Monadnock, "Marketsquare," Nieuw Bergen, 2015. Photo: Stijn Bollaert.

Job Floris, architect and co-founder of the Dutch architecture firm Monadnock, will present a talk about the firm's practice and their participation in Spaces without drama or surface is an illusion, but so is depth, on view at the Graham Foundation February 16–July 1, 2017.

Monadnock is a Rotterdam-based architecture practice led by Job Floris and Sandor Naus. Monadnock designs, researches, writes, and produces discourse in the fields of architecture, urbanism, interiors, and staging. Their work shifts between the scale of the city, the street, and the interior. Monadnock creates contemporary buildings that embed architecture in the cultural production of their generation as a whole. By examining key themes such as the contemporary and tradition, convention and banality, constructive logic, and illusionary representation, Monadnock aims for an architecture that combines beauty, efficiency, and the transfer of architectural knowledge. Landmark, Monadnock's viewing tower project developed for the municipality of Nieuw Bergen (NL), was shortlisted for the 2017 Mies van der Rohe Award.

For more information on the exhibition, Spaces without drama or surface is an illusion, but so is depth , click here.

Filip Dujardin, Untitled, from the Fictions Series.

On the occasion of our current exhibition, Spaces without drama, Jesús Vassallo discusses his recent research and publication, Seamless: Digital Collage and Dirty Realism in Contemporary Architecture (Park Books, 2016), exploring the realist drive underlying contemporary collaborations between artists and architects in Central Europe.

Jesús Vassallo is a Spanish architect and writer, and currently an assistant professor at Rice University in Houston, Texas. His work interrogates the problem of realism in architecture through the production of design and scholarship. He is the author of Seamless: Digital Collage and Dirty Realism in Contemporary Architecture and is currently finishing a second manuscript titled Epics in the Everyday. His articles have been published internationally in magazines such as AA Files, 2G, Log, Harvard Design Magazine, Future Anterior, Domus, Arquitectura Viva, and Arkitektur DK; Vassallo also serves as editor for Circo magazine.

Related Graham Foundation supported projects:

2016 Individual Research Grant to Jesús Vassallo for Seamless: Digital Collage and Dirty Realism in Contemporary Architecture

For more information on the exhibition, Spaces without drama or surface is an illusion, but so is depth , click here.

Sergei Tcherepnin premieres a new composition for various electronics played through an ensemble of cardboard and aluminum speakers. This work is an expansion of earlier works of his such as Giving Rein, in which he used 38 channels to articulate a spatial sonic architecture that was constantly in flux.

Sergei Tcherepnin (b.1981, Boston, Mass.) is an artist operating at the intersections of sound, sculpture, and theater. Attaching synthesizers, computers and amplifiers to small surface transducers—devices that convert electrical signals into vibrations—he orchestrates complex multi-channel compositions in which objects are transformed into speakers. Often invoking queer, hybridized characters such as the Listening Cactus, the Maize Mantis, or the figure of the Pied Piper, Tcherepnin’s scenarios cultivate play between things and bodies, compelling the audience to develop a “score” for handling these animated objects. These interactions suggest new possibilities for intimacy with sound, where “listening” involves a more expansive state of activity: listening by touching, listening by opening, listening by feeling, listening by harnessing, or listening by walking.

His recent performances and installations include the Museum der Moderne, Salzburg; Overduin & Co., Los Angeles; Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Roulette, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Pavilion of Georgia at the 55th Venice Biennale; Murray Guy, NY; the Kitchen, NY; Yvon Lambert, Paris; Karma International, Zurich; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY; and the 30th São Paulo Biennial, Brazil. He is a recipient of 2014 Villa Romana Fellowship in Florence, Italy.

Artist Talk: Friday, March 10, 6pm. Lampo Annex, Monadnock Building, 53 W. Jackson Blvd. #1656.
Sergei Tcherepnin discusses the influence of late artist Maryanne Amacher on his work. He will describe his recent project at the Stedelijk Museum as a part of Supreme Connections, a collective of artists, musicians and researchers devoted to interpreting and presenting the ideas of Amacher. Tcherepnin also will consider Amacher’s notion of “sound characters” and explain how her extensive research on sound and the body relates to his exhibitions Subharmonic Lick Thicket, Ear Tone Box and Games as well as his large-scale performance piece Maize Mantis. 

