Gerald Straub Conversation

Gerald Straub, applied cultural theorist, is working and living in London. He is focusing on experimental documentary filmmaking, urban spaces and cultural theory. His work interconnects spatial settings and human behaviour and examines how these subjects relate under specific socio-political conditions. He is teaching at the Dept. of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, University of London, I spoke with him in Bethnal Green Road.

The islands, Dubai

In conversation : Catherine Vieira with Gerald Straub

Catherine : First of all tell me what was the beginning point of your research?

Gerald : In general I am interested in public space and how humans behave under certain political condition. This is my over-all interest. In terms of my research I am interested in pre-defined urbanism, which relates to an architectural setting which is less organically grown but more conceptually planned. This is the basic introduction to the research : the socio spatial consequences of pre-defined urban space in contemporary architecture and the role of the notion of immediacy.

Catherine : What strategies did you employ in your observation / investigation of the pre-determinate design of Dubai?

Gerald : Maybe it’s important to introduce certain notions and try to unpack an environment like Dubai. One important notion is the notion of immediacy – divided into three inter-related layers. Firstly the instant environment itself - built in very short amount of time, an urbanization process from scratch referring to instant cities such as Shangai or Dubai. Secondly, it refers to an instant social activity/ behaviour - an action, which has to be accomplished without loss or interval of time - relating to the here and now. In this specific case, the term refers to the immediate interaction process between an individual and an enclosed architectural setting (E.g. border zone) ; how do people navigate or interact with specific conditions - going to the shopping mall, to the parking space, to the work place or tourist area etc. You are constantly confronted with a “precise purpose architecture” and you have to deal on spot with the difference between your original aims and the ones which are predefined, and of course the way the surrounding is constructed has an influence on your immediate engagements.Thirdly, the term serves as an instant artistic framework in order to explore a performative art practice, which relates to the notion of immediacy – based on a “Situation”. You have the city as an immediacy, you have the immediate engagement and an artistic performative methodology in order to unpack the un-intentional holes of abstract space. Precise Architecture refers to contemporary urban planning which implies a very accurate function and a predefined usage of space. Most of the developments in Dubai are pre- conceptualised in order to function exclusively as meant to be. Any other engagement is strictly excluded (e.g. a precise interaction which the environment asks for – press the button on the barrier/ insert a card etc.).

International City Diagram

Catherine : It is like interstice, or unvoluntary empty space in cities?

Gerald : These spaces are difficult for any other engagement than the one which is meant to be. There are empty spaces - more in the sense of “becoming” - the concept is there but the actualization not. E.g. space between developments – unfinished projects – concrete rubbles – or just “land”. There are potentials of these spaces but limited in time.

Catherine : Are you thinking of a space that is infinitely flexible in terms of future?

Gerald : There is always a potential of infinite flexibility, of course the more defined a space is, the less flexibility there is. With pre-definitions the potentials are narrowed down. What else can you do in the biggest indoor ski hall in Dubai? You can ski. What is the flexibility of the space, if the architecture (and the entire urban scape) asks for a certain engagement, for a certain thinking, but also embodies a very specific political layer of engagement? I am interested in this potential of flexibility of abstract space/ pre-defined space. Where are the porosities of abstract space? This goes back to “the Production of Space” by Henri Lefebvre - percieved, conceived and the lived space. But back to the central question : How can a porosity be detected? For example: think off dictatorships or countries with rigid regimes where sometimes small eruptions (other than meant to be engagements) can happen. Demonstrations can happen in an instant – an immediate form. Just recently if you think about the Tiananmen Square in China - or the demonstrations after the caricatures in Denmark - the uprising happens - this could be an example of porosity. If you relate a porosity to the system of architecture in Dubai, it becomes more obvious how little space there is for flexibility. And on the other hand, if a demonstration is already conceptualized and taking into account (e.g. anti banking / 1st of May gatherings) – a porosity is part of the concept and therefore defined and without consequences. I am interested in the potential of immediacy, which goes beyond fulfilling predefined criteria. A good example for that are border crossings – porosity has to be reinvented constantly in order to overcome abstract space. Hence, there is a potential of detecting porosity through immediacy. What are the traces of an immediate engagement with a predefined space?

Catherine : Can we imagine an architect creating a system of performed organisation, programme and form to find new ways of urban planning?

Gerald : I think the intention is there, architects try to incorporate different layers, but it doesn’t work like that in an instant city planning process. At the end of the process the result serves mainly a privileged neo-liberal setting, then it works well. But of course, when there is social divide - it doesn’t work. It always depend on what is taking into account as the reference. Consequently, it would help to consider more performative elements in planning processes.

