Jacques Rancière speaks of the partage du sensible, which establishes who has a part in politics. In the Platonic Republic, he says, the artisan works with its material in the atelier, and that tells him where to be and what to do with his time. It also decides where he is seen and what he sees, that is, the regime of visibility. Spaces like the Rothko Chapel, I think, subvert this. The questions that arise are – how and why? How do we ‘subvert’ the urban space? Why is there a demand for this subversion? Is it a matter of Truth, Justice, Memory, Survival?
During the conference Around the Rothko Chapel, which took place at Les Treilles earlier this month (July 15-20, 2019), I had a gripping conversation with Hala Wardé, the architect responsible for the Louvre in Abu Dhabi, in which we discussed the politics of space, the symbolic charge of materials, and her most recent artistic research with the photographer Nan Goldin for the Versailles exhibition Visible/Invisible.
Wardé was born in Lebanon, and then studied with Paul Virilio and Jean Nouvel. Virilio speaks of the persistence of the place in urbanism, this persistence is a resistance against the speed of hypermodernity. When working in a geopolitical context of war, changing borders and constant destruction and construction, new challenges arise for the architect. What is the role of images in inestable contexts? The polarity between Dubai and Lebanon as socio-historical contexts leads to different architectorial decisions, different ways to appear in the public space. For Wardé, Lebanon is still an imaginary space, although the artistic scene which is vindicate the testimony of the city is in constant growth, mainly through the Arab Image Foundation and the work of Akram Zaatari, as well as the Beirut Al-hadath Archive.
Recently Hala Warde has designed the architecture and scenography of the exhibition “Visible/Invisible”, which just opened last May at the Trianon in Versailles . This exhibition features contemporary artists such as Dove Allouche, Nan Goldin, Martin Parr, Eric Poitevin et Viviane Sassen who have created site specific works. The question is – how can a monumental palace like Versailles be intervened in order to stage these displays? What strategies can be used to build a mise en scène in this context? For the oeuvre Women's March (2019), Wardé collaborated with Nan Goldin and Soundwalk Collective in order to create a whole installation stemming from Olympe de Gouges' Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne.
The full entretien is not currently public, these are my reflections around the encounter, without disclosing any of the themes discussed. This post will be updated in case of any changes.
A