Yoro Park: The Site Of Reversible Destiny (Japan) door Arakawa & Gins
Between 19 and 23 February architects Joke Post and Renske Maria van Dam organize the I/M/D BURST WEEK - a week in which students work in teams to come up with an interactive object, service or ritual that represents and maintains the presence and memory of a person(s). This year the week is based upon the theory ‘procedural architecture’ of Japanese artist/ architect Arakawa and American poet-philosopher/ architect Madeline Gins.
According to Arakawa + Gins, architecture is one of the greatest tools available to our species, both for figuring itself out and for constructing itself differently. To further their philosophical implication’s impact on human lives Arakawa + Gins developed a practice based on, so called ‘procedural architecture’. A functional tool, whether it be a hammer, a telephone, or a telescope, extends the senses, but a procedural tool examines and reorders the sensorium. There is a constant back and forth going on, constant change. The ‘design’ they speak of is a way to undo, loosening to widen and re-cast, the concept of person. Their practice was not solely limited to architecture, but shows a diversity of multimedia art, philosophy and poetry, focusing on the same concepts approached in various ways generating a work flow so intense and multi- faceted as rarely seen in the art- and architecture world.
Arakawa and Gins both have passed away, leaving behind a wealth of ideas, production, and possibility and the strong wish that their work will be continued and developed further, for human kind to achieve what they called reversible destiny. The I/M/D Burst Week will respond to this call for action with figuring out how to reverse “the downhill course of life”, to extend our lives in every scale of action, molecular as well as global.
I/M/D Burst Week will evolve around the question: How to continue and further develop Arakawa and Gins’ approach to the human sensorium? How to break our habits and inspire alternative forms of social-environmental inhabitation? And will be presented in a final exhibition on Friday 23 February.
Invitation: Final exhibition FRIDAY 23 FEBRUARY 14.00 – 17.00 @ I/M/D Department.
Joke Post is a Dutch architect. She has been working with Arakawa and Madeline Gins in New York City since 2001. She was the project manager of Bioscleave House and of the Escalator at Dover Street Market. Currently she is president of the Architectural Body Research Foundation, involved in rescuing and utilizing Bioscleave House and working as an artist-architect.
Renske Maria van Dam is also a Dutch Architect. She works as independent designer and currently works on her PhD research at KU Leuven, Belgium. Since 2013 she is part of the KABK teacher team hosting a diversity of courses.