 Hi everybody, I Guess this first thing to say we're gonna go for about an hour, and it's definitely not a lecture I'm not sure what a lecture is anymore, right? I mean, I think that's one of the things that we can Think about or let's say it's one of the things that if we don't think about it Then we're idiots, and I think maybe the small group that we get it together now. We're trying not to be idiots in this moment and And So it's not a lecture. It's a it's more like a kind of intimate conversation almost sort of bedroom to bedroom or a room to room And and I wasn't sure what to talk about. I mean, of course, it's Precisely not business as usual right now For example in just in New York somebody's dying of the virus every two minutes So it's not business as usual, right? So so the idea that we would Just carry on or do lectures and so on or speak about architecture in the same way would seem almost like an insult People who are really Suffering I guess that's kind of obvious maybe less obvious on the other hand. It's not it is business as usual The people that are dying are exactly Correlating to people who struggle the most in our society So in a certain sense what we are experiencing is not a kind of aberration But a kind of accentuation or intensification of the world that we already live in so actually it could be that So many people Are interested to say like what will change and that we will all be different and nothing will be the Same of course these kinds of statements are usually the preludes to everything remaining Exactly the same The kind of thing we if we could tell ourselves that this is a crisis for example then and crisis is a medical term Right it comes from this way this moment crisis is the moment which you might live you might die, right? So often people who talk about crisis usually talk about crisis because they're very interested in restoring The state is quo But if you think of the crisis as not so much a crisis, but as an as a kind of intensification Of what's already going on then returning to business as usual Is the most difficult thing so I would suggest that we don't take the attitude of That this is not business as usual nor simply the attitude that it is business as you but so try to think in the middle And I think given that most of us or our architects and by the way, we Not really sure what that means Or let's say an architect or an interesting architect would be anyone Someone who's not certain what architecture is architecture would be for us Something uncertain may be for everybody else in society Architecture is precisely certain and not just certain but like a kind of image of certainty like the way we represent certainty But maybe an architect is the only person in society for whom architecture is uncertain or even represents a certain amount of uncertainty So for us architecture, let's say is a question everybody else. It's kind of answer actually they come to us Expecting us to give them architecture as an answer which we hate to do Or if we do it it's some kind of internal Conflict so I think in this moment just Small group of us together could think a little bit And it's a time to think right to challenge our assumptions about architecture Maybe even to challenge like if we had this image of ourselves is so questioning of architecture and so open To changing our understanding and certainly G-SAP is a kind of model of this kind of laboratory for changing attitudes If we're so proud of this thing, maybe we have to also be careful what it is that we Routinely business as usual don't Change and that means like thinking through the sort of theoretical technical social historical conceptual thinking it through every aspect Of our field and that's why I thought maybe we could talk about Automatoclark, so let me try to bring you some Images I'm hoping that you're seeing this Well, maybe I open the chat that way if you it's really a nightmare. You can't see it. You'll let me know So so why matter Clark will firstly firstly If you don't know the work of matter Clark and you're in architecture, then you are an idiot Just that's a very simple definition An idiot in architecture is somebody that doesn't know the work of matter Clark Maybe you join this session because you do know matter Clark or want to know matter Clark I can't yet decide if you're an idiot or not But let's say if if we're interested in reducing stupidity in architecture matter Clark would be an incredibly Important place to start. I mean this person Right doesn't seem to exactly represent the virtues of Of architectural restraint of comfort security protection all these things that we associate with architecture Of course matter Clark is always understood to be an artist everybody knows I suppose that he studied architecture Cornell and then became an artist And of course we think that art is interesting and architecture is boring and because he's interesting He must be an artist not an architect So the reason that we don't allow him to be an architect He could be let's say an architect trained at Cornell who took his architectural understanding And displaced art or disturbed art with architecture In other words could be what's radical about him is that he's an architect not an artist But we tend to have this kind of self-deprecating idea about our own field that if he's so hardcore interesting Then we must have lost him to the field of art and the field of art is even more questioning and even more destabilizing Than our own field. But again, look at this image. Of course, it's You know, this is 1972. This is the project called hair These are photographs by his then girlfriend Caroline Gooden who was a photographer After a one year of growing his hair He has it then kind of stretched out on photograph like that But I could suggest to you that only an architect would have their hair placed into this kind of grid In other words the the kind of Claim of architecture on order is still there. In fact, if you look at it from the back He's in some kind of prison of architecture. He's absolutely Inside geometry. So this image you saw before which is the wild man the wild artist the young crazy dyslexic alcoholic kind of transgressive figure Is in fact some somewhat imprisoned in a kind of system of calculation and so on. So all the complexity of the hair Is actually being kind of counted. It's a kind of census of his hair. This is not really A kind of reggae This is not kind of marijuana Matta Clark although, of course marijuana was one of his many things but it is it is almost like a kind of Architectural knowledge of the world Here, so I warn you not so easily even in the moment of the greatest wildness that this figure is so simply An artist and why do we tell that story here? Here he is at the age of 13 at the beach and behind him On his shoulder and you know things on your shoulder way tend to weigh very heavily This is father and father's tend to weigh extremely heavily, especially this one. Roberto Matta The famous surrealist artist, but then again I just did the same thing because Matta himself was an architect work with local ruzio and so on and then became more famous as a surrealist painter again, so we have a young architect Who will become an artist repeating a pattern of his father his father who? Never showed any respect to him and Matta Clark's entire life Was trying to impress his father and the only thing he really ever did that impressed his father was to die Very young and in the moment he died his father then said my son the great Artist so again this kind of torment between architecture and art Of course, this is the matter Clark You know somebody that's tormenting architecture like cutting it out here in paris 1975 Making this whole like a kind of a telescope so you could look up through a building from the street and you could look down To paris or here offers brought 1977 Uh in antwerp again a sort of geometrical dissection or a kind of disruption of architecture by architecture Like architecture inside architect not just the architect inside that architect Let's say Inside of itself producing this sort of beginning to develop you can sense here a room that has been violated by but not violated by some kind of Irregular transgressive animal but actually violated by geometry. So here actually the disturbance has been caused by By order by geometric Order and there's kind of metaclark Accidentally, although there is never such a thing as an accidental photograph of an architect or an artist sort of lounging in this Disruption and then eventually we get to his last work 1978 in chicago circus In which actually it's impossible to determine Which is the geometry of the building and which is the geometry of the cuts into the into the building? So