Technics
Friday, July 20, 19:00-21:00
Ana Alenso:
green and yellow
boom and bust
Ana Alenso builds an allegorical cosmos showcasing the economic, social and ecological risks and disequilibria implicit in natural-resource extractive industries, with a particular focus on those pertaining to hydrocarbons. During the cultivation phase of TIER.space, she will create a sculptural intervention that combines plants, water and industrial elements. Objects such as an oil barrel and glass water bottles—familiar shell-like traces of destructive global consumerist traffic—are brought in conversation with living plants. Light, heat, growth, moisture, will transform the sculpture over the course of the following months.
The opening of this project will be accompanied by an installation of works: La enfermedad holandesa tropical and The future of oil, both of which are related to the speculative and metaphorical contents found within certain political economy phenomena, most specifically those associated with boom-and-bust cycles, the Dutch disease and the resource curse. Such phenomena occur predominantly in natural-resource-rich nations where corruption and violence become commonplace, paving the way for authoritarian regimes to rise to power. An example of this paradox manifests itself within the artist’s native country, Venezuela, which has the world’s second largest oil reserve, and yet is submerged in one of the worst humanitarian and economic crises of recent history.
More info: www.anaalenso.com
Photos by Benjamin Busch
Tuesday, July 17, 19:00
Jacob Remin: *something is wrong on the internet* / *cloud flares*
broken harddrives and broken bodies. shifting bits and crunching metals. jacob remin takes us through the infrastructures of “cloud computing” and “harvesting the rare earth”.
the internet runs on computers and therefore it can be redesigned. but when the network is internalised and the source code disappears, where do we turn when things get creepy?
change your system: be the turing complete user. quitting mainstream internet as a possible act of self care and resistance. tune in, phase out, get weird.
Jacob Remin’s practice is a critical meditation over technology and the power structures it creates. in a world based on technology, JR questions the norm and the natural, while creating spaces for conversation. his works are manifested in the meeting between light, space, composition and interaction.
JR lives and works in copenhagen, denmark.
Video stills by Jacob Remin. Photo by Benjamin Busch.
Sunday, June 17, 13:00-15:00
Talk at 14:00, informal discussion to follow
Making Unsharp? An encounter with Studio Pararaum
Through an installation, talk and discussion, Studio Pararaum (Meng Li and Linda Zhang) speculate on 10 years of Making Unsharp. Their encounter at TIER.space focuses on the connection between two seemingly divergent technics: image making and casting. Revisiting the premodern technic of camera obscura, they explore the relevance of iterative image casting against today’s technologically mediated world and its potential in architectural perception.
Li and Zhang write, ‘We make architecture by Making Unsharp. To make unsharp is to question the distance between the viewer and what is perceived—without this distance, perception cannot exist. We experiment from within this distance to reveal the impossibility of appearance: of any precise beginning of end, in time or space. We think through making—with material and technology—to precisely make unsharp.’
Meng Li and Linda Zhang are doppelgängers. They both received their M.Arch I AP with distinction from Harvard University GSD as recipients of the James Templeton Kelley Thesis Prize and the AIA Henry Adams Medal and Certificate. Linda was a Harvard Dean’s Merit Scholar while Meng was a Frank Knox Fellow. They completed their B.Sc.Arch with honours McGill University SOA where Meng was recipient of the Clifford C.F. Wong and the Favretto Scholarships while Linda was a recipient of the Philip J Turner Prize and the McGill Alumnae 75th Anniversary Scholarship. Previously, they worked together for Studio Olafur Eliasson / Studio Other Spaces (Berlin). Prior to Pararaum, Meng worked for Diener & Diener (Basel), Hans Kollhoff (Berlin), and Valerio Olgiati (Flims) while Linda worked for Barkow Leibinger (Berlin), Christian Kerez (Zürich), and WOJR (Boston). Meng Li received the Lyceum Traveling Fellowship while Linda Zhang received the Harry der Boghosian Faculty Fellowship as well as a Fellowship at the ZK/U (Center for Art and Urbanistics). They have been published and exhibited internationally in Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States.
Meng Li, Assistentin bei Christ&Gantenbein DArch ETH, Zürich
Linda Zhang, Assistant Professor, Ryerson University RSID, Toronto
Photos by Benjamin Busch
Thursday, June 14, 19:00
Manuel Ángel Macía: On Pharmacoloniality
An instance of Manuel A. Macía‘s broader research programme on pharmacoloniality, this lecture-performance takes the form of a listening session on Latin American popular music. Turning to the aural spectrum, the session explores and elaborates Puerto Rican Acoustemologist Julio Ramos’ concept of pharmacoloniality. The concept denotes an inverse process of ‘colonisation’, whereby Latin American substances—sugar, tobacco, coffee, cocaine—intervene to stimulate European rationality and co-produce the rhythm of modern temporality.
The event obliquely addresses the propositions of TIER.space, tackling the psychopolitics of cultivation; healing and self-care through narcosis; and the coloniality of sense.