Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:05 Hello everyone. And welcome to field architecture, breeze blocks, where our editors shared their thoughts on works in progress, urgent matters, and current happenings in architecture and spatial politics. My name is Kristen who, and I'm currently an editor on field architectures, New York city team. Today we're delving into FAA stories on earth exhibition at the Venice architecture, be an alley with fellow architect, designer and organizer at BFA. I'm not select T and F editor, artists and writer best, um, said on their collaborative contribution, the great re animation. So Hey <inaudible> Hey. Hey. Hi Krista. It's great to see both of you here and thanks for coming on to talk to us about your exhibition. I was just wondering if you could maybe share a little bit about what the great reanimation is and like kind of, you know, lead us into the conversation.
Speaker 2 00:00:58 Yes, I can start maybe. Um, yes, please. I began with the origins of the natural history museum or the natural science museum and how this typology and space that we know today started as private collections that were mostly acquired through travels specifically through colonial projects, which is where the Explorer or the scientist travels to one of these colonies and brings back home exotic and rare specimens and builds a collection. And they were all called cabinets of curiosities. So I started looking into the word curiosity, and now it's implies this innocence intention, right? Or a motive to learn and acquire knowledge, but this seemingly innocent motive led to acts of collection extraction and exploitation that were anything, but in a sense, so though the natural history museums are equated with history of knowledge and scientific knowledge. Many of their collections were originally forms of entertainment and ways to uphold a high social status within society.
Speaker 2 00:02:01 So some of these collectibles were rebuffed somewhere fictional, somewhere, mythical, artificial, or non accurate somewhere reconstructions of different parts of creatures to create these fantastical creatures. So the fact that these collections consisted of both the fictional Andrea specimens is the evidence that their purpose was not to purely provide scientific knowledge, but to conjure shock and fascination and claim ownership of rare collections. So that's what I began looking through these collectibles that are mythical fictional or fabricated. And that's when I arrived at this also a Kemira is that mythical animals that are used in the video. And there are many pieces of literature such as fables that you as animals, birds, and even plants as the main characters of a story. But the narratives usually, um, refers back to human characters. Uh, usually they even refer back to human issues. Um, mostly they discuss relationships between the people and the king issues around power or stories around injustice. So issues that might not be able to be discussed otherwise in public without punitive consequences. So it was for them writing these stories with the animals as the central characters were ways to discuss injustice or imagine alternative futures. Hmm.
Speaker 1 00:03:26 That's an incredible, I don't know. Uh, Sam, do you want to add something?
Speaker 3 00:03:30 I could talk a bit about the short story that I wrote.
Speaker 1 00:03:34 I mean, uh, we can, yeah, we can delve into the, into the story. I mean, I just also want to comment, like, you know, as a kid, when you, when you also go to like the natural history is even, it's also made like all this like kid friendly, you know, and it's like this, I really like how the you're kind of going into a critical dive into like this idea of like curiosity or like the scientific knowledge. So I just want to commend you on that criticality, but yeah, we can hop right into the story of it.
Speaker 3 00:04:00 Yeah. So when we first took on the project, I sort of followed the lead. I followed a man as the, and the research and she did, she compiled a lot of great research into the cabinets of curiosities, as she mentioned. And we looked into a lot of the creatures that were exhibited, but the ones that were also assembled specifically for the, for the cabinets and for the collections. And by, by that, I mean, like the Camaro's that were combinations of different animals combined into one sort of hybrid creature. And so we were really inspired by that. And then I started thinking like, I wanted to sort of write a story that was kind of humorous. And I currently live in Berlin and there's been a lot of debate and activism and the recent, um, few years around the humbled forum, which is not the natural history museum.
Speaker 3 00:04:56 In fact, in the story, there are these two museums kind of, they're both brought into the, the fiction, but the natural history museum is the site of the story. Whereas the beginning of the narrative, like it starts on the Eve of the opening of the humbled forum and the Humboldt forum in Berlin is this newly reconstructed Berlin palace, which was, um, originally built in the while it started being built in the 15th century and then was demolished and the 20th century and rebuilt and in the last 10 years, so the Germans decided to rebuild this. It's a, it's a bedrock Imperial endeavor, and they decided to rebuild it in the exact same way and for it to house the logical museums and the museum of Asian art. And there's a lot of activism in the recent years by like decode army activists, kind of questioning the motives behind rebuilding, uh, such an edifice from, uh, from like a, an Imperial past.
