6. Traces
BRU / 2017
From The House of Politics (AAVS Brussels)
Architecture has a prominent role in visual culture and is crucial to the edification of collective imagination. What kind of role could architecture play in establishing new perspectives on transnational institutions and their diverse citizenship?
The research analyses how the buildings of the EU institutions actively perform an arrangement of rituals, circulations and symbolic orders, with the objective of unveiling the poetics hidden in their, a priori, unappealing generic architecture. The objective is to question the role of architecture in relationship to EU’s visual identity strategies within a contemporary context where digital technologies are crucial to the construction of public image. Furthermore, to reveal with the media of film yet unknown conceptions of the EU and its transnational institutional architecture.
The research utilizes film as an analytical tool to address the role of architecture in representing and constructing political communities. This edition of the AAVS’s House of Politics focused on the European Council. Located in the European Quarter of Brussels, the two main buildings of the Council’s headquarters, the Justus Lipsius and the Europa Building where chosen as case studies.
Traces is a 3 minunte long film centeringing around the main atrium of the Justus Lipsius, in Brussels, more specificaly the traces left in the space from its numerous and constant transformations. The film draws parallels to Cedric Price’s Fun Palace arguing towards the capacity of this space, above all others, to best represent the European project. Through its behaviour, the atrium of the Justus Lipsius resembles that of the anti-architecture once proposed by Price and seems to fit the idea of a Europe that is allways becoming, constanly reimagining itself politicaly. This space transends the traditional spatial notions of spaces of power as well as the EU transends the notions of a traditional nationstate institution.
The film uses a mix of original footage (recorded by myself) and archival footage from the European Council’s archive.
“Might this insidental space be the best encarnation of the European project?”