why of course these are celebrated as amongst the most important works of 20th century art And if you're a student in art, you must study metaclark. It's not Optional interesting that right metaclark is optional in architecture, but not optional in art If for example, you were a major art museum, you must have metaclark in your collection He's a canonic figure. He's even the figure of a kind of artist artist in the same way that other Very small set of figures like Marcel Duchamp and others not by accident Marcel Duchamp his Kind of familial godfriar literally of course close friend of his father and all of that a childhood Mentor and there's a lot of Duchamp In metaclark. And so if I'm arguing to there's a lot of architecture metaclark Maybe we have to think there's also a lot of architecture in Duchamp, which of course there There is anyway looking at looking at these astonishing Images which are kind of images of vertigo, but what is what is vertiginous here? What is spinning out of control? It's not the subject It's not like a human placed within this geometry, but architecture itself as as it were lost its Bearings now I I Obsess about metaclark So this is of course when I say to you to not know about metaclark is to be an idiot Of course, I'm trying to prevent the possibility that I'm the idiot Obsessed with metaclark. I did a show in G set many many years ago which led up to this book which came out a couple of years ago on an architecture, of course the sort of central One of the central concepts of metaclark But more recently I did another exhibition in Shanghai at the power station called passing through architecture the 10 years of metaclark This show opened at the end of last year Then closed because of the virus and then kind of reopened when shanghai reopened and then it sort of finally closed So it was a kind of exhibition in the age of the Virus and of course I'm interested in the relationships between The work of metaclark. Let's say in the work of the Virus right the the way the virus Occupies the inside of your body takes over Control and reorganizes the geometry the genetic geometry and the cellular Geometry, but I don't mean it here like as a kind of a metaphor like oh Look at the virus. Perhaps there's something viral viral about metaclark Now I mean it a little bit the other way around That perhaps if we were to think a little bit more carefully about metaclark's work We might think about a virus in a different way so it's not about kind of art as a as a kind of Piece of evidence or representation of something that's let's say biological I'm interested in metaclarks biological thinking and in particular the main theory of this exhibition was to argue that metaclarks And it's kind of this book this book is which is huge by the way Don't look at it. You could never find it or buy it or even carry it. It's a monster And of course one of its admissions is to kill the previous book to criticize the previous book So this takes a kind of biological view Of the building cuts and that might seem at first counterintuitive like he's cutting through buildings very very precise He very much has an architect architect cutting with architecture into architecture, but I want to argue that his main mindset was fundamentally Biological anyway, here's metaclark. He's at Cornell By the way, he was not a terrible architecture student again We assume that if he's like really radical and hardcore and interesting that he must have been a bad or rebel Architecture student. No, he's not just a good architecture student. He won all the prizes in his graduating year. He was the favorite Student you see him there in the studio of Cornell He doesn't look so certain right? He looks at us over his shoulder. He looks directly at us. He hides his face a little bit behind his Shoulder we don't know by the way whether he's kind of wanting to get out or go back in He's like at the threshold to the studio You see in the distance of the studio is lucrabruzio's modular man kind of hanging there as a kind of representative Of architecture in its place Notice that he's sitting beside the tools of architecture the triangle the drawing board and so on but actually there's no drawing there And then you look on the wall beside him and there's a white wall Um, and there's no nothing hanging on it But there are these two holes and these holes may be our little enigmatic clues As to his future life of somebody cutting but the main point here is we don't know If he's just passing through architecture like he's going to school and then he's going to become an artist He was doing classes in sculpture at the same time as he was doing architecture Maybe he always wanted to be an artist or maybe he wants to go Deeper into into architecture. We know that as I showed you before In the famous metaclark. So this is the metaclark the architect an unknown Uh picture that I found in the archive and this is a very famous A picture of metaclark poised between the inside and the outside of the building Carving into the building a kind of a daredevil thrill seeker very physical very macho. So so I kind of quiet timid cautious not sure at the threshold of architecture and again kind of Macho image of somebody also at the threshold, but seemingly now Uh in in control of the threshold and of course, we would be we would be normally thinking in these kinds of terms like young delicate thoughtful not sure gives way to Older stronger more confident more decisive more famous unknown image known image this this sort of trajectory I think part of what I want to suggest to you is that this very very timid figure Let's say is is the is the real metaclark or to put it another way around. He was an extraordinarily delicate Creature some something like this. But first, I guess we have to ask ourselves I mean kind of a core question, which is like, what does it mean to pass through architecture? All right, like how do you pass through architecture? You can see in this image, of course is passing through because the the wind And the light passes through but also insects pass through right vibrations pass through bacteria passes through viruses pass through thoughts pass through people pass through pets pass through Pipes pass through wires pass through Electrical signals pass through radio passes through television passes through the variability for us to have this conversation Is premised on the idea that these signals could pass through the rooms that you're in Rendering those rooms somewhat irrelevant in the moment of this creation of another kind of room or another kind of architecture In which we have this meeting in other words passing through architecture is uh, what's happening? Let's say all the time it happens when you're in in a room and just by chance You can see through a door and through that door you can see through a window and you see a tree in the distance so there is this kind of perforation of architecture that is let's say Routine I would argue that that metaclark's mission was to pass through architecture. That means not to Change it or to change it only by going through it So as it were when you look at the work of metaclark You're looking at like a kind of turbulence Like the turbulence in the wind or a smell right a smell is a great example Of some somehow passing through by the way all of these things sort of smell vibrations insects pet Dirt by the way the dirt that comes in underneath your shoes into a house Uh are excessive wind all these things are kind of like the enemy of architecture You get taught in architecture school how to remove those things if you Suggest that you would like to have more insects inside your house You are likely to lose that commission. By the way keep an eye on leanable body And harness maya both of whom felt that what they call domestic insects were an absolutely vital Part of architecture. So there are of course counter Theories anyway to pass through to pass through like when here's what metaclark does immediately after Leaving architecture school. So we are in his loft In new york. He hangs a kind of cauldron from the ceiling you see it there and into this cauldron He places a kind of gelatinous mess and puts it into all sorts of foodstuffs and so on he basically makes bacteria So he's interested in breeding Bacteria you see he's sticking his finger into the apparently the smell was so intense speaking about smell that nobody could enter the room While he was in that room If you look at the wider room around him You can see that there are plants hanging on the walls that there are a kind of what looked like sort of skins lying on the floor These are skins. You see it may be more clearly here. These are skins coming out of this ball There are the gas