Speaker 3 00:06:04 And I decided that I sort of wanted to loop that into the, um, the natural history museum. And we kind of decided on making the story about a group of animals from the natural history museum who, who have suddenly come back to life. Some of them were never in fact alive, but are just creations by the, by the taxidermist. And they've come back to the Camaro's. Yes, the Camaro's. And so they've come back to life and they've decided to have a list of demands and they're very serious about it. And it's still, the story is told from the standpoint of a character named Helga cop, who is a delegate from the green party, from the Berlin green party. And she's tasked with trying to like draft the informant list of demands that the animals are putting forth. And she has a very difficult time doing that.
Speaker 1 00:07:02 Um, yeah, I mean, I also, I was like reading that like helicopter, this seems like that one person that is always tasked with like, basically everything, when activists demand certain change, legitimate change, it's like, all right, let's just send this one person to coordinate everything or like create this committee. Um,
Speaker 3 00:07:21 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which for me, which for me sums up, uh, green party politics all over Europe. I mean, she has like a domesticating impulse. Like she thinks she's going to, she doesn't want to do it. And she, her, her politics are very narrow-minded in a way. So she's just, she finds the whole thing bizarre and she doesn't really want to do it. And then it really doesn't go well again for,
Speaker 1 00:07:47 Yeah. I mean, especially also like, as I think being just this one person as a delegate, you know, it's also, I think very indicative of a lot of the way, like people in power try to try to kill basically movements. Right. Cause it's like, oh, we have this one committee or we have this one person that's going to like handle everything. And I think that, you know, in watching the videos it's really like successful or kind of critique on that in thinking about the demands to like the specific demands of the animates, there's definitely a relation to like current events. And I was wondering if you could like maybe articulate some of those ideas and like how the animates demands might relate to ongoing demands from, uh, our by, uh, colonized and oppress communities.
Speaker 3 00:08:34 Uh, for sure, like in writing them, I was maybe like generating something from discourses that we hear and, uh, ongoing movements. But I also want, I didn't necessarily want to like make them into an allegory for current movements. They're their own thing. And they, um, in a way they're aware of their own shortcomings, they refuse in a way to be seen as some kind of United front they're like worthy is very different animals. We've been thrown into this because of the zoological natural history museum format. And we're not really trying to articulate something together, really. Like we just have these demands, aren't going to make them, and we want them now in a way they're not being rationed or anything. They're just like leaning into their originality in a way, or like kind of, they don't know how to use human money, but they want it anyway.
Speaker 3 00:09:27 And they're not really sure of what their end game is, but they're just suddenly thrust into this. Uh, they're they've been suddenly like brought back to life and they, they feel like they need to demand something. There's a part that interestingly enough, like more on like German party politics, like there's a part, I think, I think it didn't make it into the final cut of the piece, but this is like an interesting tidbit. Like one of the famous taxidermists in Germany is called Gerhard Schroeder. And that's also the name of a politician who was in the Christian democratic union, one of the main parties of the party of angina America and also the party, the social democratic party. And so there's in the narrative, there's this bit where all the Gerard shorters are talked about together and it it's almost, my friend said something really funny. It's almost like a zoological study of the Zohart shoulders from German history. Um, but, um, but yeah, like what becomes apparent is that, uh, had got, is, is not able to draw together, uh, a coherent list of demands from all of these creatures.
Speaker 1 00:10:38 I'm just thinking of, I know it's not like a direct correlation and not meant to be necessarily, but different. I mean, there's all different people and they all have different demands and they're all like, to a certain extent, very legitimate, but also like very local and specific. And you can't just treat it as like a model and just because of the volume of news and the way that social media works now, that it's just a lot of like incoming news and information about things that are happening around the world. And people are trying to draw connections. It's like, oh, well this is just like that, which is just like, you know, that, but in reality, it's like very specific and contextual, you know, like to that, to that point. And I dunno, like, I think I'm not, you're, you're talking about, um, your kind of specific role, um, in the kind of creation of this, of this video. And I don't know, maybe you can like speak a little bit more to that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:11:27 Yeah. Oh, well, what I try to do with the film is also combined the humor that Bassam was describing by using these collages of the Crimea, as in such a, let's say flats way and position them within these spaces surrounding the museums in a very like banal way as if it is the most normal thing for them to be there, but also at the same time, is it normal? Is it introduced the ear in this, through these glitches, through these transitions between each scenes and also allow for the erotic newness of what's Helgam must have been feeling also within the story of the film let's say, or the narrative that we was, we were trying to show. So both from the perspective, let's say of the animals, but also from the perspective of Helga,
Speaker 1 00:12:19 I feel like it's a really careful and like intentional framing. That's really key. Um, I think, you know, I guess like one other interesting thing that might be of note to our listeners is, you know, we're living in a global pandemic and, you know, we're editors like all over really. Um, how was the research and production process? Like how was the working process in developing this project? Like how did that go?
