© Günter Wett. Published on September 04, 2012.

Commissioner: Arno Ritter

The installation shifts the perception of buildings and concentrates on those who live in them. No buildings are to be seen, but rather figures, digital figures or digitally animated body surfaces. Taken as the starting point of the project was the accelerated technological development in the past decades and the associated scientific insights, especially in the “processing” and “forming” of the human body by medicine and in the natural sciences. As the “object” of research, the body and the so-called mind indeed entailed that scientific progress shaping our everyday lives which is, in reality, uncircumventable from a knowledge theory perspective, but leaves fundamental questions about the future of humanness open. The ex- hibition raises issues of the possible impacts of these developments on architectonic thinking and the production of space.

© Günter Wett. Published on September 04, 2012.

The projection shows an interplay of animated, digital figures and thus a social physics. If we continue writing the current technological and scientific developments in the context of the body as we have until now, the questions arises as to which role architecture will play under these preconditions. Will architecture and the handling of our bodies change to such an extent that both areas enter into symbiotic relationships and thus abandon or swap their traditional roles? Must one think of architecture in a more corpo- real manner, like a “living” organism, or will our bodies be increasingly treated architectonically and technically so that spatial production will acquire a different meaning? Since the body is increasingly becoming a phenomenon of territorial and technological thinking, the human an eerie being, familiar and yet so foreign.

© Günter Wett. Published on September 04, 2012.

Hands have no tears to flow*
*From Counterblast (1954) by Marshall McLuhan, based on the Dylan Thomas poem “The Hand That Signed the Paper.”
In the short story “Allal,” Paul Bowles describes how a young man is roused from sleep, feeling a light weight on his chest. It is a coiled-up, red- gold snake which, lying on his body, rises and falls to the rhythm of his breathing and whose eyes are looking at him as if he were the one looking at himself. Several breaths later it is actually the case then: The young man’s consciousness has glided into the snake; he rises and falls within it, still to the rhythm of his previous own breath, and looks back at his deserted body. Ten years earlier, around 1968, a photo can be dated that shows the half-kneeling Charles Eames in a close-up with his face hidden by a medium format camera, not as if he were taking pictures, but as if he were scanning, measuring or analyzing the young man, sleeping with open eyes, lying in front of him.

Biennale Team Das Team für den österreichischen Beitrag auf der Biennale 2012: Kulturministerin Claudia Schmied, Kommissär Arno Ritter, Architekt Wolfgang Tschapeller, Projekt-Team Rens Veltman und Martin Perktold sowie Simon Oberhammer und Christina Jauernik.

© Günter Wett. Published on September 04, 2012.

Both scenes, “Allal” and the kneeling architect, have a hypnotizing character. Both are magical, both suggest a moment of transition. And both can be used as evidence. The architect does not examine buildings anymore, but rather sleeping people. In “Allal,” identity and consciousness, like heat in a heat exchanger, glide from one subject onto another. Can the same apply to architecture? Can – or must – the rulebook of the architecture of buildings be “swapped” to bodies? Could these absorb the functions of buildings? And is the construction site then no longer the building, but the body itself? And how will our building component warehouse develop?

Oxygenating Unit for Extracorporeal Circulation Devices, Patent No. 2.702.035, 1955; Soft Shell Mushroom Shaped Heart, Patent No. 3.641.591, 1972; Artificial Arm and Hand Assembly, Patent No. 4.685.928, 1987; Head Sensor Positioning Network, Patent No. 5.291.888, 1994; Methods and Systems for Processing of Brain Signals, Patent No.2004/0097861 A1, 2004; Neural Inter- face System with Embedded ID, Patent No. 2005/ 0267597 A1, 2005; [Inkjet Printing of Life Tissue onto Living Organisms], Patent No. 2011/ 085225 A1, 2011; Devices, Systems, and Methods for Reshaping a Heart Valve Annulus, Patent No. 2011/0251684 A1, 2011; Novel Gene Dis- ruptions, Compositions and Methods Relating Thereto, Patent No. 2011/0252485 A1, 2011; Powered Ankle-Foot Device, Patent No. 2011/ 0257764 A1, 2011; Multiple Electrode Lead and a System for Deep Electrical Neurostimulation including Such a Lead, Patent No. 2011/0257764 A1, 2011; ... etc.