instance Chemex’s clinical portrayal of the coffeemaker in Pyrex or Brown’s metal appliances like juicers, mixers and toasters in sleek silver forms.
Lastly, we arrive at ‘Kitchen Sink Dramas’, a whole slew of photographic and artistic explorations, showing the emotive humane element of the kitchen
(Australian Design Review, 2011)
In most urban capitals, high-rise apartment living is the norm. In the big cities, we seek skyward accommodation, learn to compartmentalise our everyday lives and often entertain a lifestyle that keeps us out of our homes and drives us into the nucleus of the city’s commotion. When architect Dash Marshall was asked to design a stylised dwelling that would be both ‘artistic and utilitarian’ in the starkest sense, you would have expected him to gravitate to ideas around functionality and the mechanics of simple living. Yet, Marshall has thrown us for a euphoric loop in presenting this recent project, entitled the ‘Apartment for Space-Age Lovers’. It’s an architectural renovation that took as inspiration a couple’s love, and in some way redefines the capacity of dense, modern living within the urban context of New York City.
First comes the love in this case, which brews between an arts-centric New York-based couple in their early 40s, who both lead an international lifestyle, well-travelled (by habit and trade) and are constantly self-employed as a photographer and author. They remain pixelated for their privacy and have chosen to be left unnamed in the press surrounding the project. We will refer to them as ‘the Lovers’ – as Marshall himself is inclined to call them.
The Lovers presented Marshall with their own mood board and aesthetic requests. They wanted smooth surfaces for easy cleaning, have a penchant for white box austerity and value minimalist art. In the finished apartment, we see these translated into high beam luminescence, gloss cabinetry and an overall pod-like ambience, where whiteness contains order. It is both Space Odyssey and a nod to the musical aesthetics of the band Air. Marshall best describes this vision as the ‘curved glass visor of a space suit’.
Read the entire article here: http://www.australiandesignreview.com/interiors/2415-apartment-for-space-age-lovers
Hôtel Americano
(Australian Design Review, 2011)
The new Hôtel Americano sits erect in the heart of New York’s Chelsea arts district, but offers more than just good proximity. The ten-storey hotel was designed by Mexican architect Enrique Norten, with interiors by French designer Arnaud Montigny of Colette, Paris fame. It is a building with an emphasis on the arts: in its architecture, design and location, conveniently nestled as it is within one of North America’s most renowned arts hubs.
As Grupo Habita’s first property in the US, the Americano project has been successful in translating the core elements of the group’s long-standing ethos, mainly focused south of the border for the past 10 years – firm in applying smart architecture and design with lux hospitality. In this regard, Hôtel Americano’s identity is based on the notion of a ‘global Latin culture’, says Carlos Couturier (co-founder of Grupo Habita), with a nod to internationalism (and without being too kitsch). He believes the hotel also serves as a neutral meeting point for global nomads with a deep appreciation of the arts, culture and of course New York City. ‘This is why we build hotels,’ says Couturier. ‘We aim to be a magnet for the arts.’
Read the entire article here: http://www.australiandesignreview.com/interiors/2338-hotel-americano
Prophecy Magazine (2007)
(Managing Editor)
Landmark
(With photos by Luke Abiol and poetry by Marina Garcia-Vasquez)
Reminiscent of early 20th century photography, Landmark grew out of an email correspondence between Abiol and Garcia-Vasquez. Each one was grappling with the sense of war and what becomes of cities in ruin, New York post 9/11 and bulleted Beirut. The post-World War I poetry of Hilda Doolittle served as inspiration for a contemporary dialogue in global cities.
The Image of Modernity: A manifesto for urban landscapes, architecture, and poetry
Marina Garcia-Vasquez sets out to investigate two fundamental issues: how the remote past of a city is imagined and what part we, as spectators or engineers of the visual outcome, determine the urban landscape to be. The romantic notion of a city, steeped in colonialism or modernism is a contested wound, variously seen as gaping or victorious. I argue that art, here as poetry and photography reflect the debates of both the historical and the romantic, but actively contributing to the notion of the city in past and present. In the form of an identity both personal and public, we examine the interplay between visual perspective and the interior reflection of the person. This interdisciplinary approach of visual and literary weds the notion of dualities: time and history, celebration and erosion. We look at revival and decrepitude. It is a pictorial repertoire in word and image.
Belongings: A Poetry Experience
(With photos by Luke Abiol and poetry by Marina Garcia-Vasquez)
Belongings is serial poem of identity. First written in 2006, the poem revolved around a winter cap that the poet Marina Garcia-Vasquez was carrying around for her first winter in New York City. It was an object that was true: in utility and sentiment. Belongings exists as seven portraits by Abiol with handwritten poetry by Garcia-Vasquez. The poetry portraits are 20x24 inches, matted, and framed in white.
Belongings has been exhibited at Kris Graves gallery in DUMBO and at La Esquina Cafe in SoHo.
