# HETEROTOPIAS IN CINEMA /// Introduction

The space in which we live, which draws us out of ourselves, in which the erosion of our lives. our time and our history occurs, the space that claws and gnaws at us, is also, in itself, a heterogeneous space. In other words, we do not live in a kind of void, inside of which we could place individuals and things. We do not live inside a void that could be colored with diverse shades of light, we live inside a set of relations that delineates sites which are irreducible to one another and absolutely not superimposable on one another.

[...]

There are also, probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places - places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society - which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias.

Michel Foucault. Of other spaces (1967)

For the next two months coming (December + January), we decided to explore the notion of heterotopias in cinema. According to Foucault, the cinema (building) itself is an heterotopia in its ability of allowing several overlapping spaces to exist. A room with a two dimensions screens where a three dimensions world is able to exist. Heteropias in cinema (films) are therefore increasing the amount of overlapping worlds and thus question the status of reality of any of those worlds.
Foucault distinguish two main types of heterotopias. The first one is called crisis heterotopias ie. privileged or sacred or forbidden places, reserved for individuals who are, in relation to society and to the human environment in which they live, in a state of crisis: adolescents, menstruating women, pregnant women, the elderly, etc. The second one is called heterotopias of deviation: those in which individuals whose behavior is deviant in relation to the required mean or norm are placed.
We will probably focus more on this second type of heterotopia through cinema and try to observe in them their poetical and political aspects.

picture: Stalker from Andrei Tarkovky (1979)

# Digital Architecture: Passages Through Hinterlands by Ruairi Glynn & Sara Shafiei

I usually don't review books I did not read, but since this one gathers projects I more or less know, I am pretty sure that it is a very interesting one.
The name is Digital Architecture: Passages Through Hinterlands and it has been created by Ruairi Glynn (redactor of Interactive Architecture) & Sara Shafiei (remember the famous Theater for Magicians ?)who are both very close from the Bartlett. This book follows the eponymous exhibition which was developed this year in London. The coherency of this compendium comes from the territory of practice (London) and the generation (young). Graduate students' work comes from what I would call the three best narrative schools of architecture which are the Bartlett (with Christian Kerrigan's 200 years architecture project for example), the University of Westminster and the Royal College of Arts, thus justifying such a evocative title (Passages through Hinterland).
Other projects comes from talented people such as Usman Haque, Mette Thomsen, Philip Beesley, Tobias Klein, Marcos and Marjan etc. Foreword is unsurprisingly from Neil Spiller.

You can see a 40 pages preview on the book website

Kenny Tsui

David Greene & Samantha Hardingham

Michael Wihart

Nicolas Szczepaniak

# Dystopia : Architecture in the clouds.

Here is a serie of artworks of the French artist Christophe Dessaigne , his work is a mixture of pictures texture and photographic effect. He's playing with the scale of the original object to create a new dimension, each of his pictures is telling a story and creating a new fantastic world. In his dark visions you can notice that his favorite movies are Dark city (Alex Proyas) and Blade Runner (Ridley Scott), some of his works appears on books, CDs or magazines covers.

What follows is a selection of the more architectural ones.

More here & much more here
.

# Sensual landscape by Brynhildur Guðlaugs

Sensual landscape is Brynhildur Guðlaugs' thesis project for his master degree at IAAC (Barcelona). It dramatizes a bath complex in Iceland's countryside introducing the importance of synesthesia in architecture by a work on colors and thermal atmospheres.
The project is based on case studies including the Native American sweatlodge, the Japanese onsen, the Russian banya, the Roman baths or Philippe Rahm's interpretation of architecture.
You can access to the whole pdf here which I recommend in order to appreciate the globality of the work.

Sensual landscape by Brynhildur Guðlaugs
tutors: Belinda Tato & Jose Luis Valleja
IAAC thesis june 2009

via ecosistemurbano

# Installations of Anthony Gormley

Here is the pretty impressive installations of Anthony Gormley (I discover his work at the kunsthall in Rotterdam in January). Gormley's work is about human body in space, compare to his other sculptures more traditional in a way, those installations create an interesting relation between the human body volume at a big scale and the visitor/observer size and body. More over the quality of the fabrication of those art piece is really amazing. We have to notice that Gormley is one of the few artists using last technologies to push there art to another level of complexity and meaning (like the french artist Xavier Veilhan) for example his collaboration with ARUP for several projects (see this former post).

More here

Much more on Gormley's website : here

# Fake plastic villages

The New York Times just published an article about US army's fake training Afghan village built in Texas. This follows what you might already know thanks to photographers Olivier Chanarin and Adam Broomberg who published a very interesting book (foreword is by Eyal Weizman) in 2007 about Chicago, the fake Palestinian village built by Israeli authorities in the middle of the Negev. UK also have its own fake Afghan village (with plastic fruits in the market) and spent 14 millions pounds (23 millions dollars, 15 millions euros) to construct it.
All this money tackles obviously the irony of building fake villages in Texas, the Negev or Norflox when people in Palestine, Irak and Afghanistan need to recover from war and lack of money to reconstruct destroyed villages...

