Lecture date: 1976-07-12
At ARTNET
The Rally: Celebrating the Art and Wit of Architecture: an event held at Art Net during the heatwave of July 1976. During the few years of its effervescent existence under Peter Cook’s curatorship, Art Net was part art gallery, part architectural exhibition space, and part tribal gathering for various ‘scenes’. Alongside the publication of the magazine Net, the space on West Central Street hosted a series of notable exhibitions, talks, and conferences. Peter Cook described Art Net as ‘a kind of ad hoc institution where we hope that the people who are talking will knock up against one another’ – a hope repeatedly fulfilled during the two weeks of The Rally.
Bernard Tschumi explores the myth of Don Juan, suggesting numerous theoretical parallels between the seducers succession of masks and the series of disguises that constitute architectures design process. By analyzing Don Juans fear of fidelity, his fascination with geometry and order, his relationship to the stone statue of his lovers murdered father, Tschumi reconfigures Don Juan as a device to discuss an architecture beyond the realm of building, beyond meaning and usefulness. In this context the play of contrasts – formal/informal, order/chaos etc. – exemplified in the construction of gardens becomes equally applicable to the construction of cities.
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