Theatres of Architectural Imagination
Instructor: Lisa Landrum
In what ways is architecture a performing art? What is architecture’s dramatic potential? How have remote practices reconfigured and revitalized embodied practices and ensemble performances?
Framed by such questions, this experimental seminar explored reciprocities of architectural and theatrical imagination. Students studied spatial and dramaturgical practices of exemplary theatre artists, together with select words and works of architects who make and think theatrically. Students considered the influence of theatrical arts on architectural history, theory and design, while rehearsing curiosities about architecture’s performative potential. In addition to seminar presentations and interpretive research documents, students created multi-media micro-events, staged as digital Entr’Actes (2-mintue videos), some of which are featured at the online exhibition (UQAM Design Centre), part of the 2021 Theatres of Architectural Imagination Frascari V symposium.
Austin
Dorn
Hasti
Fakouri
Ralph
Gutierrez
Kevin
Jo
Emily
Jones
Alixa
Lacerna
Andrew
Lawler
Johnathan
Lum
Zahra
Sharifi
Mackenzie
Skoczylas
Cleo
Syverson
Sean
Vandekerkhove
Mike
Zhang
Austin Dorn
Adaptations
This stop-motion animation explores interstitial spaces between theatre and flexible architecture. Taking the worktable as a stage and common tools as interactive actors, the film questions the role of architectural making in storytelling with a plurality of plots and outcomes. Adaptations incorporates research on the experimental multi-media work of architect Elizabeth Diller (Diller Scofidio + Renfro), and the performance group The Builders Association, including their 2020 pandemic-inspired work-in-progress called Decameron. Adaptations earned the “Arcimboldo Prize” at the 2021 ArchiShorts Competition, as part of Winnipeg’s Architecture + Design Film Festival (April 17, 2021). Watch Adaptations here.
Hasti Fakouri
Revealing Shadows
Revealing Shadows explores temporality and place by capturing slow lighting changes over undulating soil surfaces in time-accelerated film. The first clocks were created by shadows and still today we can tell the time by looking at the shadows on architectural surfaces. Revealing Shadows draws inspiration from the performances Refuse the Hour (2015) and Refusal of Time (2012) by artist-director William Kentridge, and writings on Building Time and “Relative Permanence” by architect-educator David Leatherbarrow. Watch Revealing Shadows here.
Ralph Gutierrez
SCI-FI
Sci-Fi tells a traumatic narrative of destruction, loss and migration through abstract forms and music. This sublime retelling of the 1991 volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo grew from archi-theatric storyboard drawings that choreograph chimerical chronologies. Sci-Fi is infused with study of Einstein on the Beach, the seminal 1976 opera by Robert Wilson, Philip Glass and Lucinda Childs, as well as analysis of Manhattan Transcripts (1976-81), the experimental screenplays and architectural representational strategies by Bernard Tschumni. Watch Sci-Fi here.
Kevin Jo
Unveiling Shadows
This miniature theatre stages unseen effects of climate change and explores how shadows both reveal and conceal truth. Within the fabricated set, with a silhouetted skyline for a background, the viewer observes melting ice. The city is gradually submerged under the raising black water, disappearing into the shadow. Unveiling Shadows takes inspiration from the allegory of the cave, originally told by Plato, and from William Kentridge’s 1999 Shadow Procession performance, which was inspired by the same allegory as well as from the context of apartheid in South Africa, where Kentridge works. Watch Unveiling Shadows here.
Emily Jones
Bicycle
This animated film highlights relationships between theatre, procession, architecture and political activism. It follows a growing group of active transportation enthusiasts as they cycle through Winnipeg, from the North End to the Legislative Building where inclusive mobility takes the political stage alongside advocates of Black Lives Matter and the Global Climate Strike. Bicycle emerged from research on the political puppetry, protests and pageants of the Bread and Puppet Theater Company, as well as studies of medieval and modern carnivals and their roles in creating and problematizing urban order. Watch Bicycle here.
Alixa Lacerna
50 Ways Between Theatre and Architecture
Mixing clips of distressing news footage with the sounds and lyrics of Paul Simon’s 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, this video explores obligations of architecture and theatre to social and environmental justice. The work grew from acoustic experiments, script-writing and in-class improvisations, as well as research into the 2016 performative soundscapes and oral storytelling of The Encounter by Simon McBurney and Complicité, and John Hejduk’s architectural Soundings and Masques. Watch 50 Ways here.
Andrew Lawler
House Exaggerated
Merging futuristic images and flashbacks, House Exaggerated provokes alternative readings of housing challenges, comfort and collapse. This stop-motion animation is informed by studies of economic crises, including The Builders Association’s 2011 staging of House / Divided, John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, and architect Patrick Bouchain’s restorative community-building strategies through theatre projects and participatory design processes.
Johnathan Lum
Thinking Out Loud
Thinking out Loud explores temporality and creative processes, while giving expression to multiple ideas that simultaneously comingle during architectural design. The work is based on study of The Black Box project of artist William Kentridge, including the story of the Magic Flute, together with analysis of architect Aldo Rossi’s Little Scientific Theatre and theatrical reflections. Watch Thinking Out Loud here.
Zahra Sharifi
Can You Hear the Light?
This short film grew from scene-by-scene analysis of the famous Orghast performance staged in the ruins of Persepolis by director Peter Brook and writer Ted Hughs in 1971. Research included study of Brook’s notion of Empty Space as the premise for theatre, and related architectural scholarship on his use of found theatre environments and open circles as profound participatory settings for cultural expression. Can you hear the Light interweaves personal visual and aural experience of Yazd with Orghast’s epic struggle for synesthetic communication. Watch Can You Hear the Light? here.
Mackenzie Skoczylas
Housing Memory
Filmed in the ruins of the St. Norbert Monastery, this Entr’Acte explores connections between personal memory, bodily presence and place. The work is informed by research into the multi-layered performance of Mnemonic by Complicité, the poetic constructions of Canadian architect Richard Henriquez, and the interpretive insights of architectural historian Alberto Peréz-Gómez, including his essay on “A Praxis of Personal Memory.” Watch Housing Memory here.
Cleo Syverson
773
Inspired by the performance of 887, by Canadian actor-director Robert Lepage, this Entr’Acte uses a home street address as the premise for constructing a memory palace of recurring domestic stories and their cultural context. The creative work also draws on David Leatherbarrow’s analysis of architecture’s “Unscripted Performances” and the capacity of built environments to preserve memory and foster imagination.
Sean
Vandekerkhove
Monoprocession
This filmic animation of ink drawings on mylar explores movement, time and space. The techniques are inspired by study of early cinematography, as well as the drawing and animation strategies of artists, including William Kentridge, especially his 2003 Journey to the Moon, and Paul Klee, notably his enacted lines which lead to a performative understanding of architectural drawings. Watch Monoprocession here.
Mike Zhang
Ni Dukker (Nine Dolls)
This digital animation reinterprets the story of Henrick Ibsen’s revolutionary 1893 play Master Builder through the lens of The Builders Association 1995 restaging of the same play and Gordon Matta-Clark’s appropriation of architecture as a stage for demonstration and deconstruction. The nine dolls represent the character’s desire for independence and freedom from stereotypes. In the film, this theme is explored through spatial symbolism and geometric play.