burners that are bubbling this way. He's doing kind of chemical work So so literally metaclark begins his work By doing kind of biological work. This seems to be the exact opposite of cornel You know white architecture is super white whiter than modern architecture ever was super geometric This seems to be the opposite of geometry. These things dry into these kind of gooey smelly kind of Horrific it's kind of like it's almost like the revenge on cornel. It's like kind of anti-white architecture It's like shitting on on and cornel by the way, there Many reasons why you're shitting on on On that particular brand of modern architecture is an honorable Activity here it is happening quite Literally and you see the pans the sort of metal pans are lying on the floor And they are being in a certain certain way exhibited. So this is not just anti architecture It's also anti art. This is this is art that if you look at it You also breathe it in when you look at this art you breathe in the bacteria Which is from which it is being made. It's also art that evolves It keeps getting smaller and it keeps desiccating and moving into the air But it is also as it were on the floor kind and again not on the walls But on the floor framed like a kind of painting and look at how this this Is lined up with the floorboards In his studio and even you could say the fact that it has been photographed already indicates that this is anti art, of course as itself a form of art here it is a sort of shrinking in to a kind of blanket if you were to touch this fabric it would Disintegrate There are the rejects on the left you see kind of pans with all sorts of congealed messes and mixing with plants There's a lot of plant life. It's a lot of biological elements added in but also a lot of food You see on the right that he's very fascinated with when this kind of congealed substance Starts to look not so different from a kind of the congealed quality of the brick wall Of his studio. Here's one of the pieces on the floor of the studio It's a kind of mixture of plants And and this kind of fungus He said at the time that he was mainly interested in Infection what he called whole sail infection He imagined for example that there could be a huge gelatin mess like this That would form the whole of the Hudson River that the whole Hudson River would be this enormous Bacteriological Experiment but look at it on the floor. It seems like impossible to touch impossible to move But here is exactly the same piece now in the basement of the gallery of 112 green street in Soho Which of course is famously the site of kind of downtown productions This is the very first time he's occupying the space and you see he's reconstructed that work as best he can Again, it's on the floor. It doesn't look like art. It looks like something that should be cleaned away It looks like garbage. It looks like a rest. There's a kind of a confusion here So anti art is not just a visual thing or an aesthetic thing It's also an exhibition thing a way of occupying space zooming in more closely on it Again, it looks like kind of dead skin of some kind of Animals then he has his first Solo exhibition first time he's exhibited here in the bycut gallery And you see he's taken that vine that it was hanging on the wall of his studio He now hangs it between two walls of the gallery And and there are all of these various kind of biological specimens hanging there He provided for the visitors of the gallery a microscope so that you could look at the organisms growing The fungus and bacteria growing within this a kind of like laboratory Experiment the first of these works was sold the first time you ever sold a work It was bought by Holly Solomon And several people refused to have dinner in her house because they were afraid of getting infected by this work Which was hanging near the dining table Richard sarah the sculptor reached out and touched it and simply disappeared And she thought that was great was absolutely Wonderful He then starts to make to being an architect He designs the equipment to make the bruise in which he's going to make bacteria You see it on the left kind of gas burner and then he starts to fill these trays Now he's up in the ground floor for a group show again in the 112 green street And you can see his kind of cooking equipment is placed beside the exhibition includes the pans The biological material which you see kind of shrinking the the stove in which it's cooked Even the bucket with which it was then poured and the brush with which it's then stirred so it's again a very very Never underestimate Metaclarks the complexity of metaclarks exhibitions. This is a quote from him at that time I'm more interested in synthesizing life than in making art. So basically he was trying to make life like organic biological life. I take this quote Very serious As a basis of the work By the way that mix in 112 green street turned out to be to explode It literally was alive. It literally exploded here. It is just after the The explosion you see that one piece of the tray has moved to the right There's been a huge fire and they've tried to move it apart You see on the left. He then takes those pans Rearranges them in the street in the same pattern that they were in the gallery But then as you see on the right sort of sets fire to them and then photographs it So once again, even the destruction of the work becomes Part of the work and then you see after the work is finished. There is a dumpster Full of garbage. So a classic piece of architecture, right a perfect geometry a rectangle which is all of this garbage Then there are his his cooking Equipment and he's portraying a kind of synergy or or he he's refusing to make a distinction between the dumpster What's inside the dumpster was inside the dumpster architecture, right? All the all the actual building materials the wall the floors, but also cartons Equipment kitchen equipment and so on so architectures as it were in a dumpster and he starts to think that of course dumpsters Really architecture and and that the garbage in them is architecture and this becomes the basis of his future work The next time he exhibits Is this project? It has no name. It was in in a group show Over the course of 12 days, he walked the streets outside the church in which this was exhibited and picked up garbage And every day he placed garbage into a wooden frame and you can see it slowly building up There are 12 layers of garbage He then removed the the walls you see you see the sides falling down You end up with this kind of geometric figure that's perfectly geometrical. It's architectural It's a kind of a wall by the way you meet this wall when you walk in the front door You have no choice. You have to go around it. It's big. It's smelly. It's full of It's a kind of disorganization of material It's everything rejected from civilized life everything rejected from architecture. It's the kind of architectural rejects Which like in the return of the repressed have been pulled back Into the house and reformed to make a house a kind of a wall So he's actually making geometry out of its other. He's making architecture about what seems to be It's other again These are the drawings that then led to the idea that he could do two of these walls outside a church in downtown new york And you see that on the left it starts out with the idea that you could build a roof to the dumpster the roof would be kind of biological So these drawings are a kind of confusion of architecture and biology You see on the left the dumpster is a kind of wall making machine And on the right you have two walls a dining table and a hammock for sleeping on And the idea is that artists would make performances and they would cook and you would live and you would live in the street And and he called the project homesteading was about constructing a new idea of domesticity This is domesticity made out of the rejects of domesticity So if for example in the zoom meeting we have all as it were withdrawn to our domestic spaces like kind of animals returning to our Den's imagine that your den would be made out of what has been rejected from from architecture architecture literally made out of its other He then does many many drawings of which i'm just showing you a few in which he imagines that architecture can be made out of garbage More specifically that architecture would be biological. These are all composting systems So you feed the garbage in at the top and it slowly works its way down and you have a kind of loose metal frame Which is holding these things together He then in this next exhibition makes such a wall and gives it now the name garbage wall This is a more well known project underneath the Brooklyn bridge You see him there and you see