Debate and baptism ERA21 #01/2015 Curating Architecture

ERA21, in collaboration with 4AM/Forum for Architecture and Media, is preparing a ceremonial launch of the first issue of the year 2015, ERA21 #01/2015, with the theme CURATING ARCHITECTURE. The event will take place on Thursday, March 26, at 8 PM in the variable cultural space PRAHA in the courtyard of the Pražák Palace in Brno, and it will include a discussion in which, alongside the architect and curator of the issue Jakub Kopec, the architectural theorist, curator, and publicist Jan Tabor and the theorist and historian of architecture, curator, and publicist Peter Szalay will also participate. Together, they will reflect on curating as speculation about architecture, exhibiting as a non-existent theory of architecture, or how one can capture attention through architecture nowadays.

The information revolution, both global and local at the same time, expands the physical living environment into volatile virtual spheres. The possibilities of new technological interfaces intertwine with contemporary social, ecological, and economic demands, together transcending the narrow concept of architecture as construction art. Architecture becomes a medium for emerging situations, generating, processing, and transferring an increasingly substantial data package.

The role of the mediator (curator) in the growing amount of information creates tagged pathways. In the words of Hans Ulrich Obrist, "an obscure profession whose significance was unknown to anyone has become very much watched." Various events, workshops, and interventions in public space, as well as websites, blogs, or printed publications and periodicals, have their curator alongside exhibitions. Curating permeates various fields and perhaps more than an independent profession, it is a certain way of critical thinking and action. A projective approach that can redefine the contemporary role of the architect. The singular creator/master transforms into an active mediator of architectural creation, based on interdisciplinary collaboration, processual methods, and bottom-up strategies.

The magazine's theme oscillates between curating as critical theory and practice, from exhibitions, cultural activism, and interventions in existing structures to temporary installations as laboratories of emerging architecture and interactive architecture and experiments with new technologies. The theoretical part, composed of two polyphonic interviews and four authored essays, intersects parallelly with seventeen selected realizations. The forthcoming discussion will build on one of the published interviews - Jakub Kopec with Jan Tabor and Slovak architect and educator Imro Vašek - allowing space for debate for the audience as well.

Participants
Jakub Kopec (*1983, Ostrava) is a licensed architect and curator. He is active in the associations SUPERLABOR and 4AM/Forum for Architecture and Media. He has participated in mapping projects Introspection and BAM - Brno Architectural Manual, exhibitions Compact City, Exposure of One Project, or Domografia and architectural realizations of exhibition installations (130 Years of Prague 7, Psychoanalysis of One Space, Podium, Hi5!, Baťa Cities, Jindřich Chalupecký Award 2012, REMAKE, etc.) and the cultural space PRAHA. Since 2012, he has been a member of the editorial board of the magazine ERA21.

Jan Tabor (*1944, Poděbrady) studied at the Technical University of Vienna and works as an architectural theorist, cultural publicist, and university educator. He is the curator of numerous exhibitions, such as Den Fuß in der Tür - Manifeste des Wohnens (2000) and Mega: Manifeste der Anmaßung (2002) at the Künstlerhaus in Vienna. He is the founder of the art collective in Mikulov near Znojmo and co-founder of f.e.a. - forum experimentelle architektur in Vienna. He lives in Vienna and in Mikulov near Znojmo.

Peter Szalay (*1982, Bratislava, SK) is a theorist and historian of architecture, curator, and publicist. He graduated from the Department of Art Science at the Faculty of Arts at Comenius University in Bratislava and completed a doctoral study at the Faculty of Architecture STU in Bratislava. He works at the Department of Architecture, Institute of Civil Engineering and Architecture of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. His thematic focus is primarily on the theory and history of modern architecture in the Central European region and its perception in the present. He is a co-author of publications such as Atlas sídlisk Bratislavy and Moderné a/alebo totalitné v architektúre Slovenska, and a permanent correspondent for the international architectural bimonthly A10. Since 2015, he has been a member of the editorial board of the magazine ERA21.