1 Talk in the series 'Producing the Future: Art and
Globalization' organized by the Center for Place, Culture
and Politics, City University of New York Graduate Center
(April 24 2003)
Sabine Bitter / Helmut Weber
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Since 1993, we have cooperated on projects addressing urban geographies, architectural representations and related visual politics.
Dealing with architecture as a frame for spatial meaning, our works are at the interface of architecture, new media technologies, and systems of representation.
Tonight we will show some examples of our work, which we understand as a background of a method, way of approach and intention to engage with the urban site Caracas -- the city where we are now involved in an urban thinktank for 6 months till. Financed by the German Kulturstiftung, the directors Hubert Klumpner and Alfredo Brillembourg selected with a jury 10 international fellows or fellowteams who are working on the Caracas Case – from architects to writers, artists or cityplanners.









Live Like This!
Did that building do that to you? Or did you do that to that building?
(2001)

Live like this! Shows visual rearrangements of a modernist social housing project "Pedregulho" by architect Affonso Reidy realized 1947 - 1952 in Rio de Janeiro.
Usually this famous architectural building is shown as a black and white photograph just after its completion, when there was no sign of people in it. Conversely, it is shown as a rundown ruin, indicating the failure of modernism. We wanted to bring together these 2 views and also put them in relation. On one hand the really fantasic form and aesthetics of the building, and on the other hand the appropriation and social use by the people who live there.
The work investigates concepts of building national identity in relation to architecture and modernism, and questions how architectural sites define, structure and organize daily living spaces and social relations.
The recombinations of photographs take the grandiose form of the building as element to create an imagined new building - as well as showing the effects of use over time.
There exists a tension between its modernist design and the transformation of its program by decades of diverse use, which seems in this case quite productive for the people who live there.