the wall is now It's not simply a wall that the geometry is coming from itself But coming from this kind of metal grid with plaster on one side metal grid on the other He has this idea this this particular part of brooklyn bridge There are a lot of what we were yet to be called homeless But would be would be eventually called homeless people So this was his idea of a possible future for architecture Again, the image is the image of a grid This is not so different from the image of his hair that I showed you at the beginning Like this is an image of a kind of perfect grid Which is containing not just order, but as it were a sort of disorder It's also you could say a kind of vitrine a kind of artistic display of the other of the economy of the Of waste turned into into sort of utilization Just to give you a better sense you see him making the wall What they did here was to dig a hole And assemble the wall beside the hole lift the wall up Drop it down and fill it in so you get the image as you see on the right So here he is like now sort of smoothing the plaster on the outside of the wall But also he returns to the site to photograph the wall fallen down flat I suspect he's the one that pushed it flat Because just as this wall is made out of recycled garbage Even the wall that has been recycled must itself be recycled in a kind of Continuous process So this image This kind of portrait of metaclark with a kind of metal grid Picking up garbage is absolutely crucial to understanding the way that he thinks Architecture he's not thinking of garbage as simply the other but as the very possibility of the production Of architecture. These are just to show you some typical photographs of him. He's always interested in that moment in which Organization architectural organization has a kind of intimate relationship with what seems to be its other This can mean kind of literal garbage But it also mean for example the recycling of buildings he fascinated by this building which is being lifted up to be moved Somewhere else for him a city is exactly the same as that little wall he made It's constantly turning over in a kind of biological life cities are like Organisms so just as he's interested in on the image on the left on a building deliberately lifted up to be moved away He's fascinated by a building literally falling down In his own neighborhood as you see On the right Then when he goes back into green street He produces this work and you see it's a kind of diagonal shelter underneath an old lift shaft One half is filled with bottles. The other half is filled with compost and he's making mushrooms and growing plants So again a kind of literal confusion Of organic and technological and from those bottles he makes these glass bricks So once again, it's about recycling thrown away the bottles by the way all came from brooklyn So he would gather the bottles from brooklyn bring them to soho and eventually he would start melting them into bricks So again here you get geometric form As it were constructed out of a kind of confusion of geometry or what appears to be the opposite of geometry And again, there is this sort of uncanny sense of the of a kind of otherness But i'm trying to suggest to you this is not for him otherness. This is the deep heart Let's say of architecture. He's making architecture out of Recycled automobiles literally again as kind of housing. He's also covering the housing with plants There is a relentless confusion of architecture and plants all of his drawings involve at that time 1971 involve what looked like kind of architectural structures. Even you could say architectonic structures In a kind of loving intimate and confused relationship with plants where they'd be floating on the river like this And he starts to imagine hanging from a tree. These are some of his first drawings for tree dance And again, you can see that he's trying to make a kind of cocoon Where the space for the human would be something like the space for an animal Or at least the space would be look like a kind of extension of the tree rather than something Added to the tree. So here it's kind of imagined and you see it on the right He's living in that space with a few friends For a day dreaming of being in a tree You can be sure that when metaclark Dreams he dreams of trees. Here he is not exactly the heroic artist, right? This is somebody he's sort of hanging in the cocoon of his own art. This is a much more delicate Kind of woven image. This is the artist kind of let's say woven into a place as an animal and a tree animal This was his kind of dream when he draws that project You see the drawing on the right But the way he draws the tree is to make it seem let's say a little bit more geometric and the way he draws his Additions to the tree are a little bit organic. So the drawing is a very very beautiful confusion of architecture and And biology And I want to insist on that I show you a few drawings just just so you don't think this is just sort of casual Look at the drawing on the left. It's a confusion of architecture automobiles and plants On the right you at first you might say it's kind of like a zoo where there are some trees But the trees are half inside the zoo and half outside and part of the zoo is made by trees So you could also say that the architecture is inside the trees or the trees inside the architecture I'm not really interpreting the drawing for you. I'm just describing The image. Look at them. They are very very calculated images of a kind of refusal to allow the organic or the technological gain Some kind of advantage and trying to suggest not just a symbiotic relationship between them, but a kind of confusion Between the two as you see on the left and on the right and by the way, he has measurements for these The idea of these projects. These should be six stories high. He's he is drawing buildings right 1971 by the way, if you do that now, you get all sorts of bonus points for being ecological and sensitive You don't get any bonus points for being transgressive. This is not understood as trans transgressive But transgressive It was environmental. It was ecological It was I'll show you now some drawings. There are two sets of matter clerk drawings Which are never shown. He never showed them and nobody wanted to see them The first is a set of incredibly delicate drawings of plants Nobody wants to see them because nobody wants matter clerk to be a delicate more feminine more uncertain more You could say beautiful person We want this macho cutter. We want the violence quite literally the violence We want the relationship with architecture not to be a loving relationship But let's say a conflictual one So so artists don't want to see these drawings and especially architects don't want to see this So these are these are like forbidden drawings for architecture and he was doing them all the time by the way through a succession of close Friends and they all said it was very difficult to talk to him because he would always be doing these drawings As if they dreaming at first they just look like you know plants There's some weirdness to them But the more you look the weirder they are you notice that actually the trunk gets thicker as it goes up Rather than smaller and again There's a kind of not just a hint of geometry but geometry is sort of embedded there you get a kind of sex between trees And by the way if you enter trees Without sex between trees it's all over Right But the trees are also somehow forming architecture architecture becomes you know And it makes doesn't make any sense to say this is a grid in which trees are growing or the trees are is it We're growing a grid The drawing is drawn in such a way to resist that same with this drawing There are maybe some some right angles that we would claim for architecture and some Non-right angles that we would see as organic, but can you be so certain of that distinction? Yeah, you could hang geometry between trees for sure But what are you going to do now? What are you going to do when the tree is more geometrical than you like here the branches go out form and then there's a ring form Right I mean we were talking the other day with some students about a tree is not a tree city Is not a tree the interesting thing is that a tree is not a tree either look at this All right, and you see this kind of vortex of energy kind of like a big sort of Dynamo and this sort of intersection of pure force and the word energy is coming up again and again and again In his thinking he's very very interested in energy Whatever passing through architecture means it's something about energy and the flows of energy The fact that I can take some garbage make a wall and that that wall will return to the city in a kind of endless Cycle