# Godardian landscapes

I recently watched two movies from Jean-Luc Godard that I did not know before, and I was really impressed by two sets which compose interesting landscapes which shove cinema's etiquette.
First one is from Pierrot le Fou (1965) and dramatizes a stand alone piece of highway in the middle of a field and from which a car fell without any indication for the spectator how it did go up on it...
Second one is from Tout va bien (All's well) (1972), in which Godard questions the mutation of 1968's social movement with the take of a factory by its workers. The administrative department of the factory is shown as a section on which the spectator can read a caption: One is right to sequester bosses. Unlimited Strike. Since then, some directors did follow this apparatus, I am thinking in particular of Chan-Wook Park in Old Boy, but I am pretty sure that Godard is the first one to establish it (if anybody has more information about that feel free to comment on it).
In addition of those two movies, I could not resist to also insert Godard's shoot of the Villa Malaparte in Le Mépris (Contempt) (1963), which is more classic but which, in its remoteness (on a cliff with the see around), succeeds to create for the narration, a setting extracted from reality.

# 610-3356 by Sarah Oppenheimer

Here is a Matta Clarkian project from the artist Sarah Oppenheimer who develops this vocabulary of piercing through the material whether it is architectonic material or void material. All her work seems to be able to fold itself at anytime and disappear which I think, makes the beauty of it.

# Intensive Fields conference at USC School of Architecture

Dear people of Los Angeles (for God's sake stop saying L.A. when you have one of the coolest name of city on earth !), this event is for you ! On December 12nd, USC school of architecture is organizing a conference called Intensive fields about the very popular topic of parametric urbanism with a bunch of very high quality speakers. I think that this quality is necessary when you deal with such crucial issues as urban design. To reach this scale of design is problematic and any proposal should certainly includes a part of self-contradiction in order to avoid the dictatorial hand of the architect on the city...
I just regret that Chris Lee was not invited to this event since he is tackling this kind of issues for a certain time now with his unit 6 in the AA...

Don't forget to register !

# David Harvey's class on Marx's Capital

davidharvey.org is Harvey's official website and provides the totality of his class (in video) dissecting Marx's Capital in City University of New York. David Harvey who was lecturing last Saturday for the last session of the Oppositional Architecture, claims that the current economic crisis has weakened capitalism enough for us to have the opportunity to interfere. He is calling for an "eco-communism" (as he was saying people freak out when he says he is a communist but much less when he add "eco" to it...) which tackles an interesting issue about whether or not the word "communism" should be still used as Alain Badiou, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt think or is this word already too much connoted by the Stalin and Mao experience (which would deserve to be called totalitarian collectivism rather than communism).
Anyway David Harvey's lectures and classes are more than ever worth listening and his website is providing information in a rare generosity which is really appreciable.

# Empty streets

A new serie of emptiness, after La Soufriere, Paris, Tokyo or London, this time the void is in the streets of Los Angeles, this serie of pictures by the photographer Matt Logues, let me think that I'm fascinated by this kind of pictures that is becoming a "genre". It's even more astonishing when you know the usual density of cars, traffic jam on highways or people in the streets of L.A.
This is an echo of this good article (by our friends of NDLR).

Empty London, 28 days later (Danny Boyle).


Vider Paris by Nicolas Moulin.


Rush hour in L.A.


Matt Logue 's website : here

# City of the (Re)Orientated by Ben and Sebastian

City of the (Re)Orientated is a very beautiful project created by Danish artists Ben and Sebastian (Ben Clement & Sebastian de la Cour) in 2007. I can feel the presence of two of my favorite authors here, Jorge-Luis Borges and Franz Kafka. Borges for the infinite material in which spring up several fantastic localities and Kafka for the endless wandering of a man who do not know how and why he woke up in this world...

Anyway, this is only my interpretation. The official text is very interesting and beautiful:

The 'map' has long been useless in a city whose streets are continually reshaped by their walkers, vendors, sponsors, hobby street artists and salvation-sellers. In this anthill of possibilities only the most elastic orientation software can direct the city's inhabitant through its myriad of shifting, tangled streets.
As more private dwellings of the city connect to this mobile space, more public parks, institution and cinemas protect themselves from mobile invasion.
Two interdependent territories grow back to back, simultaneously:
The first, a mobile, shifting space is allowed and continually reshaped by the new technologies. A space intent on becoming more stimulating, responsive and distracting.

In the shadows of the mobile territory, grow the immobile spaces. They become ever more out-of-reception and are intent on appealing to the focused eye.



photos by Niclas Jessen

thanks Martin (B)