Train to the future

 

Train to the future

BY KRISTINA SERGEEVA


Norilsk is the northernmost city in the world with a population of over 150,000. An artificially created industrial city during Stalin's repressions, Norilsk is popular for its various mineral resources and large mining operations. Norilsk is associated with permafrost, lack of light, depressing landscapes and a grim history.

I went on a photographic expedition to Norilsk with the aim of reflecting the identity of contemporary Russia through the mythologization of ruinized spaces. Train to the future is a journey into a future that has already arrived.

I see Norilsk as a place where the sense of time has been lost. As in all of Russia, the war has suspended the present. I am trying to find a suitable metaphor for the new time, the thin line between past and future. Wandering around the city, I imagine myself as a discoverer of a new land that is no longer with me. During the creation of the project, I was inspired by the stories of eyewitnesses about the victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

SHORT BIOGRAPHY

Kristina Sergeeva (1996) is a visual artist from St. Petersburg, Russia. She uses photography, book and print forms in her artistic practice. The field of study in Kristina's projects revolves around the exploration of themes of collective and individual memory and personal perception of the contemporary Russian context. In her work she focuses on reworking and making sense of history, searching for national identity through observation and exploration of the landscape of post-soviet space.

Website
https://kristina-sergeeva.ru

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/_tinaserg/

 

On Trial

 

on trial

BY CRISTIAN ORDÓÑEZ


Although only residing in the USA for a short period, Toronto-based Chilean Photographer Cristian Ordóñez has spent a large-period of the previous decade revisiting the lower states creating works that explore the notion of memory, personal relationship, and encounters with the territory.

On Trial observes and plays witness to these encounters, a body of work that presents the social, economic, and geographic survey of the landscape traveled by Ordóñez. A survey, engaging with all things natural and foreign on even ground, seeking to question not only the observer but the role of the object within the frame.

Forthcoming previous published works, Notes 01, 02, and 03, the new chapter continues to visualise his approach and interest in the photographic process as a medium to explore the territory, own cultural diversity, and the connection between place and ethnicity.

Text by Rohan Hutchinson. Editor, acb press

SHORT BIOGRAPHY

Cristian Ordóñez is a Chilean photographer based in Toronto. Ordóñez has exhibited his work in multiple group and solo exhibitions in Canada, Chile, the United Kingdom, Russia, Greece, the United States, and Netherlands. He has also participated in various art fairs in Santiago, Toronto, and Vancouver. Using the medium of photography he collects impressions of the world, gravitating towards the parallels between ideas, memory, and belonging. He observes time and space through human absence and presence, captures natural and urban vestiges, explores the vastness and intimacy of landscape, and focuses on blurring the lines between nature, urban structures, and portraiture. His work has been collected by the National Gallery of Canada, Library & Archives, the National Library of Australia, the State Library of Victoria in Australia, and the San Telmo Museum in Spain.

Website


https://cristianordonez.com/works/on-trial/

Book


https://www.acb-press.com/publications/cristian-ordonez-on-trial-forth-coming

 

Kenneth Frampton - Reflections on the predicament of architecture: seven points in retrospect

 
 

Robert Maxwell Memorial Lectures
Kenneth Frampton - Reflections on the predicament of architecture: seven points in retrospect

Thursday 22 April 2021 6pm BST (1pmEDT)

Introduction

Soumyen Bandyopadhyay (University of Liverpool)

Mark Swenarton (University of Liverpool)

Lecture

Kenneth Frampton (Columbia University)

Conclusion

Marco Iuliano (University of Liverpool)

KennethFrampton’s presentation will advance a critique of the current malaise in architectural education and of the equally debilitating state of contemporary practice. These aspects are evident in the current postmodern tendency to reduce architecture either to design of spectacular sculpture at a gargantuan scale or to the application of Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology in order to favour the maximization of profit. Both of these Neoliberal impulses have deprived modern architecture of its former ameliorative character, namely, the formulation of the building task in a socio-ethical and spatially innovative manner. The lecture will attempt to trace the subtle ideological shifts and the changes in nomenclature that have accompanied our currently unsustainable degradation of the megalopolitan environment.


