When artist duo Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber become interested in an architectural site, they're not content looking up the official history or playing with the structure of the building, they have to go deeper, as they confess in todays lunch talk held in the Alte Saline Hallein.
As an example, they explained how they visited the famous IIT buildings by Mies van der Rohe and were at first at a loss, sure that there was nothing they could unearth anymore about the building. Then they found out that parts of the complex had caused the destruction of buildings that had housed a vibrant black scene back in the 1950ies. They found poems mourning the loss of those centers, all of this of course completely unrecorded in the official cronicles.
Another of their projects was a giant housing complex in Caracas, Venezuela, that was supposed to abolish the so-called barrios, a nicer expression for slum, in that area, but ended up being squatted as the dictator that comissioned it go overthrown, in the end becoming a slum itself. It's interesting to notice that what was once a prestige project quickly disappeared from all official publications concerning the city of Caracas.
"This", says Sabine Bitter, " is what interests us, places that once held specific promises, that were of some sociopolitical importance. Then we dig and find more things surrounding them, and in the end we can build projects." Projects that can lead to surprising results, like in the Caracas one where they took the venezolan constitution overhauled by Chavez - with the help of the people, of course - and transformed all this into an ascii text forming the superblocks mentioned before. This image was mounted in subway stations in Caracas, leading people to proudly point to parts they had a hand in crafting, but also to wildly discussing current politics. Asked if there were attempts at destruction, they decline. "But maybe only because the stations are well-monitored." Having gleaned a glimpse of their approach, I for one am sure, if it had happened, they would have found it interesting. mp
