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LIGA, Space for Architecture is an independent platform founded in Mexico City in 2011 that promotes Latin American contemporary architecture through exhibitions, conferences and workshops.
Calle Doctor Erazo 176,
Col. Doctores, Del. Cuauhtémoc
CP 06720 Ciudad de México
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2018
The Split Wall. TERREMOTO #13
Terremoto and LIGA jointly edit the new issue of this Mexico-based contemporary art magazine, that will be focused on architecture.In this issue we will reflect together with architects, artists and theoreticians on the way in which structures to house, organize and influence human life are planned and built, together with forms of resistance that contribute to destabilizing the pillars of the neoliberal system.
In the mirage of functionality, the collateral effects of a developmental principle that (re)produces itself, ignoring gentrification, dispossession and displacement, become invisible. How can architects address their practice critically, establishing a space for dialogue that reverses the exercises of power? Under what working parameters can honest processes be established, where architecture works in favor of the well-being of the community? How to think about architecture on the basis of an active heterogeneity that is able to connect the past and the future in order to sustain a hybrid present?
Collaborators: Laura Burocco, María Berríos, Tadeo Cervantes, Mónica Chuji, Dorothée Dupuis, Ruth Estévez, Jorge Lobo, Iván López Munuera, Andrea Pacheco, Godofredo Pereira, Fernando Portal, Marina Reyes Franco, Elisa Silva, Vere Van Gol.
https://terremoto.mx/issue/issue-13-la-pared-dividida/
2017
ramble Interludes: Guerrero Chimalli - Sebastian
Walk: Guerrero Chimalli - Sebastian
July 16, 2017
Guides: Juan Carlos Cano and Axel Arañó
(...Every governor that praises himself in using a guayabera in the beach is interested in a monumental Sebastian sculpture in his town. It doesn’t matter if they are unfinished works, such as the Millenium Arcs in Guadalajara, or the Mexican Miscegenation Monument, lost, like the arrival of Quetzalcoatl, in the Caribbean Sea in front of Chetumal, or the Mexican government incomprehensible gift to Ireland that spoiled a calm sea landscape with a sculpture called Awaiting the Mariner.
And, of course, all of them carrying a message of national optimism or regional pride, the Paulo Coehlo of sculpture. Between all of them, the work that most exemplifies that Mexican monumentalism can be a metaphor for the contemporary national reality is Guerrero Chimalli. This gigantic red robot is located on Bordo Avenue on Xochiaca, in the heart of Chimalhuacan, State of Mexico. Antorcha Campesina territory. The area is full of opportunities, as is all the east of Mexico City’s Metropolitan Area. Along this avenue a camellón with magnificent opportunities of turning into a lineal park of 8 kilometers is spread out. Today, there are multiple activities, automobile sales, technical equipment, malls, garbage dumps, educational areas, old cars scrapyard, areas in disuse. And suddenly, a small park appears, a Mexibus bus station, and Guerrero Chimalli…)
Juan Carlos Cano
Chimalhuacán
The town of Chimalhuacán gives its name to this municipality, located west of the State of Mexico between Nezahualcóyotl and Chalco. Located in the north hillside of the Los escudos (The Shields) hill, from which it gets its name, it fulfilled the purpose of an embarkation port towards Tenochtitlan. From its slopes, to date, volcanic rocks that were once used for sculptures and buildings for the Mexica capital are extracted.
During the seventies, the uncontrolled growth of Mexico City reached this population changing completely its landscape’s physiognomy, simultaneously bringing settlers from other parts of the country that have surpassed by far the number of original inhabitants. Many of these new settlers are affiliated or related to the political group called Antorchista (Torchist) or Antorcha Campesina (Rural Torch).
If the adjoining municipality of Nezahualcóyotl already had the identity of a huge coyote in one of its most important crossroads, Chimalhuacán’s identity couldn’t stay behind. In reference to the mythology of its founding, in the year 2008, it was commissioned to the sculptor Sebastián the building of a monumental structure that will represent the Chimalli warrior. Finished in 2014, this 60 meter high monument has added to the traditional shield a notorious mallet, which can be easily mistaken with a torch, as a forceful symbol of the numerical and political supremacy of the newcomers. The monumental and defiant gesture in which it addresses the city seems to confirm the sentence of one of its founders: “In the near future, all Mexico will be Chimalhuacán”.
Axel Arañó
ABOUT THE RAMBLE INTERLUDES. The Ramble Interludes cycle proposes a series of walks; each one will depart from a space that have a special connection with art and the city and will focus on a specific urban context, a certain neighborhood. Representatives of ten different spaces will guide subjective visits to the urban surroundings the building belongs to; they will point out spontaneous situations that have sparked their interest or anonymous architectural landmarks. This series of encounters thus sets out to investigate the relation between the architecture of the city and its users through case studies where different communities and collectives are connected with their districts thanks to cultural programmes.
ramble interludes. San Miguel Chapultepec
Walk: San Miguel Chapultepec
Guide: TallerTornel with Rodolfo Díaz Cervantes
July 13, 2017
“I thought in a thousand options. Historical context, architecture, botanics, hiding places, fun moments, galleries, urban crossroads, loss of identity, cafes, gyms, modernity, diners, workshops.
