Komplot curates Architecture of Survival & Art2102
Mandrake – Culver City, CA
11/25/08
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In the months of November and December, “Architecture of Survival” curated by Komplot and presented in conjunction with Art2102 in Los Angeles.  Founded on the principle of Dan Graham, “All artists are alike. They dream of doing something that’s more social, more collaborative, and more real than art.”

Launch Evening
Tuesday, November 25, 8pm at Mandrake.  With performances by NG, Jaro Straub, and Jim Skuldt and a screening of videos.

Exhibition at Outpost for Contemporary Art and Open Gallery
December 4-14, 2008
Opening Reception Thursday, December 4, 6-9pm
Hours: Fridays and Saturdays, 12-4pm

Featuring work by with Ivan Argote, Pauline Bastard, Aline Bouvy / John Gillis, Francisco Camacho, Matthieu Clainchard, Jean-Philippe Convert, Messieurs Delmotte, Simona Denicolai & Ivo Provoost, David Evrard, Yona Friedman, Hugues Marechal, NG, Pichler, Frederic Plateus, Jim Skuldt, The Centre of Attention, Michael Van Den Abeele, Andrea Winkler.

Complete Communion Celebration
Saturday, December 13, 6pm to 2am.  At gallery 533.  Includes an eight-hour video installation by Jaro Straub and Matthew Burbidge.
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The work of Hungarian architect Yona Friedman (*1923, Budapest, lives in Paris) is the starting point for this exhibition with the title itself being a reflexive reference to Friedman’s 1975 book, Architecture Of Survival (MIT Press, USA). The book looks at the precarious nature of modern society and suggests creative strategies for countering the problems thrown up by hyper-consumption and capitalist modes of spatial and social organisation. Friedman rose to prominence with his manifesto “L’Architecture Mobile” (“Mobile Architecture”, 1958) and plan for a utopian city “La Ville Spatiale” (“The Spatial City,” 1959) ; his ideas led him beyond architecture and to engagement with sociology, economics, mathematics, information science, planning, visual art and film-making.

Today, his writings have become influential as architectural concepts that take as their starting point the perspective of those existing in a state of generalised poverty within the capitalist economic model. He proposes structures for the unpredictable, providing the means and ways for people to determine, re-appropriate and re-invent their own living environment beyond the normative functional ability of new social forms to shape their own living spaces.

Relative to Friedman’s method of re-appropriating architecture as a creative tool -through the creation of “do it yourself” manuals, instructions and recipes- the exhibition will articulate the way in which the actual creative process integrates the notions of survival and mobility. Fundamentally, how the artworks ‘survive’ their original context. The artist’s work will deal with ‘traces’ and ‘remains’ of performances and actions, this being an area of investigation privileged in the project, the participative and performative aspects of the works being crucial within this context. One of the common material characteristics of the works exhibited is ‘lightness’ and economy of means. Whether they are constructed from recuperated material, fabric, objects or paper or are audio-visual, they are designed to be easily transportable – allowing improvisational flexibility of creation and presentation.

With Architectures Of Survival, there is the creation of a certain ‘critical distance’ apropos artistic social utopian trains of thought and a desire to revive the exhibition model and its relationship with the spectator.

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For more info, visit: http://www.outpost-art.org/ArchitecturesofSurvival_new/