légendes :

1. Sculpture House
16 mm transfered to video, 4:3, no sound, BE, 2007, 15'10" Videostill.

2.Vienne, Eglise de Fritz Wotruba, 2007 Photographie couleur, 38 x 55.

3.Nevers, de la série Shaping Stones, 2007-2009. digitale Print, archival inkjet print , 144 x 215 cm.

UNORTHODOX MODERNISMS
By Katerina Gregos

Over the last twenty years, Aglaia Konrad has systematically investigated the development of the global metropolis, the expansion of urban agglomerations and the rise of the mega-city in locations as diverse as Sao Paulo, Beijing, Chicago, Dakar, and Cairo. Her practice, which is based on extensive on-site research and an ever-expanding archive of visual material, primarily deploys photography, video, slide projection and large scale photographic installations of blown up photocopies or silkscreens, as well as the publication of artists books in the form of photographic visual essays.
Konrad is interested in probing the social, economic, historical and political parameters that inform and underlie architecture and urbanism, as much as she in interested in exploring the physical presence of architecture and building types, particularly those of modernist genealogy. At the same time she has also examined the infrastructure and sprawling urban networks that cities depend upon - from motorways and junctions, to airports, tunnels, and bridges - drawing our attention to the complex system of signs and codes embedded therein. Focusing on the physical fabric of the urban built environment and the hyper-city, her lens-based practice meticulously captures and transcribes its viral quality and alienating sense of the spectacular, while always maintaining an objective distance.

Hers is the analytical look of a cultural researcher, which reveals rather than depicts, through a targeted selection and presentation of visual information. At the same time, her gaze is also an artistic one, framing images in ways that highlight particular formal and aesthetic qualities, but without lapsing into aestheticism per se. Belonging neither to the domain of architectural photography nor to that of documentary photography her work is situated in an area in between, where the form, function and the discursive parameters of a metropolitan vocabulary all converge. In that sense her work partakes of and bridges various disciplines from visual art, photo-graphy, urbanism, architecture and urban sociology.
Underlying all her practice is a keen interest in the evolution of modernism, with its various facets and spin-offs. Konrad explores the territory that exists in between the high ideals of modernism as well as its corrupted, bastardised forms, seeking paradigms of both modernist utopia and dystopia. However, this interest in modernism and its offshoots all over the globe is neither romanticised nor idealized, but rather approached with a sober, objective impartiality. Konrad maintains, at all times, a critical distance from her subject matter, leaving conclusions entirely to the viewer.
Konrad's most recent project is both consistent with her earlier investigations as well as a new point of departure. Rather than focusing on the urban sprawl and groupings of standardized, modernist typologies she now turns her attention to outlying, single, iconic, highly idiosyncratic buildings. From an interest in repetition, multiplicities and a rhizomatic form of representation, she now focuses on singularities and the most individualistic - even eccentric - aspects of modernist architecture from the 60s and the 70s. In line with her earlier works, here too Konrad does not seek out famous landmarks but turns her attention to peripheral, marginalized and overlooked architectures.

Entitled "Concrete & Samples" (I, II, & III) the work consists of three silent 16mm colour films (and a forth one, still in the making) which each focus on a specific concrete building, two public, the other private. The first of these is the Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Vienna-Mauer built by the Austrian modern artist Fritz Wotruba (1907-1975) between 1974-76 (also known as the Wotruba Kirche); an imposing, unmistakable building which looks like an enlarged piece of abstract sculpture, a kind of three-dimensional synthetic cubist arra-ngement which consists of 152 asymmetrically arranged vertical and horizontal concrete blocks, with the narrow spaces in between used as windows and doors. The second, "Blockhaus", is the Church of Sainte Bernadette du Banlay in the town of Nevers (FR) built by Claude Parent (ƒ1923) and Paul Virilio (ƒ1932) between 1967-68, a formidably heavy bunker-shaped building made of beton brut with an imposing curvilinear interior. Finally, the third building is the cavernous, grotto-like òSculpture House", a private residence in Angleur (BE) designed by the Belgian architect Jacques Gillet (ƒ1931) between 1967-68 and constructed in sprayed concrete as a wild synthesis of architecture and nature, of structure, materials and form. Gillet worked together with the sculptor Fˆ©lix Roulin (ƒ1931) and the engineer René Greisch (1929-2000) to fashion a highly unusual organic, asymmetrical structure which resembles a mass of rocks and blends into the surrounding forest, indeed almost seems to have grown out of it as a kind of "living-sculpture".

