Noteworthy, the exhibition with the above title is an architecture exhibition. There are two reasons why it presents in the form of cinema. Firstly, architecture is an “experience”. It is a three-dimensional sensorial event where our bodies are fully engaged. Therefore, the representation of architecture in the form of exhibition is problematic because of the abstraction or the reduction that will occur in the reproduction. Whether in the form of three-dimensional models with a much smaller scale, projection drawings, or artists sketches which almost resemble photographs, architecture has always been something flat and bland. Therefore, I chose cinema to represent the architecture of Andra Matin.
Architecture manifests, like cinema, in the dimension of time and motion. It is understood and read in sequences. Creating architecture is the same with predicting and conjecturing the effects that can arouse feelings and emotions, incising memories, in the course of one’s experience. Just like the filmmakers, architects work with cuts, edits, framings, openings, the depth, the superimposition of different layers and partitions, and planes that are interconnected.
Cinema is close to architecture not solely because of its temporal and spatial structure, but essentially both articulate “lived space”. “Lived space” is a combination of external and internal spaces, actual and mental projections. In experiencing “lived space”, memories and dreams, fears and desires, values and meaning, diffuse with actual perception. The mode in experiencing architecture and cinema become identical in this mental spaces, which meander endlessly without fixed boundaries. The facts that architecture images are immortalized in the form of materials, while cinematic images are illusion projected to the screen, doesn’t mean anything.
Aside from the prominence of the visual aspect, cinema is a “tactile” art. Even though in watching a movie, spectators are turned into bodiless observer, the illusory cinematic space gives the viewer back his/her body, as the experiential haptic and motor space provides powerful kinesthetic experiences. A film is viewed with the muscles and skin as much as by the eyes. Both architecture and cinema imply a kinesthetic way of experiencing space, and images stored in our memory are embodied and haptic images as much as retinal pictures.
Secondly, and I think this is the most important, Andra Matin’s architecture has cinematic quality. Architecture as an event is arranged into plots of occurrences or sequences, so the comprehension of the whole story is suspended, not obtained in an instant. Andra Matin censors our visual experience in order to compel our body to open other senses. This is done in different strategies; different thickness of walls, material porosity, level of heights, depths, and so on.
If architecture in general has standardized emotions by eliminating the extremes of the spectrum of human emotions, Andra matin’s architecture drives us to undergo a story, to lend our emotions, and put them there. It exists not only because of its material existence, but the images and feelings evoked by it on the people who experience it. It makes us realize attachment to the place, time, and especially to ourselves, strongly and meaningfully.
In collaboration with Davy Linggar for presenting the Architecture of Andra Matin in cinema format, the nine works in this exhibition hopefully explain the above description. A sequel, which still continues.
curator : Avianti Armand
art director : Davy Linggar
Exibition Periode: 2 - 27 August
Dia.Lo.Gue. Artspace
Kemang Selatan 99a
Jakarta
everyday 9:30 am - 6:30 pm
animation graphic LeBoYe