Thoughts on an exhibition (Domesticated Mountain)

Recently I've been thinking about what it means for an architect to show in a gallery. Or what it means for a artist to present work that is perceived as architecture.

It became clear that the project and the exhibition should overlap. Of course the project was what was being exhibited, but the exhibition should be a project too, perhaps a project that informs the project itself. Almost inevitably, exhibitions are projects.

The main narrative of domesticated mountain takes place inside the video, the vehicle that carries the project, and it is also the object that occupies a spot between art and architecture, if only because it borrows it's form from film.

(but when an art installation is inhabitable, 

and actually a functional room in the space of the gallery, is it still art?)

All the other objects are more or less straightforward art or architecture: a large scale installation and short video fragments seem to be part of the art, and plans, section and model seem to be part of the architecture presented.

if, according to the video, we don't need buildings anymore, are the architectural plans and sections drawings of an un-proposed home? And could we say that they have crossed over to art, since they are not proposals?

Personally I was never interested in the what is what question, because the edges of the field have always been blurry, and writing a blogpost can be as architecture or as art as anything.

Plus, I do sometimes think about whether we indeed need buildings, and whether the only role for architects is to produce more objects, and if that is still a valid role. 

Couldn't it just be wrong to make any more buildings? Aren't we just serving the empire with products that in the end we despise? Doesn't every newly "developed" area just remind us of how scary is our postneoliberal reality? And could buildings play a role other than suspicious development tools for a post-capitalist landscape of perpetual crisis?

Domesticated Mountain

curated by Maria Cristina Didero

Gloria Maria Gallery, Milan