The world, Dubai

Catherine : Do you consider Dubai a prophetic urban project in terms of planning from an aerial view, and is this strategy something like a Google map syndrome?

Gerald : It is a sampled google map in terms of the compilation or mash-up of global economical zone. It is like a mash-up of all the elements that serve profit at the end of the day. It is more a patchwork of google maps. So you have the financial district in London, N.Y or Frankfurt - therefore you have the mini-financial district in Dubai, you have the international art fairs and exhibitions – so therefore there is the art district - you put together all the museums in one place, you collect certain elements of various conditions and then pack them together and re-construct them in the most efficient way. You pack the zones - or the entire instant city - into a glamorous spectacle through marketing strategies and as a result you get the mirror of precise capitalism - and additional, the thin borderline between collapse and perfect function. Which of course doesn’t work in reality – the “perfect function” cannot be maintained without intentional and unintentional disruptions.

Catherine : When an architect predict a design with the priority of this aerial view façade to show at the world the power of this emblematic object, it’s kind of different approach to the determinate design rather than modernism, was a mix of other priorities ...

Gerald : Dubai was a mix only on the surface, because the bottom line was always determined to transfer an oil based income into a service industry based income. Very much in the best possible way under certain premises, which are in this case – neo-liberal politics mixed with autocracy - compiling all contemporary service industries together and spectacularsing them as much as possible. (e.g. resulting in labeled zones such as: Dubai Outsourcing Zone, Dubai Global Village, Dubai Silicon Oasis, Dubai International Capital etc.) – in this sense not even subtle but very obvious. There is nothing else than “pre-defined meant to be’s”. Conditions, which are not officially predefined do not exist in the spectacle (e.g. the problematic of the socio-political conditions of the asian workforce). Hence if a global financial crises occurs, of course the fragility of the obvious becomes visible. – On the one hand Dubai is a fame architecture based urban scape from the non aerial view. But on the other hand - no matter if google mapped or not - it represents the main aim, how to make a minature (ex- ) contemporary instant space (almost as imagined 50 years ago – as a space station on another planet – with all the infrastructure needed in order to survive/ maintain specific socio-political conditions – in this case the mix of autocracy and a neo liberal approach to economics). Dubai obviously marketing itself, as a kind of essence of global capitalism mixed with tourist desires. Everything is meant to be precise or non-existent. But despite the precise planning there is always a potential for porosity.


Catherine : Which illustrations you would like to choose to represent this conversation?

Gerald : Well I think now Dubai lost his official glamour, the surface. Many people who worked there have left and also left everything behind. I talk about the traces of immediacy, the traces of an instant city and the representation of the fragility of a pre-defined space. Now you go to Dubai airport where there are 3.000 cars left with the doors open and the key inside. People leave from one day to the other, and you have these kind of traces which show some of the consequences of the instability. There are also thousands of asian workers without work living under extreme conditions - stranded. I’m curious about two different kind of immediacies and their traces. One which follows predefined criteria of a space and one which does not follow a predefinition of engagement with that space. In a metaphorical sense, the first one refers to the lateral line organ of fish, which enables fish to navigate through their environment. It lets the fish know what is in the water around them – without touching. The second immediacy could be seen as the transversal organ of space - a metaphor for a social engagement with space, which does not follow precise criteria – leading to a porosity, an immediacy which does not follow predefined conditions. In short : my aim is to work with the un-intentional holes of abstract space.

Urban Think Tank Manifesto

Metro Cable, San Agustin, Caracas

Urban Think Tank’s book Informal City: Caracas case was the result of close observation of the heart of Caracas’barrios and concluded with tactical infrastructure projects. It is a manifesto on how architects could work in developing countries.

Brillembourg and Klumpner, studied at New York’s Columbia University, through the metro cable project demonstrated an innovative approach to urban planning. Connect directly to the Caracas public transportation this cable-car system will take people from the bottom to the top of the slums and compose of a multiuse station. The project provides the fonction of a school, a medical center and a an open space for different social activities.

Lina Bo Bardi Poetry

Courtesy of the Instituto Lina Bo e P. M. Bardi, São Paulo

Lina Bo Bardi was an important architect of her generation. The Museum of Art in Sao Paulo designed by Bo Bardi in 1968, is a really inspiring construction.
‘In 1957 I started the Museum of Sao Paulo project, looking for a simple architecture, able to communicate what used to be called monumentality, within the collective sense of Civil Dignity. Through the experience of the people I arrived to what could be called Poor Architecture, opting for direct solutions. The building spans seventy meters, with a five-meter cantiveler on either side. It is supported on four pillars tied with two reinforced concrete box beams at roof level...’