The event will take place via Zoom

Registration required: please click here to reserve a place

University of Liverpool School of Architecture

Open Space, Landscape in Reverse by Xavier Delory

 
 

OPEN SPACE, LANDSCAPE IN REVERSE

BY XAVIER DELORY

A renewed dialogue between ruin and landscape.
From a modernist office tower of the Glorious Thirty in a state of transient decay, Open space reverses the "classic" ruin / nature representation that can be observed in Flemish landscape painting from the 17th century. Unlike the "composed veduta" by painters from the north where you can see ruins of ancient Rome surrounded by an Arcadian landscape where nature and culture unite harmoniously, here the landscape no longer welcomes ruin, it makes part of the ruin. The mountainous landscape used, refers to the aesthetics of the sublime, giving a tone of confrontation between man and the forces of nature.
By introducing a landscape “freely” into this brutalist setting, Open space also plays with the relationship with nature, materials and landscapes, especially with the spatial continuity from inside to outside which was at the center of the concerns of the first modernist architects who wanted to put man back at the heart of "Creation" thanks to technique.

Bio
Xavier Delory, born in Liège (Belgium) in 1973, studied interior architecture and photography. His work is on the frontiers of art and architecture, questioning the characteristics of digital photography in its relationship to reality and to the construction of an image. The artist uses digital photomontages to create fictional architectures.

https://www.xavierdelory.com/

 

Of Dying and Living on by Daniel Chatard

 
 

Of Dying and Living on

BY DANIEL CHATARD

It‘s unusual for a story to begin with the death of a person. But with tissue donation, a process that can change another person‘s life from the ground up starts there. The German Society for Tissue Transplantation (DGFG) provides patients nationwide with corneas, amniotic tissue and heart valves, among other things - the DGFG maintains twelve tissue banks alone for this purpose. The photographs examine the complex system that makes the donation process possible and show the rooms in which tissue donation takes place. The selected photographs, taken in cooperation with the DGFG, explore tissue donation in Germany as a closed system within which the various locations photographed have different functions. They show rooms and still lifes that visualize important steps in the donation process - from the farewell room, where people see their deceased relatives one last time, to the surgery room, where the donations are used to heal the recipients.

Bio
Daniel Chatard (1996) is a Franco-German documentary and portrait photographer based in Hanover, Germany.In his work, Daniel has been mostly interested in the relationship between individuals and their societies, exploring how collective identities shape the human experience. He is available for assignments in Germany and worldwide.In 2015, Daniel started his studies of photojournalism and documentary photography at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Hanover. In 2017, he interned as a photographer at Weser-Kurier in Bremen. He did an exchange semester at the faculty of journalism at Tomsk State University (Russia) in 2018.

http://chatard.de/
instagram / @daniel_chatard

 

The State of the Region by Marvin Systermans

 
 

The State of the Region

BY MARVIN SYSTERMANS

The structural change that is coming with the end of the coal mining industry in Germany is noticeable throughout the Lausitz region. The immense quantities of earth that have been moved have not only brought forward new landscapes; With the end of lignite mining, the Lausitz region is also looking for a new identity. This process takes place in different ways in the urban space, the renatured lake landscapes and the surroundings of the still active coal mines. The photo series "The State of the Region" examines places where traditional and young structures coexist, old structures slowly vanish and something new is created. On the one hand, the work deals with problems and conflict issues such as the environmental impact of coal mining and urban vacancy, while at the same time reflecting stereotypical representations of the Lausitz region. It describes the gradual departure of the region from the era of the coal industry, as well as the emergence of Europe's largest lake landscape.

Bio
Marvin Systermans is a german photographer, photo editor and communication designer working on a variety of different projects. His photographic work mainly focuses on different approaches to reflect on urban spaces, structural changes, and the human habitat in general.

Exhibitions

2019 — Solo Exhibition, Galerie im Foyer, Bremen
2019 — Group Exhibition, the horizons Zingst, Environmental Photo Festival
2019 — Group Exhibition, Wendener Hütte, Wenden
2019 — Solo Exhibition, Galery Flut, Bremen
2018 — Group Exhibition, Münzenberg Forum, Berlin
2018 — Group Exhibition, Osthaus Museum, Hagen
2017 — Group Exhibition, Summerset House, London
2017 — Group Exhibition, Forum of Design, Magdeburg
2016 — Group Exhibition, 1st Design Biennale, Havanna
2015 — Group Exhibition, German Youth Photography Award, German History Museum

