Ana Džokić & Marc Neelen

(STEALTH.unlimited)

From Venice to Tirana Biannual – fire and other burning issues

 
For the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2008 STEALTH.unlimited co-curated the Dutch Pavilion with the project ‘ARCHIPHOENIX – Faculties of Architecture’. Their response to the overall topic ‘Out There: Architecture Beyond Building’ was triggered by the recent burn-down of the Faculty of Architecture in Delft. Instead of thinking in terms of an exhibition, the Dutch Pavilion was turned into a stage for research and exploration and a debate platform focusing on faculties for architecture – in the sense of its multiple capacities, powers, capabilities. For a week, the project took the opportunity to engage a vast network of architects and other professionals in a direct exchange either as speakers, interviewers, or moderators. The spatial set-up for the pavilion changed on a daily basis to accommodate the line of activities and an on-site instantly edited video and book production unit. While the pavilion has been acting as a temporary ‘school’, the produced content aimed to become an imaginary curriculum for architecture beyond division on education and practice.

A year later, in autumn 2009, STEALTH curated one of the three episodes of the Tirana International Contemporary Art Biannual (T.I.C.A.B). In an attempt to critically respond to the current development of Tirana – through ‘wild’ urbanization, fast capital investment and set within the horizon of a neoliberal context, this 4th Biannual edition expanded beyond the field of visual arts, into the domain of architecture and processes of urbanization. By involving architects, artists, cultural workers, activists and journalists from the Western Balkans region and the wider global context, the Biennial’s Episode 2 examined the deficiencies resulting from the highly individual and profit driven development of contemporary cities – and pointed at alternatives that emerge from these cracks, opening the horizon to different contributions and involvement of citizen’s to what the future of our cities could be.

Ana Džokić and Marc Neelen collaborate since 2000 in STEALTH.unlimited, a practice based between Rotterdam and Belgrade. STEALTH shape opportunities where various fields of investigation meet and where thinking about possible future(s) of the city are mobilised. In their work shifts of perspectives – from visual culture, urban research, spatial intervention, to cultural activism – are a key element. By creating devices that can take the form of a specific intervention in physical space, an occasion for exchange of knowledge, but also a piece of software, they produce test conditions to probe the shared authoring of urban space and culture.

Wednesday, 10.03.2010. at 19.00
Galerija Miroslav Kraljević
Šubićeva 29 Triphala 1 pc