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Genius Loci (Spirit of Place)

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Genius Loci (Spirit of Place) Genius Loci (Spirit of Place) 1 Ai Weiwei Genius Loci (Spirit of Place) Daniel Buren On the occasion of the 14th International a government weapons amnesty there by Tony Cragg Architecture Biennale in Venice, curated this melting down guns to make an equal quantity of year by Rem Koolhaas, the Lisson Gallery and shovels. These in turn were used to plant the Richard Deacon Berengo Studio present an exhibition addressing same number of trees, 1,527 to be precise, both the complex relationship between art and the in Culiacán and in different locations around Spencer Finch public realm. By existing beyond the walls, the world. Despite Reyes’s Palas por Pistolas ‘public’ art can help define the character of its seemingly representing the inverse impetus Dan Graham location, sometimes functioning harmoniously and proportion of Kapoor’s monumental symbol, and sometimes in tension with the architecture it also responded to its location, arguably Shirazeh Houshiary or landscape it inhabits. also managing to distill something of the spirit of its place, albeit in a very different way. Anish Kapoor In classical mythology, the Latin term genius Richard Long loci refers to a protective spirit attached to As experienced producers of large-scale public a place –– a guardian who watches over their commissions, Lisson Gallery and Berengo Tatsuo Miyajima part of the world and imbues it with a special Studio present a range of major artworks by character. In modern reality, we still need to 19 artists, both inside and outside the historic Julian Opie be able to identify a genius loci in order to give Venetian Palazzo Franchetti. The exhibition us an understanding of our environment. One also includes models, drawings and proposals Pedro Reyes way of negotiating between the public realm of public projects –– some unrealized, some and the individual is through common symbols –– temporary, some permanent –– along with Santiago Sierra in the form of works of art –– that help us photographic documentation of actual objects identify with our landscapes. Whether those as they exist out in the world, all displayed Lee Ufan symbols add, enhance, complement or even in a special laboratory room, within a structure come to represent their surroundings depends designed by the London-based architectural Koen Vanmechelen on the impact and intention of the works of practice Carmody Groarke. Joana Vasconcelos art being placed. Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate, for example, was conceived as a central focus The exhibition focuses on real (as opposed to Lawrence Weiner for the Millennium Park in Chicago, drawing notional), life-size sculptures, most of which the sky and the surrounding buildings into its are not propositions for bigger or more public Richard Wentworth seamless, curved stainless steel surface, in works, but simply standalone examples of keeping with the artist’s wider aesthetic. Yet, how artists engage with material, space, place, Tokujin Yoshioka since its unveiling in 2006, Kapoor’s undulating architecture, fellow humans and nature. In the and essentially abstract sculpture has become final reckoning, surely the test of any great an unofficial emblem of the city, a tourist work –– public or private –– is that it helps us attraction in its own right and, perhaps, better appreciate, contemplate and understand the contemporary definition of a genius loci. the world around us. When architects, artists, developers, and planners fully understand Another public project that reflected and this, then the results, in terms of public art, perhaps improved its environment, began can truly attain the character of genius. around the same time in Culiacán, a city in Mexico known for its drug-related gun crime. Greg Hilty, Lisson Gallery The Mexican artist Pedro Reyes reacted to Patrizia Spadafora, Berengo Studio Legend and Locus At the first post-war meeting of CIAM (Congrès an arresting architectural stage, of course –– Internationale d’Architecture Moderne), is charged with boosting the economic profile Norberg-Schulz had observed the Anglo-Italian of depressed regions. I. By contrast, architecture fancies itself as architect Ernesto Nathan Rogers valorising beleaguered, or at least beholden to functional the pre-existent ambience of ‘place’. Ears thus Contemporary public space is characterised Let us begin with the myth: In the spiritual constraints of housing the activities of ringing with the humanist tremors shaking by a tension between economic forces, political pantheon of the ancients, beneath the peaks being. Together with disciplinary contingencies the foundations of High Modernism, his own agendas and cultural resistance. In the parlance of the gods, and among fertile banks, valleys