Years of Solitude

Life is an ode to solitude.
A desire for distance, the pleasure of being far away.
Not that this is a necessity, but through a strange and mysterious collision of thoughts, living is the visceral need for a solitary nostalgia of imbalance.
Solitude is an expectation, a protection from the world.

Being able to be alone, this is the trial of the century.

This biennial is a call for an archipelago of solitudes.

The first edition of the Biennale d'Architecture d'Orléans represented a resistance to the linear narrative. We have attempted to test architecture, in its intensity, through words and fragments. The second edition is intended as “landscapes”: landscapes of solitudes throughout the world. The urgency is here.

This is how we came to add six associate curators to our ranks, who we have asked to tell us the tales of solitude throughout the world, where architecture is still a “promise” for freedoms that may be impossible to maintain.

The solitude of Arquitetura Nova confronted by the Brazilian dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s (Dreams Seen Up Close) is the focal point from which the second edition of the Biennial emerges. The figure of Fernand Pouillon, in this first sensitive monograph that we are dedicating to him (Mes réalisations parleront pour moi), is another way of presenting the political commitment of an architect. Between these two tutelary figures, in the public space, the Rue Jeanne d’Arc in Orléans is bedecked with the radical imaginaries of architects from the Arab world, who strive to smash any repressive identity constructs to smithereens (Al Majhoula min al-ard). The polyptych of the Biennial is completed, on the one hand, by an uncompromising analysis of the Mexican territory following the dismantlement of state facilities (From solitude to desolation). On the other hand, architecture in its most contemporary practice emerges like a mutant animal in which the ideas of creative artists from all disciplines are mutually contaminated (The Architectural Beast). A new promise for the future?

The Biennale d'Architecture d'Orléans has identified itself since its creation as a biennial of collections. Two aspects will set the tone of this orientation. Firstly, the invitation extended to the MAXXI collection in Rome in conversation with the project Waiting Land, by Stefano De Martino and Karen Lhormann. Then the monograph dedicated to one of the major figures of the Frac collection, Günter Günschel (Homo faber: un récit) in order to capture the permanency of architecture as destruction/reconstruction of natural landscapes.

We were saying that this Biennial is like an archipelago. Like any archipelago, there is an Aegean Sea that supports these islands. Our “Aegean Sea” will be an alphabet unpacking the notion of solitude—both desired and feared—and understanding it, from the work of Hejduk, to that of Absalon, Ahmed Mater, or Driss Ouadahi, Rajak Ohanian, and John Cage, and to the research of Bêka & Lemoine, or Lacaton & Vassal, who we have not asked to reveal their œuvre but rather the errant geography of their thought.

And all of the Biennial will hang on Julie Nioche’s Nos solitudes.

Artistic Director: Abdelkader Damani
General curators: Abdelkader Damani & Luca Galofaro

Associated curators:
Davide Sacconi, Dreams Seen Up Close
Pierre Frey, Mes réalisations parleront pour moi
Nora Akawi, Al Majhoula min al-ard 
Frida Escobedo & Luciano Concheiro and Xavier Nueno (iii), From solitude to desolation
Hernan Diaz Alonso, The Architectural Beast
Cornelia Escher, Homo Faber: un récit

Contact communication: Marine Bichon, marine.bichon@frac-centre.fr