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ARCHITECTURE+PHILOSOPHY 2010 FEBRUARY The
Nauru Elegies: A Portrait in Sound and Hypsographic Architecture
The Nauru Elegies is a multi-media portrait through the approach of an architect and composer. The Republic of Nauru is a small island in the South Pacific Ocean. With a land surface of just 21km², it is the world's smallest independent state and at its core, represents a place at the most remote extreme of the planet. Its seemingly utopic geography and landscape stages a dystopic economy and society. Investigation is based on on-site research of the subject, the island-nation of Nauru. The portrait reclaims a new architecture within local hypsographic territory at a culmination of global currents and posits a deep structural connection between digital media, landscape, and new forms of compositional strategies based on the "de-territorialized" aesthetics of a world economy that mirrors the geopolitical tensions of the early 21st century. Polyphonic issues include matters of ecology and raw material (phosphate), geo-political history, virtual banking and economic corruption, global climate issues and information networks. Architectural structures and sound compositions are formed by scripts embedded in this landscape of erasure. The Nauru Elegies unveils a heterotopic, remote island at the core of modern life through visual and invisible flows and patterns. The poet Goethe
once wrote: “architecture is nothing but frozen music.”
ANNIE
K. KWON (b. 1977, Portland, USA, lives and works New York, USA)
is an architect and artist who was a head designer with Skidmore
Owings and Merrill in New York and EMBT in Barcelona. Her most recent
projects as the founder of Kwonix are the design and construction
of James Turrell’s studio in New York City and the scenography
design for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Her work has been
featured in A+U: Tall Buildings and Abstract of Columbia University.
She is a professor at Pratt Institute and Parsons School of Design
and curator of contemporary architecture + performance in New York
and Seoul.
The Nauru Elegies: A Portrait in Sound and Hypsographic Architecture A project of
EXPERIMENTA Utopia Now: International Biennial of Media
Art The
Trauma of Being-in-Common: Details forthcoming
[top] Architecture+Philosophy
2010
STATE OF DESIGN 2009 – 2009 PROGRAM – 2008 PROGRAM – 2007 PROGRAM – 2006 PROGRAM – 2005 PROGRAM |
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