This volume devoted to work by Daisuke Kosugi is published in
conjunction with the exhibition of the same title, which is the third and
final instalment of The New Sanctuary. This exhibition series was
devised by Laura Herman and examines how architecture engages with the body
and the senses.
The body relies on the architecture of the home for the structuring of
day-to-day activities. But this architecture, a fixed given, can form an
uncompromising backdrop, stifling the body in domesticity. Architectural
qualities represent certain ideas and persist over time in ways that our
bodies, habits and routines do not. What if our bodies are out of joint with
the architecture that surrounds us?
A False Weight is an experimental portrait of Tadashi, a
character based on the artist's father. Tadashi is a retired Japanese
architect and bodybuilder who has been diagnosed with an unusual and
incurable degenerative brain disease affecting his movements and daily
routines. In an architectural and domestic journey coupled to three phases
of the disease, the film reveals, through the medium of Butoh dance, the
inner conflict of a man torn between his desire for strength, efficiency and
independence and the acceptance of his rapidly declining body. Through its
repetitive sequences, the film introduces into the architecture of the home
a sense of time with a “human” dimension, one that is repetitive rather than
linear, emancipating rather than oppressing.
Featuring a conversation between Daisuke Kosugi and Laura Herman and an
essay by architectural theorist Zuzana Kovar, this publication explores the
possibilities of the disabled body to emancipate itself from un-adapted
architecture and the ideals of efficiency, while discussing the fallacy of
contemporary representations of the ideal body.
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibitions at Jeu de Paume, Paris, from October 15, 2019, to January 19, 2020, CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, from October 31, 2019, to February 13, 2020, and Museo Amparo, Puebla (Mexico), from September 28 to October 14, 2019.
The Satellite Programme of contemporary art exhibitions was started by the Jeu de Paume in 2007. Since 2015, this programme of exhibitions has been organised jointly by the Jeu de Paume and the
CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux. Each programme is conceived by an internationally renowned curator (Fabienne Fulchéri, María Inés Rodríguez, Elena Filipovic,
Raimundas Malašauskas, Filipa Oliveira,
Mathieu Copeland, Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, Erin Gleeson and Heidi Ballet). In 2019, it will also be presented at the Museo Amparo in Puebla (Mexico). Each exhibition is accompanied by a publication that was conceived as a carte blanche for the curator and artists. This series of books, each of which was created in close collaboration with a graphic design agency, forms an independent artistic space within the Satellite Programme.
The 12th Satellite Programme, titled
The New Sanctuary and curated by Laura Herman, proposes newly commissioned works by
Julie Béna,
Ben Thorp Brown and Daisuke Kosugi who, through their individual practices, consider the capacity of the designed environment to host, care and engage with the body and the senses. How does space determine the way we feel? Predicated on a sense of a threatening and hostile environment, one of the basic definitions of architecture is the provision of shelter and comfort for the human body. The common idea of the dwelling as a “surrogate skin” is derived from the nineteenth-century German architect Gottfried Semper, who described the animal pen, made out of woven skins and leaves, as the origin of the architectural “private” space. Today, this understanding of architecture as an enveloping spatiality seems no longer to apply. If architecture is to be reconsidered as the meeting point between different cultural references, practices, rituals, desires and needs, how can we imagine a space of sanctuary for today's world?
Laura Herman (born 1988 in Brussels) is a graduate of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College in New York and holds a master's degree in Comparative Modern Literature. Laura workes as a curator at La Loge, Brussels, a space dedicated to art, architecture and theory. She is also an editor for
De Witte Raaf, a bimonthly art journal distributed in Belgium and the Netherlands. Her reviews and essays have appeared in
Mousse,
Frieze and
Spike Art Quarterly among other publications, and she has curated a number of exhibitions and events, including
Natural Capital (Modal Alam), BOZAR, Brussels;
Third Nature, Hessel Museum, New York;
Definition Series: Infrastructure, Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York; and
Wild Horses & Trojan Dreams, Marres, Maastricht.
Irene Sunwoo is a New York-based architectural historian, curator and writer. She is Curator of the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery and Director of Exhibitions at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). In 2015, she was Associate Curator of the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial. She is also the author of
In Progress: IID Summer Sessions (AA Publications, 2016), and her writing has appeared in
Grey Room,
AA Files,
Getty Research Journal,
The Avery Review and
Domus, among other journals. Her research has been supported and recognized by grants and fellowships from the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Graham Foundation, the Paul Mellon Centre and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.
Daisuke Kosugi (born 1984 in Tokyo, lives and works in Oslo) is a Japanese
artist. He is co-founder of the Louise Dany initiative in Oslo with the
artist Ina Hagen. His work has been presented at LIAF (Lofoten
International Art Festival), Norway; CPH:DOX 2017 (Special in NEW:VISION
Award), 11th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2016); and Malmö Konsthall,
Sweden (2016). He was awarded the 2017 French Prize by the French
Institute of Norway. In 2017, he was an artist-in-residence at WIELS,
Brussels, and in 2018 he was a resident at the Cité Internationale des
Arts in Paris. In spring 2019, he created a performance for “Move” at the
Centre Pompidou.
