Our editorial project 1980 in Parallax, which explores notions and examples of Post-Modernism outside the Western context, will culminate in a screening and panel discussion on the 23rd of November, in the British Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, in conjunction with the exhibition, Dancing Before the Moon.
1980 in Parallax, the Jencks Foundation’s first research theme takes the year 1980 as its starting point. In 1980 the first ever Venice Architecture Biennale entitled The Presence of the Past famously announced Post-Modernism as the international mainstream of architecture. It proposed a new canon that was to be more inclusive and polyphonic, and sought to embrace a diversity of narratives, a variety of styles, contradictions and irony. Charles Jencks’ contribution to the Biennale When ‘wasms became ‘isms set out to map the various streams and traditions of Post-Modern Architecture through exploring the edges, the eccentric, the bizarre and the outsider cultures of architecture beyond the mainstream. Yet despite these ideals, none of the case studies and architects presented at the Biennale went beyond the European and North-American context. Looking back – once again – in order to look forward, this research theme reconsiders the Post-Modern canon from the critical distance of 43 years to reinvigorate the pluralism suggested by the Biennale and Charles by bringing together perspectives beyond the Western canon. The essays explore the impact of the 1980 Biennale across the globe, from North and South America to East Asia, to Eastern and Southern Europe, and the African continent, and can be read on the Jencks Foundation website.
Participants of the conclusive panel discussion in Venice will include Lukasz Stanek, Professor of Architectural History at A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan; artist Monica Narula of Raqs Media Collective; and Neal Shasore, architectural historian and Head of School at the London School of Architecture. The panel will be moderated by Jencks Foundation Director Eszter Steierhoffer and will be followed by a screening of Raqs Media Collective’s film The Byciclist Who Fell into a Time Cone, commissioned by the Jencks Foundation at The Cosmic House.
Download Raqs Media Collective booklet The Bicyclist Who Fell into a Time Cone here.