which includes skyscrapers as well as small cabins or homeless shelters This is all a kind of a conversation about energy And it is a kind of deliberately and viral sense of energy and these are the words that he's using an infectious energy Here again a kind of now now if I hadn't shown you the previous images you might not have even imagined a tree You might have just thought that this is a more kind of a geometric condition a kind of a cross But when you look inside the cross the cross is precisely not made up out of crosses Like so you're getting again geometry out of what seemed to be its opposite There's a again a kind of confusion of which day which way does a tree grow and soon you get a kind of urbanism By the way the drawings i'm showing you i'm showing you chronologically these drawings are very much kind of systematic Explorations And that even a kind of vortex of energy. It's about a kind of psychedelic kind of burst of energy These drawings are undated unnamed I mean with some detective work. I have I can give you dates and so on but it's important to know they are kind of like very Very private investigations each one of which could be treated as a work of art and by the way these days they are treated by like Works of art and in the end it's just energy about energy flows of energy and flows of energy that very Easily form architecture Right as architects very easy for us to see that there is architecture going on Okay, so i'm trying to make you the point that in his private life Let's say in his drawings if we can think of this as Private but this whole question. What's public? What's private? Maybe that's going to be one of the victims of this argument He's all about this kind of confusion of architecture and trees. So again, I want to quickly show you that the building cuts That see again seem like geometry on geometry are really biology on biology So here's the first cut. It's a hole made in the floor Of the gallery of 112 green street and in that hole he plans a cherry street cherry tree You see on the right and in the dirt on the right. He's going Grass and mushrooms. So again, it's a kind of a biological experiment. It's also technological what nobody ever seems to notice about this drawing There's actually a blueprint Image of the tree on the left on the plywood in reverse Right a kind of reverse image literally like a blueprint. So there's a kind of image of a tree next to a tree So it's also a confusion of of let's say technologies That project he then seals it up. So he re establishes the hole You still see the hole because there's a lead lining You see the geometry and he buries in the in this hole. It's a kind of two a kind of grave for the cherry pits So the organic life that was In that tree by the way, this is still there. Just just you know, we're just a few about 100 meters away from this It's still there buried somewhere one day. There'll be some sort of art archaeology that will dig it up And what metaclack says is that even though you don't have the hole anymore The hole is in your mind because of this mark on the floor He's very very interested that when you think you're inside a space You actually sense the spaces you cannot see the sort of hidden space His whole life he will look for those hidden space here now. We're in 1977 In a gallery he goes to the basement digs a square hole and every day just keeps digging lower and lower And you can see him from the gallery above because he cuts the same hole hole in the floor of the gallery In other words, you walk into a gallery. It's a white cube There's nothing there except for a hole you look down through the hole You see another hole and in that hole you see the artist almost as it were burying himself. He's always interested So what do you get what's on exhibit in the gallery is what's inside the ground Holding up the floor of the basement that holds up the gallery the sort of secret structure Let's say of the gallery also at the same time He's in the underground of paris underneath all the famous monuments of paris He finds the shit and the sewers probably you can see from this image that the shape of the shit Is very much the same as the shit that he was making to attack cornell. So he's saying the beauty of paris Is is you know like based on this Sort of smelly flow Now to the cuts right the first cuts that could be recognized as cuts. This is the so-called sauna cut. He takes a horizontal Cut through his girlfriend's sauna Probably not a good diplomatic move Not a relationship that survived this cut But notice how he cuts it he cuts through the electricity in the wires So that you're not only sense that there's a hole but you sense Let's say the movement of the hole and you don't know whether this is going out or going in These become objects sitting on the floor of his loft like this and they move with him These objects become like forensic slices Through the building through the life of the building at the end of 1971 He does an extremely complex cut in chile involved mirrors again It's all about revealing the secret life of the building because the same thing in Boston With a show called pipes in which he brings the hidden pipes into the gallery itself Through cuts and then he's starting now starting in new york and brooklyn He makes here for example a kind of horizontal window by cutting through a corner and a door and through this new window I now see a room that I couldn't see before and I see through it To a window on the other side So for the first time I realized that the window on the other side is also a cut In other words the way he cuts into architecture is to show you that architecture is made of cuts He's doing it again and again. So here in the floor. These are very famous works. I just show you you probably know them I show you very fast Looking from below Of course, you get to see all sorts of forensic information about how this building is constructed what the layers are and so on But more importantly the room in which you are standing and the room above are one and the same room And then you're seeing through the door in the room above So you are able to as it were pass through so all always what he's trying to do Is to pass through architecture and to let your mind pass through again just to show the cut All right, give you another example. This is threshold. Obviously he makes the cut right at a threshold So now it's very very complicated three Four rooms are placed into an intimate relationship They didn't have before and we can see out through this window to the street and looking down right and through like the dog and looking up It's incredibly complex work, but you can see from this one It's not just that hole on the floor in this unpublished photograph You see he's a cut through that he's removed the floor from the floor below Uh, this is his friend that sculptor Susie Harris who's down below. He's actually making a kind of a pyramid a small hole at the top and a large hole At the bottom here's Susie Harris like who was a real thrill seeker lying across she was much more courageous Than metaclug. This is for sure. If you don't know the work of Suzanne Harris, I totally recommend that you see it When he goes to Do this our project in in in italy in januar The famous Project it's again the same thing. He cuts a small square in the top removes the square But then cuts a series of radial cuts Through the side and through the bottom just to show you if you don't think this is an architect word These are the drawings of that project Unbelievably clearly architectural so when for example he cuts in his most famous word back in New jersey 1974 splitting when he cuts through the building This is very much a cut made with the same Kind of interest in in in the kind of a biological again I'm showing you now another set of drawings. These are the other drawings that are never shown of metaclug because Flower tree lover tree hugger nobody wants that but also nobody wants him to be an architect This is a this is a great threat to architects because if he's really interesting then that means most architects are not And also he's a great threat to artists because if an architect can be that interesting What have they got right so this so people don't like to see these drawings But in all of these drawings, by the way, these are not drawings for a cut These are in his mind already cuts when he has made these drawings He feels like the project is already done and he moves on and makes another one Many of these are considerably more radical than the cuts that he would do Of course, they are the kinds of things that he would like to do. What about sliding a house sideways? Right and so on. I mean and again, no doubt. No doubt The work of an architect a kind