Underskog

– I think the National Museum’s architecture team should go on a research trip to Europe and the US to study the rich possibilities that, after all, exist in the display of architecture – Mona Pahle Bjerke, on the exhibition Brytningar. Norsk arkitektur 1945–65

– If my first-year architecture students submitted projects in this way, they would have failed – Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, on the Nordic Pavilion, 2010 Venice Architecture Biennial

– With a too big topic and too many participants, this year’s Architecture Triennial falls on its own good intentions – Martin Braathen on the 2010 Oslo Architecture Triennial

Norway has recently witnessed loud discussions and debates around communicating architecture. Recent exhibitions at the National Museum – Architecture and the Nordic Pavilion in the latest Venice Architecture Biennial triggered harsh criticisms, articles, reviews and debates on presentation and perception of architecture. Commissioned by the National Association of Norwegian Architects and organized by 0047, the Year of Architecture – a nationwide, a year-long program exploring architecture’s role in the Norwegian society – addresses alternative ways of communicating the discipline, but yet fundamental issues had found little space into public discussions on how and why to communicate and present architecture.

Show and Tell – A roundtable and book launch
Friday, March 4, 7pm at 0047
Schweigaardsgt 34 D, Oslo

About the roundtable

Curated and moderated by Carson Chan (DE, writer, curator and co-director PROGRAM, Berlin), Show and Tell expands the current debate around communicating architecture by inviting renowned critics and curators Martin Braathen (NO, architecture critic for Dagens Næringsliv), Eva Franch (US, director of Storefront for Art and Architecture), Andres Lepik (DE, curator of Small Scale, Big Changes at MoMA, NYC), and Paola Nicolin (IT, editor, Abitare) to engage in a discussion around questions such How is architecture exhibited? What is an architecture exhibition? How can architecture be at once the object and context of display? What relations architects have to modes of displays? Show and Tell aims at looking into architecture exhibition beyond representation, presenting it as a seminal field of production in which the architecture discipline expands in active and engaging ways.

About the book launch

In the same evening, 0047 launches And the Seasons; They Go Round and Round, the catalog and final installment to the two exhibitions curated by Chan in the spring of 2010. Featuring essays by New Yorker writer Nick Paumgarten, artist and writer Patricia Reed, and economist Amin Samman, the catalog seeks to expand the investigation of the overall geometry of our social, aesthetic and economic life that was initiated by the exhibitions. The catalog is designed by young design group Vaguely Contemporary (John McCusker & Sara Hartman). The designers will give a short presentation on the challenges of transforming an exhibition into a publication.

About the participants

Martin Braathen is an architecture critic and PhD candidate in the History of Architecture at NTNU, Trondheim. He is the author of Alt er arkitektur. Neoavantgarde og institusjonskritikk i Norge 1965-1970 (Everything is Architecture. Neo-avantgarde and institional critique in Norway 1965-1970), and has published widely in newspapers and architecture magazines in Norway and internationally. He has been the exhibitions director of Norsk Form/The Norwegian Centre for Architecture and Design, and the architecture curator of 0047 in Berlin.

Carson Chan is an architecture curator and writer. He founded PROGRAM in 2006, a non-commercial initiative for art and architecture collaborations. His writing on art, architecture and contemporary culture appears in periodicals and books worldwide, including Kaleidoscope (Milan) and 032 (Berlin), where he is a contributing editor. Between 2005 and 2010, Chan has organized and curated over thirty art and architecture exhibitions, and is currently writing a series of essays about the discipline of exhibition making in both art and architecture. With Nadim Samman, Chan was appointed curator of the 4th Marrakech Biennale in 2012.

Eva Franch i Gilabert is the director of Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York and founder of OOAA [office of architectural affairs]. Franch’s work has been exhibited extensively, including at the Center for Architecture in New York, NAI Rotterdam, FAD Barcelona and Shenzen Biennale of Architecture. Selected publications and articles include “Ecologies of Excess” in AD (2010), “Thesis” in Everythink must Move (2009), “CityThemeCity and Content_A” in Pidgin (2006-7), “Dementia” in Postboks (2004), “Pause Pavillion” in Pasajes (2004), “Generative Metaphors” in Sources of Architectural Form (2007), and “R.E.D. Studies” in Imagined Spaces (2007).

Andres Lepik is an author and curator based in Berlin. He worked as a curator at the National Gallery, Berlin; Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and Curator in the Architecture and Design Department at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Most recently he curated Small Scale, Big Change. New Architectures of Social Engagement at MoMA New York. Additionally, he is the author of numerous articles, reviews and books.

Paola Nicolin is an art historian and critic who currently teaches at Luigi Bocconi University and works as Art Editor of Abitare. A visiting scholar at Harvard and student at MIT, she is also the author of various publications, including Palais de Tokyo. Sito di creazione contemporanea (Postmedia, 2006), the entry “The Art of Exhibition” for the Encyclopedia Treccani Terzo Millennio (2010) and a upcoming book on the problem of curating at the XIV Triennale in Milan within the context of the institutional crisis of exhibition system in Italy in 1968. She is currently curating the column “On Exhibition” at Kaleidoscope (Milan).

John McCusker is an American graphic designer and cofounder of Vaguely Contemporary. Based in Berlin since 2008, John has worked on projects and publications for such clients as Peres Projects, Krome Gallery, and Temporäre Kunsthalle-Berlin. Apart from commissioned work, John has been involved with exhibitions and performances at Exile Gallery and Center Gallery, and will be designing the forthcoming website and journal If A then B: Notes on Translation (Passenger Books).