Advisor: Otavio Leonidio
Dissertation: Schaulager, between accessions and deviations: the entanglement of architecture with the deviant performance of Cildo Meireles
Defense date: 04/07/2018
Abstract
The present work starts from the distrust regarding the manichean criticism
presented by Hal Foster in the book The art-architecture Complex. His argument
is based on the opposition between the triad of phenomenological experience,
imagery virtuality and conceptual acting. As a result, there is a moralistic
reduction of these issues causing the condemnation of several contemporary
architectural practices and the legitimation of Richard Serra’s artistic process.
Following Foster’s perspective, architecture would be fated to the potentialization
of the current neoliberal logic, thus positioning the American artist as the only
possibility of resisting to it. In this dissertation, the performance of the Brazilian
artist Cildo Meireles is taken as transgressor to this fosterian logic. By
complexifying the relations “between mind-body-image” in his artistic approach,
Meireles restricts being easily categorized. Therefore, his artworks serve as an aid
to reveal that, despite adhering to a capitalist logic, part of contemporary
architecture may also present transgressive aspects. The Herzog & de Meuron’s
studio is chosen to be analyzed here, based on the assumption that its trajectory is
not limited to the framework established in the above mentioned book. Due to the
fact that each project belonging to the Swiss architects has its own particularities,
it seems difficult to speak of its totality without significant reductionism. This
leads the research to the study of one of their intriguing buildings: the Schaulager.
There is the impression that they operate following what is denominated here as
the “condition of between”, established by the entanglement of the deviant
performance of Cildo Meireles with contemporary digital architecture.