Eduardo Souto de Moura and Angelo de Sousa
Out Here: Disquieted Architecture
14/09 – 23/11/2008
11th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia
www.dgartes.pt/outhere/index.htm
The Directorate-General for the Arts of the Portuguese Ministry of Culture has the pleasure to announce Out Here: Disquieted Architecture, by Eduardo Souto de Moura and Angelo de Sousa, curated by Joaquim Moreno and Jose Gil. Out Here: Disquieted Architecture is the Official Portuguese Representation at the 11th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia.
The Official Portuguese Representation at the 11th International Architecture Biennial of Venice is a project developed by two curators, architect Joaquim Moreno and philosopher Jose Gil. They problematise the idea of developing architecture as a theme for work that could tackle the experience of architecture in a contemporary landscape marked by questions of ephemerality, transience, frequent paradoxes and continuous movements in time and space.
The curators invited architect Eduardo Souto de Moura and the visual artist Angelo de Sousa to produce a multidisciplinary proposal that temporarily will be part of the Fondaco Marcello, the Pavilion of Portugal, on the Grand Canal.
The challenge issued by the commissioners to the creators took shape in the conception of Out Here: Disquiet Architecture, an intervention that invites the visitors to follow a path of pendular movements between mirrors and reflections through a field of images that amplify ad infinitum their experience of relating to and observing the locale.
In the exterior space, going along the Grand Canal or looking at the Fondaco Marcello from the other bank, the visitor will see a mirrored surface that makes the building disappear, creating an empty space, an absence in the plane formed by the line of houses that are located on the bank of the canal. This astonishing facade mirrors images in motion and reflecting the surrounding landscape palaces, water, boats on the canal and given the different points of view obtained by the observer on his journey, they reveal multiple perspectives/ perceptions of the city.
Inside the Fondaco the architectural proposal is characterised by a differentiated use of space. In a first room, that has been darkened, the visitor will have a perception of the reverse of the facade, the structure and the materials that support it, and in an inner room he himself is the subject of a process of reflexion sustained by reflecting walls and mirrored columns, where different views of his self come together.
Joaquim Moreno and Jose Gil explain that Eduardo Souto de Moura and Angelo de Sousaís discourses can intersect productively and move forward in exploring this ìDisquieting Architectureî.
More information and contacts at www.dgartes.pt/outhere/index.htm