Awards

2019 — Shortlist Vonovia Photo Award
2019 — Shortlist Canon New Talent Award 2019/2
2019 — Scholarship from the BFF Neuer Förderpreis 2019
2018 — Münzenbergforum Photo Award, 4. Place
2017 — Shortlist Felix Schoeller Photography Award, Best Emerging Artist
2017 — Shortlist Sony World Photography Award, Professional Architecture
2015 — German Youth Photography Award

Residency

2019 — BangaloResidency Goethe Institute, Max Mueller Bhavan.
In collaboration with Raisa Galofre, photographer

https://www.marvinsystermans.com/
instagram / @marvin.systermans

 

Places of disquiet by Ricardo Nunes

 
 

Places of disquiet

BY RICARDO NUNES

In 2016 and 2017 I travelled several times through Portugal, following old memories of places I might have been. Since I was born, I had to visit the land of my parents to spend time with distant relatives, who lived in commuter towns on the outskirts of city centers. Many images of my past are formed by rushing through unknown cities or small villages around the center of Portugal. For a long time, I couldn’t relate to the attractive stories I had come to hear about the country from others. At the age of 21, I explored for myself the historically overwhelming center of Lisbon for the first time. The images of a »Portuguese city« though, still arose from my former memories of places like Barreiro, Queluz or Guarda.​The urbanization of Portugal was accelerated after the fall of Salazar’s dictatorship in 1974. The following and abrupt de-colonialization of African and Asian countries brought many immigrants to Portugal. Housing shortage and accession to the European Union in 1986 consider­ably speeded up the modernization process and strongly shaped the appearance of Portuguese cities. The ongoing financial crisis with rising poverty and criminality, as well as ghettoization, heightens the tense atmosphere. As news of forest fires and police raids were reported, I was told that the crisis and the heat are driving people crazy. It became important to decipher and describe this discomfort towards Portugal. A country with a formerly glorious past. Seemingly empty cities. A state of continuous melancholy. A fear of being spoken to. A fear of revealing that I am a foreigner. The light isn´t warm, it scorches skin, trees and landscapes. This journey to Portugal is an exploration of the feeling I carry — a simultaneity of foreignness and familiarity. The photographs are a portrait of a country I am choicelessly connected to. The loneliness that overcomes me in Portugal still has no release.​

Bio
Ricardo Alves Ferreira Nunes

*1986, Germany

2014 — 2017 Master, HFK Bremen, Germany
2010 — 2014 Bachelor, FH Dortmund, Germany
2012 Srishti, Bangalore, India

www.ricardonunes.de
instagram / @afnunes_

 

Future Rust, Future Dust by Loïc Vendrame

 
 

Future Rust, Future Dust

BY LOÏC VENDRAME

This long-term documentary project across several countries around the world aims to analyze the urban and architectural impact of the last world financial crisis and the burst of the real estate bubble.
Through a "concrete tsunami" exploration of ghost cities, aborted tourism projects, unused infrastructures, or roads leading to nowhere, this project plunges us into a post-apocalyptic atmosphere, vestige of this modern age mixing economic failures, corrupt elected officials, megalomaniac investors and dreams of home-ownership.
Witnesses of this big waste of – often public – money, these modern ruins hide human and ecological tragedies: indebted and defrauded people, homes finished but abandoned when so many people can’t find a place to live, and Nature disfigured for nothing, even in areas protected by law.

In a documentation process of showing the persistence of abandonment and incompleteness of these ‘non-places’ many years after the crisis, the visual approach combines aestheticism and graphism, while retaining these unfinished constructions in their surroundings landscape to reinforce the absurdity of these concrete skeletons, frozen in time, while Nature begins to slowly return back at its place.


‘The Spanish Sahara, the place that you'd wanna
Forget the horror here
Forget the horror here
Leave it all down here
It's future rust and it's future dust
I'm the fury in your head
I'm the fury in your bed
I'm the ghost in the back of your head’

Foals - Spanish Sahara (2010)

Bio
Geographer, now working in humanitarian NGO, and self-taught photographer, Loïc passion's for urban photography was born in 2012. Firstly attracted by contemporary architecture, he explored metropolises to find colorful and graphics architectural subjects, seeking to sublimate volumes and perspectives.

Since 2016, his photographic work shifted towards the study of the dynamics and changes of urban and peri-urban landscapes, through a monographic photo study documenting abandoned, stopped or under-utilized modern spaces throughout the world caused by the financial and real estate crisis.

www.loicvendramephotography.com
instagram / @loic_vendrame_photography