of confusion of what is architecture. What's holding what up? What is it? What is the floor? What is a wall? What can flip what concept? Why not several houses? Why not start with a vertical slot on the left and end up with a circular one on the right? Look at this amazing set of drawings for for possible Kind of an installation of art Place for showing and working on art In which the in which there's a kind of a spherical cut and the spherical as you see on the bottom If the sphere is actually cutting through the sidewalk as it radiates out So this is not so much a house that has been Kind of violated by a sphere It's more like a sphere with a house attached to it And you think I'm exaggerating look at one of the look at the drawing of one of the most famous works Office Baroque and Antwerp. You see what his idea is to cut a sphere out of the corner So he keeps everything off the sphere and removes everything you see in dark So there will be actually a sphere that's made of the house itself And then there'll be a gap between the sphere and the rest of the house You see it here. Maybe more more clearly. He was super super fascinated with the idea of making a sphere That in which architecture would hold so again, I'll show you another of these kind of secret drawings You get the feeling right just constantly thinking how to cut a sphere into a corner Into such a way that architecture would pass through itself Right again and again and again and again You see and and look at how at some point the sphere I just want to try to tell you this is not a house with a sphere in it But a sphere that's let's let's say holding a house together the sphere at a certain point decides that it can leave Right, it can move and maybe in our head. We always think of spheres like that That's why there are such science fiction creatures, right? The sphere is thought to be its own world or it is the world it is an image of the world So it looks like it could live inside architecture be as it were housed in architecture But again, I invite you to consider these drawings in the reverse. This is a house like built on a sphere When he does his final project 1978 In Chicago, you see it's the same idea the original drawing the same idea is to have a sphere Cut out of the top corner But also to have a kind of vertical sphere cut down on the left and a diagonal between them And this is the work that results probably in terms of the argument that i'm giving you today. This is the most Unbelievable successful brilliant work of Matta Clark It's just astounding there is really it's not just confusing about what's the original and what's the cut These are as perfectly poised between what was there and what is added as anything that i've shown you yet Again, just producing this impossibility. Maybe there's a figure there In fact, it's Matta Clark himself But we don't really know where he stands in this image or if we are looking at the image The correct way up again the same So this the these projects of course have a complexity and a density With leaves which leaves anything that you've seen of the so-called new york 5 from cornell Way way way behind right? This is this is a whole other level of revenge you could say Or you could say a whole other level of of of kind of skill of kind of a quality of Of intensity And here's Matta Clark making this cut It was incredibly cold. It was a very very cold winter You have to be like some kind of animal to make the cut. He repeatedly described himself as some kind of Animal he was dying of cancer while making this cut. He didn't know He knew he was not well everybody. He knew he was not well, but this the most amazing most transgressive astonishing work is made literally During this time. This is how cold it is. I mean it's brutal chicago You know if you really think you can cut a building in the winter of chicago. Give it a give it a try All right And and of course it was the sphere. This is and and now he knows he's uh, he's really dying. He knows that He has only some months to live But he continues to draw these are his projects for the museum of modern art. This is not the Dillard's cupidio project This is the Matta Clark Project and you can see it's spheres inside spheres again. There are hundreds of drawings of this Project, which of course was far too interesting for mama This is the very last project which is to take over a building in new york Done for his his very very close friend and supporter alana heist when she received this drawing She could not stop crying because she knows that she's receiving The drawing of a dead person soon to be dead person But she replies that she's going to do her best to realize this project which as you can see is yet again a sphere Inside a house or a house inside a sphere I just finished with these drawings. These are the drawings that met a clock made of his own cancer You will recognize the sphere you will record if you look more closely. There is the sphere, which is the Cancer itself the cancer cells and there are like little aircraft zipping around these drawings are done the same year of star wars the movie So it is all about this little fantasy of maybe shooting down the Death star these are death stars, but they are also viral. They're also infected notice that they're also network They're all linked together in a kind of a complex network in which the cells There's a kind of plant which is linking them together and then there are the little triangular Ships that are trying to as it were unsuccessfully Destroy, but they in fact nothing can be separated out. So this is almost literally This is like the one of the very very last drawings that met a clerk Will draw and again just to show you that there's this total fluidity between the plant the biology the life the body the brain and a kind of loss of Conventional architecture now we might be the last drawing it might be we're not sure But the drawing is three phases. It's a history of trees In the beginning it says there were the trees and the end and interestingly look at the trees Start off a little bit random Then they become sort of dense But a kind of geometry even at the very end is a kind of a right angle so once again at the very end And describing the end drawing then he draws in a way that it gives you the sense that right angles are born out of the sort of biological Life of trees and I thought just to kind of give you a sense So basically my argument is Is that it's super important. I think to to see to see this sense in which The clock thinks Biologically which means ecologically which means also a logic of kind of infection It means also a logic of contagion and of invasion But where the invader cannot be so simply separated from what is being invaded and in this case the host is undoubtedly Architecture, but I said undoubtedly architecture and I started by claiming that what we have in common here in this conversation is we as architects For us architectures full of doubt So if I say the host is undoubtedly architecture, uh, what does it really mean? I show you this drawing, which is one of my favorites of metaclack It it seems at first that we are looking at a kind of cross shaped hallway Which might have doors on each end of the cross And there's some sort of sphere in dotted lines But if you look more closely the dotted lines of the sphere become confused With the lines of the right angles and anyway, some of the right angles are drawn by dotted lines And again, is it is it is it a cross shaped floor? Or are these dotted lines in the bottom corner actually Going down is this like a kind of escher where they go down in reverse like is it actually a sphere with all these things hanging on each other Again, I show you the same drawing upside down because there's no correct way to see it Couldn't we see it as a set of walls that become dotted lines again somehow enabled by a sphere? and I think this is this is the Let's say the kind of architecture of of metaclack It is an architecture of destabilizing assumptions about what constitutes Architecture it is a totally dotted architecture. It's perforated one passes through He argues many times that the thing that you pass through is not what it is until you pass through it And it's not the same as it was before you After you leave it So it's a very kind of transactional very kind of contagious idea and very destabilized idea of what constitutes Let's say architecture, but of course as a member of the architect's union I want to insist that it is never anything other than architecture and the challenge that that metaclack poses to us Is to sort of deeply deeply accept the thought that architecture is biological And if just in like two seconds, you know every second architect every second word