Speaker 2 00:12:45 We both worked like we both live in different cities, different countries. So even with the curators, each one of us lives in a different place. So obviously like almost everyone else, we worked online and we, uh, set up meetings where we discussed where, um, yeah, each of us, uh, what we've been doing and where we've arrived and how we could bring this to let's say the perspective of the writer or the process of the writing with the process of the designing, the film. And we quite had a smooth process because we immediately, like what I was looking into immediately clicked with what Bassam was interested in. And yeah, I think, I don't know, I can't speak for Boston, but it felt very smooth and, and it, yeah, yeah, for sure. Do you want to add more Boston?
Speaker 3 00:13:36 Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. It was really like, I feel like when I'm collaborating, I kind of just decide that whatever inputs I'm given, I'm going to work with that. And so even when we were doing the research on different animals, chromatic visions, that was also really interesting. And I, that, I think that's, that was kind of our basis for thinking of the video effects and for thinking of a lot of the false coloring and like the synthetic chromatic, like shifts in the video. And I also worked that into the narrative and that also allowed me to think of Helga's subjectivity. Like in the end she starts, I mean, spoiler, she starts hallucinating by the, um, and that sort of works with her, hearing the animals, talking about the differences in their vision. And that's also the same thing. That is why we decided to use those, uh, far out bizarre colors. So yeah, like I think the randomness of, or not the randomness, but just having like two people work have very different interests working on the same thing. And that leads to a lot of like spontaneity and like different, um, like there were, I did, I had, of course I didn't have everything planned when I started writing the story. But then like with that man, his research really helped to take.
Speaker 2 00:14:55 Yeah, that's a really good point by some, cause I completely forgot about the colors. I feel like I saw the video so many times. Uh that's yeah. I just, the false color that seemed like strange to me anymore at some point, I guess. Yeah. It felt normal. So I forgot to also include that. So thank you by some, for mentioning it. And I just want to say, yeah, I think, I think what I also noticed about our processes, that it wasn't very separate in terms of the writer, the writer doing the writing and the designer doing the designing, but it was very collaborative in terms of that. We discussed everything together. And especially when it comes to the design, I had a lot of blossoms inputs and it was like, I seek his input because I thought it was very important and we've made most of the decisions together about the design. And
Speaker 3 00:15:43 It was like, I think, yeah, we read it. Like, it was very helpful to work together in that. And like, I like what felt very comfortable writing it because we had thought about it together so much. Like I was just, it felt like I was just putting towards what we had decided on together and like what we had planned together. So yeah, I'm also, I'm really grateful for, for Anthony and like just how it all came together. It was really great.
Speaker 2 00:16:11 Likewise,
Speaker 1 00:16:12 That's awesome. That is so awesome to hear that like these kind of collaborations can be so smooth over digital connections is I feel like, you know, that's been, that's been, uh, in conversation a lot, like over the past year with the pandemic and everything. And of course, FAA also, when we expanded to include everybody here, it was also on the virtual right when the pandemic started as well. So, but that's, that's awesome to hear about your process and how it was so formative and also very smooth despite like, you know, coming from different backgrounds from different places around the world. Uh, yeah. So hopefully this encourages designers or writers or whoever artists to, to really seek out more partnerships and work together. All right. Well, I mean, do you have any like final comments and reflections that you maybe wanted to share, uh, with folks?
Speaker 2 00:17:05 I don't think so.
Speaker 3 00:17:07 I encourage everyone to watch the series. Like there's two other great videos also in the, um, in the series, curated by Kiarra and Daphne and yeah.
Speaker 1 00:17:21 Yeah. Make sure you check it out. Uh, the exhibition will be going on in, uh, September. Right. And yeah, I will see you all next time. Thank you so much. Thank
Speaker 2 00:17:32 You, Kristin.
Speaker 3 00:17:33 Thank you both. Thank you, Krista.
