Biennale d´Architecture d´Orléans 2019

Biennale d´Architecture d´Orléans 2019
Second edition 11.10.2019 - 19.01.2020

Life is an ode to solitude.
A desire for distance, the pleasure of being far away.
Not that this is a necessity, but through a strange and mysterious collision of thoughts, living is the visceral need for a solitary nostalgia of imbalance.
Solitude is an expectation, a protection from the world.

Being able to be alone, this is the trial of the century.

This Biennale is a call for an archipelago of solitudes.

The second edition of the Biennale d'Architecture d'Orléans is intended as “landscapes”: landscapes of solitudes throughout the world. The urgency is here. This is how we came to add six associate curators to our ranks, who we have asked to tell us the tales of solitude throughout the world, where architecture is still a “promise” for freedoms that may be impossible to maintain. The solitude of Arquitetura Nova, Biennale's guest of honor (Sérgio Ferro, Flávio Imperio and Rodrigo Lefèvre) confronted by the Brazilian dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s (Dreams seen up close) is the focal point from which the second edition of the Biennale emerges. The figure of Fernand Pouillon, in this first sensitive monograph that we are dedicating to him (My creations will speak for me), is another way of presenting the political commitment of an architect. Between these two tutelary figures, in the public space, the Rue Jeanne-d’Arc in Orléans is bedecked with the radical imaginaries of architects from the Arab world, who strive to smash any repressive identity constructs to smithereens (Al majhoola min al-ard). The polyptych of the Biennale is completed, on the one hand, by an uncompromising analysis of the Mexican territory following the dismantlement of state facilities (From solitude to desolation). On the other hand, architecture in its most contemporary practice emerges like a mutant animal in which the ideas of creative artists from all disciplines are mutually contaminated (The architectural beast). A new promise for the future?

The Biennale d'Architecture d'Orléans has identified itself since its creation as a Biennale of collections. Two aspects will set the tone of this orientation. Firstly, the invitation extended to the MAXXI collection in Rome in conversation with the project Waiting land, by Stefano de Martino and Karen Lohrmann. Then the monograph dedicated to one of the major figures of the Frac collection, Günter Günschel (Homo faber: a narrative) in order to capture the permanency of architecture as destruction/reconstruction of natural landscapes.

We were saying that this Biennale is like an archipelago. Like any archipelago, there is an Aegean Sea that supports these islands. Our “Aegean Sea” will be an alphabet unpacking the notion of solitude – both desired and feared – and understanding it, from the work of John Hejduk, to that of Absalon, Ahmed Mater, Driss Ouadahi and John Cage, and to the research of Bêka & Lemoine, or Lacaton & Vassal, who we have not asked to reveal their œuvre but rather the errant geography of their thought.

And all of the Biennale will hang on Julie Nioche’s Nos solitudes.

Abdelkader Damani & Luca Galofaro

*

Architects and artists

Rand Abdul Jabbar, Iraq
Absalon, Israel
AAU Anastas, Palestine
BairBalliet, USA
Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine, Italy / France
Daphné Bengoa, France-Switzerland
André Bloc, France
Santiago Borja, Mexico
John Cage, USA
Bertrand Cavalier, France
Nidhal Chamekh, Tunisia
Paloma Contreras Lomas, Mexico
Abraham Cruzvillegas, Mexico
Design Earth, USA
Hernan Diaz Alonso, USA-Argentina
f-architecture, USA
Miguel Fernández de Castro, Mexique
Bernard Gachet, Switzerland
Griffin Enright, USA
Günter Günschel, Germany
Zaha Hadid, Iraq-UK
Susan Hefuna, Germany-Egypt
John Hejduk, USA
Anne Huffschmid and Jan-Holger Hennies, Germany
Damjan Jovanovic, Serbia
Alberto Kalach, Mexico
Ferda Kolatan, USA
Lacaton & Vassal, France
Karen Lohrmann and Stefano de Martino, Germany / Italy
Elena Manferdini, Italy
Jumana Manna,USA
Fabian Marcaccio, Italy
Chris Marker, France
Ahmed Mater, Saudi Arabia
Lucy McRae, United Kingdom - Australia
MTL Collective, Palestine-India
Julie Nioche, France
Objectile, France
Driss Ouadahi, Algeria
P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S, USA
Florencia Pita and Co, USA
Ricardo Porro, Cuba
Fernand Pouillon, France
Casey Rehm, USA
Ruy Klein, USA
Beniamino Servino, Italy
Servo LA-Stockholm, USA-Sweden
Sigil Collective, Syria-USA
Takk, Spain
Pascale Marthine Tayou, Cameroon
Testa & Weiser, USA
Laure Tixier and Hervé Rousseau, France
Usina_ctah, Brazil
Tom Wiscombe, USA
Ezra Wube, Ethiopia
Liam Young, Australia
Ala Younis, Kuwait
Tania Ximena and Yóllotl Alvarado, Mexico