of legal, political, economic and technological theories on the genius loci sought to restore of urban regeneration, the closest living and coastal plains inhabited by man, lived structures, this allows architecture profess- balance through focussing on the essential, relative of the genius loci goes by the name of semi-divine deities; dryads, nymphs and genii ionals to imagine the artist as a relatively elemental qualities of space. ‘place-making’ –– an equally mystical process apportioned to guard, guide, and sometimes liberated figure. by which denuded space is made into ‘place’. meddle with the busy work of life on Earth. An emphatic observation of found conditions When rampant speculation threatens to strip Every fountain, fortress, and forest glade had The Venice Biennale is itself an illustration would allow for place-specificity, for a place of all identity, art is drafted in to its own genius loci, a personified spirit who of the uneasy yet eager relationship between acknowledgment of the genius loci without endow a ‘neutralised’ ground with meaning dwelled in a particular place. In order for these two ‘worlds’. The biennial art exhibition exclusion. Belonging would be found in materials, and focus. (Occasionally architecture is called a structure to stay intact, the genius of its has been running since 1895, while architecture landscape, topography, and the play between upon to perform similar feats of repair, albeit location had to remain. Genii locorum were had to wait for almost a century before being ground, sky, enclosure and threshold. These conflicted by its own role in the undoing.) not immortal, and the gods were apt to punish formally acknowledged. In 1980, the first fundamental qualities would provide ground those who would cause the protective spirits ever designated Venice Biennale of Architecture against which to establish both continuity For the artist, this is a heavy load. If genius to flee or fall. was directed by the Roman architect Paolo and difference. ‘The role of the architect is loci originally corresponds to authenticity Portoghesi, under the title ‘The Presence of to make people see the special nature of the and preexistence –– whether in cultural residue Geese, associated with the ‘genius’ of the Roman the Past’. location’, Norberg-Schulz wrote; architecture’s or material, sensuous quality –– the aim of Capitol, woke the consul Manlius Marcus in insertion into the natural order would provide conferring identity and meaning is dubious. 390 BC, allowing him to defend it from invading Just as Portoghesi was devising his 1980 it with significance. When the values embodied in artworks are not Gauls. The Tower of London –– and the Biennale –– which included the theatrically reflective of values of their viewing public, then kingdom –– will stand, according to legend, as postmodern ‘Strada Novissima’ installation –– Norberg-Schulz’s theories firmly established any attempt to confer authenticity –– or to long as its six guardian ravens remain. Gradually, the Norwegian theorist Christian Norberg- a place for phenomenology in architectural reconcile between deities and earthly planes –– however, anthropomorphic readings of the Schulz published his influential book, theory; against this history, one could map a will be unsuccessful. In the legislative phrase slid towards a more ineffable sense of Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology parallel rise of abstract and conceptual shifts negotiations that hitch public art to develop- authenticity. Taken up by landscape designers of Architecture. within art, as well as the rise of Land art ment, redemption is sought through inscrutable, during the nineteenth century, genius loci and site-specific projects. However, Norberg- spectacular commissions (wherein the art usually suggested the indistinct, yet ineluctable An aside: It’s funny to note how things turn Schulz’s genius loci, in its quest to resolve objects, like real estate, act also as invest- virtue of a place due to its environmental, in circles. Several years prior to this first the profound and the particular, does not ments). This effectively repositions corporate cultural or spatial values. A spiritual pre- architecture Biennale, Portoghesi and some allow for the shifting paradigms of culture, interests as the provision of public good. existence, which ensures continuity between friends took a walk around the Roman forum. where the politics of place and meaning are all things borne of a specific location: the It was Portoghesi’s partner, the engineer in continual flux. Yet to allow for a public encounter with art in idea of the genius loci endures, as does our Vittorio Gigliotti who pointed out, to a young the space of everyday life, outside of the rarified fascination with the particularities of place. and rapt Norberg-Schulz, an ‘altar’ to
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