The rough weathered concrete of ‘Sculpture House’ paradoxically blends in perfectly with the surrounding forest and foliage, appearing as an organic growth fully integrated into the landscape with little differentiation between inside outside. The ‘Wotruba Kirche’, by contrast, is in effect a constructivist building with protruding volumes and an eccentric sense of geometric austerity, which manifests itself in the almost freestyle synthesis of rectangular blocks. ‘Blockhaus’, finally, is an almost terrifying monolith, an apotheosis of muscular brutalism, an overwhelming oppressive, ‘closed’ space which emphatically resists the verticality of church architecture (and its tendency to reach to the sky) and shuns the outside world except for the pockets of light that filter through the few openings. What these buildings share in common is the idea of ‘architecture as sculpture’ and a very distinct use of concrete, the two main elements, which Konrad highlights in the films. This is modernist architecture of a highly atypical, expressive, even bizarre nature, radically experimental and completely at odds with the International Style, and its emphasis on symmetry, rationality, openness and orthogonal horizontal and vertical grids. Instead what we observe are weird shapes and arrangements, curvilinear vectors, cubist asymmetry, and enclosed, crypt-like spaces. The buildings propose a new spatial syntax and are no doubt experimental and rebellious against the modernist norm, the result of unrestrained fantasy and experimentation. At the same time they are also examples of a reaction against the general tendency of that time towards industrial standardization and mass construction. In effect, all three re-think architecture and the notion of modernity in a pronouncedly artistic sense.

The films unravel as slow, mesmerising structuralist analyses of forms and spaces, which advocate for the deceleration of perception. Konrad perfectly exploits the time-based nature of the medium to focus the gaze on the richly detailed surfaces and sculptural qualities of each building and its interior. She consciously decided to shoot in 16mm and for very good reason since film best captures all the texture, detail, depth and subtleties of light, colour and shadow that would otherwise not register quite in the same way on digital video. Konrad’s approach here echoes architectural theorist Sigfried Giedion’s belief that ‘Only film can make the new architecture intelligible’ (1930), made in response to viewing Architectures d’Aujourd’hui (directed by Pierre Chenal, 1930).

The slow tracking shots expose every nook and cranny heightening their inherent sense of tactility and physicality. The films beautifully capture, highlight and ‘distill’ the different concrete surfaces: from the smooth concrete blocks of the Wotruba church, to the unworked rough hewn surface of ‘Blockhaus’ (where one can still see the traces of the carpentry exposed), to the textured, rough, grainy surface of ‘Sculpture House’ – it is hard to imagine that a building material as banal as concrete can assume so many different ‘hues’. In these works architectural space and film space converge, inform and reflect upon one another. Konrad fully explores the potential of film as an instrumental medium in the observation, interpretation and experience of architecture and spatial phenomena. As in the films by Antonioni or Tarkovsky for example, in the absence of a traditional narrative, it is the space itself that assumes the role of the protagonist and becomes the film’s narrator. It does this by alluding to the experiential qualities of space, in addition to portraying their formal characteristics. The fact that the films are silent decidedly enhances the viewing experience, making it more concentrated, and devoid of superfluous interferences. Likewise, there is no visual ‘noise’ here, in contrast with Konrad’s earlier works. The experience is one of silence, contemplation, and privacy, an altogether esoteric affair. Nevertheless, despite the quiet and dream-like, pensive atmosphere of each film the buildings themselves pulsate with physical energy, and register as strange, live creatures.
Nevertheless, despite their progressive aesthetics and sense of experimentation, the buildings already appear as if they were metaphorically ‘inoperative’ relics from the past. One is reminded here of Frederic Jameson’s “Archaeologies of the Future” and his concern with the problematic status of utopias. These buildings, no matter how erratic, exemplify that utopian impulse and what Marx (critically) called its ‘wish-fulfillments’ and ‘imaginary satisfactions’. Though contested and now marginalized, they continue to symbolize what philosopher Ernst Bloch identified as that uncertain yearning and symbolic allusion toward a rudimentary idea of the future, as well as being emblematic of that emancipatory moment which projected visions of a better life. By extent, utopian architectures still exercise such fascination because they allow us to suspend our disbelief and open up the bounds of the imagination. Konrad’s films succeed in doing precisely that; they prompt us to imagine both architecture and the world differently.

Katerina Gregos

Mousse Magazine, Issue #24, june 2010

Katerina Gregos is a curator and writer based in Brussels, Belgium. Amongst other projects she is curator of the Danish Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale. Previously, she served as artistic director of Argos - Centre for Art & Media, Brussels, and director of the Deste Foundation, Centre for Contemporary Art, Athens, as well as curator of numerous international large-scale exhibitions.