Umbau + Megawords + PIFAS [postdate : 9.23.08]
This past weekend, Tate and I had the opportunity to travel to Philly for a weekend of Umbau in Philadelphia. Melissa Frost, a former student of our Vienna studio, and student in the University of Pennsylvania’s Pre-Architecture program, organized a lecture and exhibition for our school. Although there were some significant setbacks in our preparations for the weekend, the events were all-in-all successful.
On Saturday night, we had a full house at PIFAS [the Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Studies] where Tate gave a lecture about the current happenings of Umbau. Although the lecture was uncharacteristically dense and lengthy for Tate, it served as a preface for the following night’s exhibition at the Megawords Storefront in Downtown Philly. Tate spoke about Umbau’s involvement in + with Rwanda [+ the Sudan], Bosnia-Herzegovina, Libera, and Vienna and also about the rich network of individuals supporting the school.
The Megawords Storefront project was a progressive in its continuum of incoming work that stayed in the space. Therefore, installing new work was about dancing with existing work and allowing layers to exist that could create diversions throughout the space. There were great zines, collages, graphics, and photos throughout the room.
In our exhibit on Sunday evening a series of plaster models were on display along a 40-foot walkway. The models were simple but elegant studies on the designs of Peter Eisenman created by a collection of his first-year interior students from James Madison University. Also along the walkway were photographs and illustrations by students who had been to Vienna for the summer studio in past years. My main contribution to the exhibit was a series of about 50 textual posters of the Umbau manifesto designed line for line along a long wall in the back of the space. The graphic posters were interspersed with other students’ Piranesian study drawings. Photographs from the cultural + urban identity project in Bosnia-Herzegovina were being projected along another wall in that same space.
The exhibit also included an interactive element, simply, a table with a pair of questions about higher education in this century and an open opportunity to praise or criticize our school’s endeavors. A tape recorder was on the table alongside the questions for individuals to leave their thoughts and criticisms behind.
Tate and I had the opportunity to have some conversations at length with Brandon Joyce [one PIFAS founder] and with Anthony Smyrski [one founder of Megawords Magazine]. Both individuals offered some original perspectives on new concepts for higher education, collectives, and new media. PIFAS + Megawords are both rich environments, teeming with experimental postulations and independent works. To be around the individuals involved in these endeavors offered us some new insights and ideas we might have never considered without them.
Cover for current issue of Megawords Magazine
[...] The UMBAU show at Megawords was a wonderful coming together, as was the whole month long storefront event. Now a dear friend is running a store, Juanita’s & Juans a gathering of indispensable books, movies and records, in the space at Arch & 11th. Nelly’s post/pictures on the umbau gig is here. [...]