out of the mouth is that architecture is some kind of biology This is this is an enormous history But it could be that this is just a kind of as Donald Trump would say aspirational Comment that architecture would be biology. We may be able to find some architects And they are architects by virtue of this That really thought of architecture in biological terms and their work was generated by that and this is the This is the architect I favored metaclack died You know, literally shortly after doing the project in chicago He worked as an artist slash architect for only 10 years So you're looking at a 10 years of laboratory work on the idea of Of a kind of biological understanding of architecture, but I think he earned our respect and I think respect would be to Try to think of this work not in terms of the normal categories of art and architecture The normal distinctions of biology and also even to rethink let's say a kind of ecological Ways of operating in short. I'm a fan of metaclack In love with metaclack, uh, which for me to be in love with something or someone means not to know what you're in love with But to know that you'd be unhappy Without it and I think to a certain extent Architecture would be unhappy without metaclack and and this is to me Let's say even more so in this moment I notice that people now reach out like people that you haven't seen for a while reach out to make sure you're okay Seems to me we have to reach out to figures like metaclack in this moment and just make sure that they're Okay Okay, so any questions I go to the chat I think you should all turn your video on anyway. It's kind of desperately lonely just to see your name Hi So how do you have a question? Yes, I do. I was going to type it. I'm I didn't really form the question in my head yet, but I was wondering All of this was very inspirational and interesting and how can we How can we take that and implement it in real? Functioning buildings or is that the point of this art? You know, hey Ben, I think um I mean, of course, you know, I'm a teacher, right? So I'm bound to say to you that's for you to decide, right? So yeah, it's for you to decide But you know when just when you said Functioning buildings, I would immediately sort of say, okay What do we think we mean by functioning buildings? And I think if you would describe really what you think of functioning building is I think your words would start to sound like metaclark's description of the building as a kind of living organism You know, if you read local brisly and all the other monsters. Yeah, they talk about architecture as a machine and there's an organism So some kind of cybernetic Organism, but they really don't like bacteria and they don't like Insects and they don't like woman by the way They don't you know, they like they hate so much And they love order themselves And and so they they really they speak the language of biology But actually they speak a eugenics language in the case of of local brisly. He was a eugenicist wasn't explicitly anti-semitic genetic engineer, you know, so so so Two signs here, right one as I say watch out when anybody mentions the word biology because people might start to die And architecture might become more boring What I think that that metaclark is helping us to understand is there's another way very sort of simple way of just thinking of architecture as itself Let's say a system of contamination Like why do those of us living in new york? We live here because we want to be contaminated That's the whole point of being here is density now now the very reason for us to be here is demonized as a As a as a health risk But I think that I think that what metaclark is trying to you know without that risk Uh, by the way without bacteria we die. So so I think metaclark is just My teacher's answer to you would be okay. Even that word function. We could we could Think about that again like what couldn't you say that the function of architecture is to host a multiplicity of species In Complex ways that we don't understand nor want to understand in the same way. We don't want to know everybody in new york We want to know that we don't know everybody we want to be with people We don't know don't understand and see what happens. So what if architecture is a form of hospitality? We could say function means Being being hospitable being being you know open to the to the unknown so we can change that word function But you can see if you ask me a question. I could talk for two hours to risk I promise the next question would be a 30 second answer Who's next? I hardly see any of your faces, which is a pity You do have the opportunity to unmute yourself now And you can turn on your camera if you'd like So antonio you have the best background What are you up to? I do. This is the north of chile the desert Unbelievable. It's at a karma Yes, I was really jealous of the background. Yeah You can look it up online. It's on google Yeah, any questions about this? All biological things I was thinking it's fascinating because of all the talks now about density and like should we move move to the suburbs Like should we run for our lives? And then we're like no like the city is the greatest thing like it's the reason we came here. It's It's so human. So I mean Other than like reasoning with people. How do we approach it? Like how do we argue for density on the city right now? Yeah, I don't again. I don't want to be I think it's interesting to think about the history of that The city that we live in Like most cities In the so-called north It's actually been designed by sanitation protocols So actually the whole city you see is already organized by regimes of to control disease so this experience which The idiot president says nobody could ever have imagined not only It is actually the the life of cities has been this 19th century was the great year years of the so-called sanitary reform So so it could suggest that senate, you know, the new techniques of sanitary reform will Uh emerge it's very likely that that we developed some new protocols And that those protocols eventually have to change because of some other kind of threat so and and one thing I can tell you in the 19th century when When there was this huge sanitation reform movement Architects were really involved In the thinking and the ideas and then the designing. So I feel I feel pretty sure that our Community will get involved. They were never the leaders and We don't need to be the leaders, but I think that there there was a lot of reflection about that And one argument you can make is that what we think of as 20th century architecture modern architecture Is the kind of result of all of that work? It's nothing new there. It's really it's been produced by 100 years of debate about light and air and And so on so if you take that kind of perspective Who knows what happens next, but you're absolutely right that we Those of us who love cities feel threatened And it's very upsetting to look at a map of the of the united states and see that the infections kind of match The political votes of the country like and match urbanism versus non-urbanism. So this is an old argument Americans ran away to the suburbs because of nuclear war Suburbs may be the Single worst and single bear single most successful export of the united states. I would hate to think that we invent another horror Horror show I don't know. There's there's another view by the way that says yeah, okay once they find the vaccine We all forget like like I forget every terrible thing that happens I mean, I actually think in the certain sense that I'm more worried about that I'm more worried that our field will you know Happily do stuff for real estate developers in the future As if that will make everybody happy Mark, we have a question that has arrived to us in the chat Yeah asking What architects and artists are using or have used metaclark as an inspiration or a starting point for Great. Great. Yeah, great question um All of them No, you it's an easy test, right whenever you meet an artist Just ask them. What do they think about metaclark and they get really emotional He's and and the artist you're talking to can be super young can be students Can be recent graduates can be the coolest cats in the universe or can be you know, 80 year old You know blue chip Artists you'll never meet somebody that says I don't know overrated There's something about and you know, maybe living for only 10 years is an advantage, of course, but I think mainly what he did was change the This is where I think he has this connection with Duchamp. He's playing an important role in changing what we think art could be All right So just to give you a simple example You know a big thing for him was cooking because he was all