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Last update - 20:56 26/08/2008 The belly button of the form By Esther Zandberg Tags: architecture, Performalism  We tend to speak about architecture in aesthetic or technological terms and discuss building methods or architectural styles, but refrain from relating to the broad contexts in which architecture operates, says British critic Deyan Sudjic in his book "The Edifice Complex." This avoidance is strange, he adds, because of the intimate ties between architecture and power. The most important question is why buildings are constructed, and not how they are built. To architects, architecture sounds like a children's fable. That is far from reality. The truth is much more soiled. Architects tend to present their work as autonomous and apolitical, but politics are always bound up with it, whether they like it or not. Architecture is a propaganda tool used by those who have power to shape the world according to their image and desire. The current exhibition, "Performalism: Form and Performance in Digital Architecture," at the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv (until September 13) unfolds the apolitical children's fable. It's spread across three stories of the building in dozens of works from 14 leading international architects' offices, representing the cutting edge of global digital architecture. The setting is perfect for a fable; the pavilion's air-conditioned climate is controlled; the miniature models of buildings resemble directors' playthings; and interviews with fabled architects are shown on plasma screens. They look good, dress right, speak in cool, correct tones and so the atmosphere (without cares) is like an airport terminal or other contemporary structure. Advertisement The architecture in the exhibition looks as if it landed here from another planet, one that has everything it needs and is indulging itself obsessively with studying the belly-button of its own form and the way in which it was created. Performative architecture, to the best of my understanding, is the architecture of an event, of a performance, of effects; it is not responsible for setting up shelter for human beings. Therefore, while millions of people in the real world do not have a suitable roof over their heads, performative architecture - or at least as it is presented in this exhibition - puts on its agenda issues such as "performalism [portraying] the changing emphasis in the architectural discourse from functionalism to performance," as the curators, Dr. Eran Neuman and Yasha Grobman write in the catalog, plus such concepts as "one-dimensional cellular automats," "biological parameters" and "architecture which generated itself." Performalist architecture as portrayed in the exhibition does not harness the amazing possibilities latent in using advanced computer software for planning so as to establish a "roof over one's head," but rather is completely committed to the cause of establishing ostentatious edifices with numerous effects in which vast sums are invested to serve those who have the wealth, giant corporations and rulers who wish to "edify" their power, to rehabilitate their image and to "stuff their own image," as Sudjic points out in his book. Architecture is portrayed here as an end in itself and, as Neuman and Grobman say in the catalog, the various works investigate the different ways of creating a form as an open process that is aware of cognitive and behavioral aspects. In the interviews that are projected, the borders of decadence are crossed with endless verbiage about form and the human energies that are wasted on it. An investigation reveals nuances in the approach to form of various architects. For Peter Eisenman, for example, form is the "product of diagrammatic processes." For Karl Chu form "is based on mathematical processes," while Archi-Techtonics develops the image with a strategy that "spills over from pragmatic design to geometric design and mixes the two." The remarks and the exhibits do not make it any easier to understand what all this formative fuss is about. Rather, they conceal with their winning words and soft, high-tech jargon, as well as with the folding, curving, soft and slippery graphic forms of the performative projects, the actual forces at work in architecture and the "dirty truth," as Sudjic defines it. Beyond the discussion and the investigation there are still not only the economic, social and political contexts of architecture but also the planning conditions, the tremendous effort invested in realizing what is displayed (apparently self-created) and the human price so often demanded. There's no place in the discussion about form in moral and ideological contexts. Eisenman asks in the videotaped interview: "When I go to [Borromini's] church, what do I care who the pope was then and whether he was conservative or not? What do I care what the community thought and what people said?" Architecture described as performative flourishes mainly in exotic and not completely democratic countries like Kazakhstan or China. Perhaps that is not coincidental. Performative architecture arouses unprecedented public interest, unfortunately not for the right reasons. In terms of interest, at the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing the architectural icon, the Bird's Nest stadium, seems to have surpassed even the symbol of the five rings. The stadium (not included in the exhibition) portrays perhaps more than anything else the genre the use of propaganda. The involvement of Western architects in construction in China has given rise to opposition that has crossed borders, but as exposure to pictures of the stadium increases, the more moderate becomes the criticism of the planners, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. Criticism is sacrificed on the altar of imagery. Thus, one must salute Sudjic, because there is not one picture in his book. He told the media: "I wanted to escape from the common tendency among architects to entice the public with images." The media fuss over the architecture of performance and event gives the mistaken impression that we are talking about "a central aspect of contemporary architecture," as the director of the museum and its chief curator, Professor Mordechai Omer, writes. Maybe the museum was misled by the propaganda and the notion that performative architecture plays a central role. "It appears that performative architecture will always be only half a percent" of all building, notes the American architect Greg Lynn in a videotaped interview at the exhibition. He's a key figure in the field, and his assessment sounds reliable. Lynn adds that for him "half a percent is what decides what is important." Whether half a percent decides what is important for the Tel Aviv Museum and justifies a giant exhibition, that is another question. The Tel Aviv Museum is one of the world's few museums to have a separate department for architectural design. But its activities are hardly felt. The architectural exhibitions of the last decade can be counted perhaps on two fingers. This one on performalism could have had a worthy place were it part of a continuum of exhibitions dealing with the other 99.5 percent of architecture in Israel and abroad. Without such a continuum, this exhibition - no matter how much effort invested in it, how learned it is or how popular - smacks of provincial pretentiousness. In the corresponding department at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art, the season's flagship exhibition is "Home Delivery," which deals with prefab living quarters. Those in charge in New York perceive that where people live is an important matter. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Sarkozy in Syria Visit will put the onus on Damascus to cooperate further on Lebanon. Shalit talks frozen Hamas' senior leader in Gaza blames Israel for breakdown of negotiations.   1.   what pretentious rubbish 01:37  |  Jess 31/08/08   2.   thanks 10:36  |  Emily S 04/09/08

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