Page 228 - Únete. Join us (Bienal de Venecia, 57 edición)

228 ¡ÚNETE! JOIN US! JORDI COLOMER
stands and screens. They are objects that remind me of this theatre on the roof of Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in Marseilles, a theatre that has both things in itself: theatre stages, like a staircase, and a screen, although those who sit there can only see the film or theatrical scene from the back, turning their heads or standing. Is this a deliberate reference?
JC: The Unité d’Habitation interests me a lot, for all the issues it raises as a model of social housing and its derivations in the famous suburban block, but above all because it was also inspired by the phalanstery by Charles Fourier – who has always fascinated me – and the idea of creating a community, with all its limits, flaws, and contradictions. This idea of the rooftop as a meeting place is – as we said before – something that has existed in Mediterranean culture, a place for conversations, encounters, and parties. Barcelona still celebrates the night of Saint John, the summer solstice, on the roofs, but it is now the festival that marks the exception, as does Carnival, the only day where access is allowed that the rest of the year is prohibited. At present we are witnessing the paradox that in all the cities of the world there are thousands of square meters of roofs, especially in the city outskirts, which are the result of the formal application of one of the principles of modern architecture, the flat roof, but in building them their primary use has been forgotten, they are closed and inaccessible. It is urgently necessary to rethink the spaces of the contemporary city, to jump over walls, to re-conquer them, and to imagine how to use them in another way ...
The theatre of the “Unité” that you mentioned, a stage with a wall, an object to be activated by its inhabitants, is somehow quoted, but I don’t think it can be seen in isolation: I think the most relevant is that system of confrontational stands, face-to-face, and the relationships that they empower, and for that I had sought references in utopian theatre projects, most of them never constructed, such as Archizoom’s “theatre of ideological encounter”.
FC: Yes, this Archizoom project is fantastic, I did not catch the reference. I also wonder if with this device there was a willingness to transform the viewers into actors in this new space. Let me explain: if I sit and watch a screen under which other people are sitting watching a screen above my head, suddenly we all form part of a scene. We are looking above our heads but it will be impossible not to look at each other, reciprocally, not to put in the same image the video and other people: it works like a mirror. What happened in this fragmented theatrical cavea that has exploded? Is it an attempt to integrate real life into your work? Can we inhabit a set?
JC: Indeed, the idea is that what happens in the space is as relevant as what is recounted on the surface of the screen: in the surface of fiction the screens illuminate the set, are multiplied, and the limits are blurred ... In that situation perception is more alert. Any gesture takes on great importance.
This proliferation of stands that occupy the entire length of the Pavilion in Venice is part of this strategy of showing the spatial components of the moment of the “spectacle”, to make them stand out. These confrontational stands, face-to-face, apart from Archizoom’s project, are recurrent in many utopian theatre projects by which I was directly inspired: for example, Ilya Golosov’s Great Synthetic Theatre Sverdlovsk, El Lissitzky’s Meyerhold Theatre of 1929, The