This audacious design proposes three parts, one large floating volume on concrete columns, a second half-buried volume and thirdly an enormous void used for multi-use public space. The public area is an open place like a belvedere to meet, to show exhibitions, festivals or circuses. Inside she created a manner of display with floating glass standing in concrete. At the moment the Henry Moore Institute Leeds offers an exhibition to explore the vision of Lina Bo Bardi, through the discovery of her sponteanous drawings that reflect the process of a unique, humanised conception.

Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992) graduated as an architect at the University of Rome. She worked with Gio POnti in Milan and was director of Domus during the second war world. In 1943 she lost her office in bombardements. In 1946, Lina arived in Rio de Janeiro by boat and settled there because she felt the country like a place where everything was possible with the intelligent simplicity of the people. She became a Brazilian citizen in 1951. All her life she was dedicated to reseach and creation through jewellery, industrial design, installations, stage designs and architectural projects.

Colm Lally Conversation

Colm Lally is working and living in London. He runs a project space, E:vent Gallery. His art practice is concerned with event, site and document. I spoke with him in his space in Bethnal Green.

'The Beautiful Children', installation part.

In conversation : Catherine Vieira with Colm Lally

Catherine : I am interested in your installation, 'The Beautiful Children' (2008), a porous structure where various performances took place during one month for The Wharf Road Project organised by V22 . Can you tell me a bit more about this project and about the way you developed the work?

Lally : 'The Beautiful Children' is an art installation and programme of events inspired by an image from the beginning of the industrial era, the famous Iguanodon Dinner of 1853. The project attempted to re-animate the dinner that took place inside a life-sized model of an iguanodon dinosaur. The iguanodon was one of a series of dinosaurs created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins for the Great Exhibition held in Crystal Palace, London 1854. The image of this dinner, which hosted 20 prominent scientists of the day, captured a celebration of scientific and technological progress in late Victorian period.

I seem to be continuously embedded in many conversations through my work with the gallery, where ideas are continuously manifesting, migrating and transforming, and I usually work with ideas that come up inside this atmosphere. The image of the Iguanodon Dinner came up in a conversation with Gerald Straub, connected to a programme we are working together in E:vent Gallery called Victorian Gardening. At the same time I was invited to participate in a project with V22 that presented ‘20 of the most innovative of London’s contemporary art spaces’. I decided to work with the image of the Iguanodon Dinner for the V22 project and also we thought it would be a good platform to launch the Victorian Gardening programme. This was the beginning point and the original motivation behind taking on the project, but of course working through the project I became consumed by a whole set of new motivations that were triggered by the image itself and just thinking about these protagonists of modernism dining inside the carcass of the extinct animal.

'The Beautiful Children', scene 4.

The first thing I did was construct the carcass. I decided to use strips of red plastic, more commonly found in meat coolers, to create the walls of the stomach. Each strip was screwed to the ceiling along a wooden outline frame that formed the space of the stomach. This porous structure allowed audiences to enter the stomach from any point. I then programmed a series of 6 constructions or scenes, something like a collage of events. At the time I was reading French philosopher Jacques Rancière’s writings on the image. Rancière, observing the power created by the proximity of contrasting logics to reveal one world behind another, relates this notion to the use of montage in the work of filmmaker Jean Luc Godard.


Catherine : What were your intentions for the project?

Lally : Generally I’m interested in the idea of the commons, for example parks, public space where people come together and interact. I became very interested in the iguanodon carcass as a site because it carries intrigue, fantasy.... it provokes strange, interesting ideas and contemplations. I wanted to rethink the space, to build it so i can get inside it and do something.


Catherine : Do you mean you create this installation to simulate a public space?

Lally : I liked also the idea of it is an internal organ, the inside and the outside; you could thing about in many ways. But yes I wanted to open the space to the public.

'The Beautiful Children', scene 3.

Catherine : How does the programming process work for you?

Lally : With this project all the scenes have a feeling of unease, heading towards apocalyptic foreboding. Each of the performances inside the Iguanodon deal with notions around contemporary unease. If you look of the Cyril le Petit performance, referencing Marcel Proust’s Madeleine... he embedded a Viagra pill in the madeleine, and again it’s the undercurrent of loss, of lost youth and sexual vitality. A lot of people felt the installation created a David Lynch atmosphere, with the strong colour of red and strange interior.

'The Beautiful Children', scene 1.

Catherine : How do you embrace the different roles of curator and creator of art in the same show?