about hospitality, right? So cooking you don't make an artwork you make a dinner And then you invite all your friends as artists to come to their dinner That's the that's the artwork now if I just say I want to I want to look at all the artists who over the last 40 years made cooking their central activity or hospitality their central activity. It's a huge number So I think it's he he's um Maybe I should give you a slightly better answer. He is fundamentally a conceptual artist like he works with ideas Just because it's very material and he's very physical and kind of even you could say sweaty It's all about ideas and those ideas and he was probably He was not very famous during his life I mean really not When he did when he when he did The project in Chicago he was interviewed and he said I have to tell you this is the first time I have been exhibited by an institution in the united states And he was very moved. He says I'm very moved and then he quickly said but you know, I meant the institution And I hate institutions, but there was this, you know, he really felt It's not just that his father never Showed any love but because you know tends to be what fathers do. I mean not do It's that no one did so I think he was he was Looking for it. He wanted to be successful. He wanted to sell works of art was always obsessed about galleries It was not like anti art market anti gallery But in truth, he never never received success at all. This has happened after his death And so for some reason For me the story is not so much. Hey metaclark a super interesting artist. We should uh, you know, uh Think about the work It's more the question. Why is that figure so important to all of us like what why do we need such a Figure there are many other figures as well But in actually and on the architect side. Oh, yeah, it's a really love hate thing with uh with metaclark for architects because he's just too good so some people say that for example the Dan graham the artist Said that michael graves early worked at the menace roof house in in princeton is totally coming from From metaclark, and I think that michael graves admitted that I think their Architects are basically deeply threatened Most architects you meet will say that they love metaclark, but they would never dare do anything like this you know How many architects do you know whose work smells bad? I mean really smells bad So we whatever you could say architecture is It's clean I'm getting back to that question about hygiene. We have absorbed this sort of hygienic understanding with metaclark Uh, it could smell It could fall. It could disappear Uh, it could be what it was not supposed to be I I think we don't have that kind of courage and maybe it's more difficult. Maybe the responsibilities of architects are different Anyway, any other thoughts? I think um, normally I don't interject my own questions into the things mark. Um Something that I was thinking a lot about while you were speaking that I haven't thought about before actually in relation to metaclark is eva hesse Yes, um, you know who? Was about 10 years older You know died just a decade before but also was this sort of like very young artist aware that she was dying and also making these sort of um, yeah natural Versus unnatural assemblages and I'm sort of interested in do you have any Thoughts about about that the sort of this uh connection or disconnection between the works. Yeah, I think he I think that eva hesse was very very um Important figure for metaclark and very influential. I'm sorry. I forget the name but she made one installation in the gallery which was a very kind of it was kind of a Sort of biological network of kind of latex It was like a spider's web. Yes. Um, and and that project is is really really close in time to when metaclark is hanging these vines in the Gallery, so I think she's she's a key is a key Reference for him and and I in that book I did I talk a little bit about The the artists particularly the woman artists that had such an influence. I think at that time There was a lot of sharing of ideas and a lot of cross fertilization In this in this sort of new generation And eva hesse was as you pointed out it was actually kind of like more successful than most so she was sort of Actually that made that made for some jealousies and some Anger, right had a little bit of fame in her time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah so but I think that the idea of a Of making something in the gallery that that looked like it doesn't really belong Of course, this has a relationship again back to Duchamp hanging the string, you know, like again um Making sure that when you enter a room the room is no longer a room Right, and I think this is you know, this is a very simple way of saying what what Metaclark does A little bit connects to the previous question because I think when when architects find ways In what you expected to happen doesn't really happen Uh, an element of architecture starts to behave Kind of irrationally or irresponsibility. This this is where I think Figures like metaclark come up. I think it would be of course super boring for people to cut buildings like metaclark cuts buildings I think for me to be influenced by metaclark is to be is is To maybe absorb this more kind of biological and biotechnological View it's a little bit cosmic And in that sense he he he had he did have that kind of a cosmic Kind of cosmic kind of attitude, you know for him Architecture is like a very delicate fragile set of membranes Suspended in unbelievably dense overlapping flows of many many kinds So he has kind of like the inverse of our normal feeling we think of Architecture kind of solid and everything else kind of liquid. He thought of architecture as as as like Hanging in a spider's web very very delicate. This is what I mean This is why I think these drawings of the plants are so important. He's trying to make Architecture delicate and when it's delicate, it's reactive responsive And it's also, you know at one level kind of a sort of a sexual thing in the sense of It's about a confusion of the body and the building and the nature everything, you know, it's a kind of interspecies Intimacy because I'm speaking this very romantic language A language of love, I guess I think this and this is where I think his work was coming from So, um There's a final question here, which I feel could certainly take us on a tangent. Um, whether or not He uh, Madakark ever met a Buckminster Fuller or if they interacted Oh, what a great question. I have no idea Um, of course the circumstances would likely be Cornell But we would have to check the years Because because Buckminster Fuller hang out Hang out quite a lot at Cornell and in Cornell He worked with the students on very very temporary kind of emergency structures actually structures that were intended for disadvantaged Uh, uh populations there was a big collaboration going on with Chile precisely at that moment And they were making kind of portable shelters and um in the back of my cerebral cortex There's a little light that's going off that says that yes, there was a Some piece of evidence I've seen that Madakark was aware of those experiments probably means I was in the archive and I saw he had a A document or something like that in terms of dialogue. I don't know. I think it's a Wonderful question. I mean, there are two monsters Um, so it's a bit like celebrity deathmatch or whatever be curious to know if they I mean Why I think it's such a sharp question is if If you would say to me ask me a question with something like who has the most Who has had the most radical ecological view in architecture? Like You know an understanding of ecology and architecture's intimacy with ecology that is so kind of deep That you have to think again about everything. I would name Fuller and And and madakark may be also patrick getys You know from the beginning of the century and a few other figures that we could start to build up List and in that sense they are kind of a hypothetical It's a hypothetical zoom meeting that they could have with each other Again, you know with with Follow very cosmic, you know Just to finish you with a little narrative. He promised his wife He was a super unfaithful by the way fuller slept with every Dog person piece of technology there is but somehow Revealed his wife and what some people call a kind of Madonna complex, but he promised her That That he would be with her when he died and he was giving a lecture and he was told that she'd gone to the hospital He went to the hospital had to travel had to fly to get there Said hello to her held her hand put her head on the end of the bed and died Um and she died like six hours later So uh these cosmic types got to be careful