This performance is presented in partnership with Lampo. Founded in 1997, Lampo is a non-profit organization for experimental music and intermedia projects.

'Photographs of Trinidad and Tobago (1964)’ by Daphne Oram & ‘In the Background’ by Céline Condorelli & James Langdon in Bricks from the Kiln #2

Join the Graham Foundation Bookshop for the launch of Bricks from the Kiln #2, a publication by Andrew Lister and Matthew Stuart. Taking place as part of a Saturday series of Graham Foundation bookshop events, this launch will feature a reading from Bricks from the Kiln #2 and discussion between Lister and Chicago typographer Pouya Ahmadi. The launch will be followed by a reception in the bookshop with drinks and copies of Bricks from the Kiln #1 and #2 for sale.

Bricks from the Kiln borrows its title from the glossary notes of Ret Marut's Der Ziegelbrenner, which was the 'size, shape and colour of a brick,' and ran for 13 issues between 1917 and 1921. Like the first issue, Bricks from the Kiln #2 is still ‘tentative, incomplete and inconsistent’ and still ‘in flux and liable to crack.’

Bricks from the Kiln #2 presents its material ‘reordered, recontextualised and reclassified, freed from the archive and fragmented on these pages,’ and includes contributions from Ryan Gerald Nelson, James Bulley, Daphne Oram, Céline Condorelli, James Langdon, Scandinavian Institute for Computational Vandalism, Mark Simmonds, David Whelan, Ron Hunt and Rose Gridneff. Highlights from this issue include pieces on the sound-film work of Daphne Oram and Geoffrey Jones; monuments to Kazimir Malevich, Rosa Luxemburg and Walter Benjamin; the relocation of a defunct bookshop from Amsterdam to Epsom; a conversation on the politics of display and ‘Agatha Christie smoking Asger Jorn’s cigar.’

Bricks from the Kiln #2 is bound with ‘signature-wrap’ prints bookending each eight-page section. Each copy comes complete with an inserted index and afterword in a screen-printed PVC dust jacket.

Bricks from the Kiln is edited and designed by Andrew Lister and Matthew Stuart between Chicago and London.

Pouya Ahmadi is a Chicago-based typographer and educator. He is an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago and editorial board member of Neshan magazine.

Norwegian artist Lasse Marhaug return to Chicago with two new, eight-channel compositions commissioned by Lampo. Marhaug premieres "Saltfjorden Vapor"—constructed from a mix of location recordings from Saltstraumen (one of the strongest tidal currents in the world), acoustic objects, voice, ARP Odyssey synthesizer and optical sound from 16mm film projectors.

In "The First Eight," Marhaug combines his electronics with recorded acoustic material from musicians Stine Janvin Motland (voice), Martin Taxt (tuba), and the trio Sult (percussion, acoustic guitar and double bass). This performance is the U.S. premiere of the work, which was originally composed at the request of INA-GRM for the Présences and L’Audible festivals in Paris in the spring of 2016.

Lasse Marhaug (b.1974, Bodø, Norway) has been one of the primary forces and most prolific figures in the Norwegian noise scene since the early 1990s. He has contributed to more than 300 releases and toured extensively throughout Europe, North America and Asia. Collaborators include Merzbow, Sunn O))), Maja Ratkje, Okkyung Lee, Kommissar Hjuler und Frau, The Skull Defekts and John Wiese, and Chicagoans Kevin Drumm and Ken Vandermark. While Marhaug is perhaps most known for his work in noise, he also ventures into improvisation, jazz, rock and extreme metal. He has contributed music to theater, film and video as well. Since 2011 he has published his fanzine Personal Best, in which he interviews his favorite artists. He also works as a producer and promoter, and runs the record labels TWR Tapes, Pica Disk and Prisma Records. Marhaug lives in Bodø, a city above the Arctic Circle in Norway.

This performance is presented in partnership with Lampo. Founded in 1997, Lampo is a non-profit organization for experimental music and intermedia projects. Support provided to Lampo by mediaThe foundation inc.

Image courtesy of Thor Egil Leirtro.

The Graham would like to thank Perrier for supporting our public programs.

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