Lally : With this project the first event was a dinner and I invited artist group Foreign Investment to host the dinner. What are the conditions under which collaborators operate? I’m not sure. Foreign Investment want to operate independently, so its a grey area where exactly the credits are. I set up the context, the site, the themes and I invite them to operate inside these parameters. Sometimes its difficult with the projects I initiate.... the points of ownership are not clearly established. A different approach would be to dictate what I want exactly and ask actors to perform roles... The artists I work with bring their own ideas to the table and, as I spoke a bit about before, it is the contrast in the logic between the different artists that creates the interest.

Catherine : Is it a collaborative project?

Lally : With all big projects there are many collaborators involved and different parts to the project. So yes it is collaborative, but not really an equal collaboration in the sense that I designed the architecture, I created the programme, I invited the artists and I developed the overall concept that binds the different scenes.
However the work that each artist does inside this context is obviously unique to her/him. I like that these works link to other thinking and projects that each artist is involved in. None of the projects I develop would be possible without the help and creativity of the people around me...
For example, Pol Mclernon did an enormous amount of work in the construction of the installation. Also the project was associated with a drawing exhibition, of the same name, that was co-curated by Joakim Borda and myself... these many different parts form a web of collaboration and exchange, which is really the idea of the commons.

Jonas Mekas Manifesto

Summer Manifesto, collage of sequences.

Jonas Mekas is a filmaker and writer, and was an important member of the American avant-garde cinema scene. When I made my first short film, the diary films of Mekas, such as Walden (1969), were an inspiration to me, inspiring poetic perceptions of the everyday. This saturday night Mekas shows Summer Manifesto with a form of fragmented sensations of seasonal pleasure. The soundtrack is the bird song.

'It’s October, so the summer is getting out of focus.'
'Ah, the computer age. Why did I decide to go backward to slides. Perhaps, I’m old-fashioned. I will never do that again.'
'I love the hot summer in New York. I love it when everyone leaves the city, and you’re left by yourself.'

Marina Abramovic Manifesto

Andrea Branzi Manifesto

Seven Suggestions for a New Athens Charta

Andrea Branzi and Francesco Draisci presented together the slideshow.
'We mean to describe a new city state – a city that considers as a value the liberalisation of the urban condition, a city where the relations go through the internet, not just streets and squares … It’s not the city of the future, but the future of the present; not an ideal city, but one in search of temporary balances.'
'Reversibility: avoid rigid and definitive solutions. Use technologies and materials that can foster new ways of use.'
'Cohabitation with bio-diversities: Realise (as in the Indian metropolis) the conditions for a cohabitation between man and the animal kingdom; the technologies and the sacred; alive and dead people. Metropolis less anthropocentric and more open to bio-diversities, according to a concept of hospitality going beyond the concept of specialization and separation typical of the European culture.'
Branzi then ad-libbed, "200,000 sacred cows in London, 20,000 monkeys in Paris, 10,000 elephants in Berlin."
Blur the difference between the indoors and the outdoors, "creating a porous system, rich in amniotic exchanges."

Peter Cook Manifesto

Expanding and Dissolving Architecture

'This is not a manifesto, but first thoughts about one.
Last month, another book came out about Archigram, by someone who does actually understand what we are about. I am calling this manifesto Serpentgram.'
'Architecture for all. I’m not a populist, I’m quite an elitist. But architecture should be taught in schools.'
'Things become more and more compartmentalized. I love the notion of the boffin talking to the tramp.'

Charles Jencks Manifesto

'Since the 1960s, and the neo-avant-garde, the manifesto has become indistinguishable from marketing.'
'A manifesto has to be self-critical, ironic – it has to criticize its own assumptions.'
'By buying out Fannie Mae, he caused the credit crunch'
(as it caused a lack of investor confidence).
'As if to prove how stupid he was, he let the Lehman bank go to the wall, thus doubling the problem.'
[An Iraqi man dancing in Nike shoes on a burnt-out American jeep]
'The fundamentalists take on aspects of the system they oppose.'

Claude Parent Manifesto

Paris noyée, Londres au fond de la Tamise, quelle architecture?

'When I was 27, I only drew squares. Impeccable. But in the middle of the square, I was alone …
you’re always shut in. So I decided to do slopes. This makes you free …
That is the fonction oblique. This happened in 1964.'
'2050: Only the top floor of the Eiffel tower is above water. 2500. Nothing is left. Fish swim through the Arc de Triomphe. They love it. It’s the same thing in London.'
'A structure, without doing architecture, made without thought, without streets or squares, rolled out like a carpet, on top of the old city which plants would be grown.'
Then there would be huge machines, which would make random incisions into the surface, revealing the structure below. People would take it in turns to be the machine operator.
This incision had to be oblique so that there would be communication between the bottom and the green surface.