Tough decision, especially knowing that this neighborhood contains these things, and many more.
I made the decision of taking a messy route, where we will stop at some geographical spots that refer us to these topics. Along the way we can look for randomness of fate and recognize the things that happen in the “San Miguel” (they call it that now).
The modern apartment complex at Juan Cano street, the Hare Krishna temple at Tiburcio Montiel, the house with the minuscule facade at Ceballos, the closed street at Protasio Tagle, Tornel 20. Without a doubt, my dilemma is not resolved, knowing and inhabiting the neighbourhood since 2010, I have witnessed a lot of changes, moments, places and situations, political successions, however, becoming a guide in this heterogeneous tour will allow me to show a little of the identity that reveals the San Miguel neighbourhood in its own everyday experience.”
Rodolfo Díaz Cervantes
ABOUT THE RAMBLE INTERLUDES. The Ramble Interludes cycle proposes a series of walks; each one will depart from a space that have a special connection with art and the city and will focus on a specific urban context, a certain neighborhood. Representatives of ten different spaces will guide subjective visits to the urban surroundings the building belongs to; they will point out spontaneous situations that have sparked their interest or anonymous architectural landmarks. This series of encounters thus sets out to investigate the relation between the architecture of the city and its users through case studies where different communities and collectives are connected with their districts thanks to cultural programmes.
ramble Interludes: La Merced neighbourhood
Walk: La Merced neighbourhood
Guide: Atea
July 7, 2017
Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire was founded in 1324 in the location where the aztec people found an upright eagle on a cactus devouring a snake. The location of the foundational myth occupied what we know today as the Merced neighbourhood, which through the addition of territories built on top of chinampas (long and narrow floating fields on a shallow lake bed, artificially built up), three more neighbourhoods would be incorporated, thus building the very splendid and large city that Cortez found at his arrival.
Our ramble starts from the Merced underground stop and it will snake through one of the oldest neighborhoods of Mexico City, known as Teopan – the place of the Gods – during the Mexica Empire, as San Pablo Teopan during the Colonial Age, and nowadays named Merced district.
ABOUT THE RAMBLE INTERLUDES. The Ramble Interludes cycle proposes a series of walks; each one will depart from a space that have a special connection with art and the city and will focus on a specific urban context, a certain neighborhood. Representatives of ten different spaces will guide subjective visits to the urban surroundings the building belongs to; they will point out spontaneous situations that have sparked their interest or anonymous architectural landmarks. This series of encounters thus sets out to investigate the relation between the architecture of the city and its users through case studies where different communities and collectives are connected with their districts thanks to cultural programmes.
Ramble Interludes: Juárez neighbourhood
Walk: Juárez neighbourhood
Guide: Aeromoto
June 22, 2017
The ramble starting from Aeromoto, headed by choreographers Juan Francisco Maldonado, Nadia Lartigue and Esthel Vogrig. It moves through the maze of streets named after European cities that remind us of the history of the democracy and the different shapes that powers has taken around the world; urban clusters that at certain times carried out protests and civil movements. This imaginary cartography, the coordinates of which are arbitrarily determined by the signage of Juarez district, is an excuse to observe what happens in Mexico City downtown, only a few steps away from the famous parade “del Angel al Zocalo”.
ABOUT THE RAMBLE INTERLUDES. The Ramble Interludes cycle proposes a series of walks; each one will depart from a space that have a special connection with art and the city and will focus on a specific urban context, a certain neighborhood.
Representatives of ten different spaces will guide subjective visits to the urban surroundings the building belongs to; they will point out spontaneous situations that have sparked their interest or anonymous architectural landmarks.
This series of encounters thus sets out to investigate the relation between the architecture of the city and its users through case studies where different communities and collectives are connected with their districts thanks to cultural programmes.
Ramble Interludes. Tlatelolco
Walk: Tlatelolco
Guide: Cráter Invertido
June 16, 2017
“We will walk to scrutinize the different layers of the city, we will arrive as far as our historical memory gives us the opportunity to observe. We will cross Colonia Santa María la Ribera, like a snake that glides over the remaining ruins of a series of crashes: an earthquake opened the way. We will tread ancient stones and modern stones and a modern tunnel will join for a certain time two spaces now dislocated. Suddenly, the fight for decent housing is intertwined with an Olmec head inside a door held in the illusion of almost invisible grutescos. We will establish an oral route from the Ribera de San Cosme to Tlatelolco, crossing Nonoalco as an anachronistic passage of a modernity surpassed by its fastest double: the neoliberal. Inside the tunnel, cavity of memory, we will walk on a skin of disjointed information going through all the cracks and fissures that the real city is leaving in its path. As a guide we will use publications that will be spinning the stories and as a counterpoint we will address the Nazi History in Mexico What is the Nazi history of Mexico? “
Cráter Invertido
ABOUT THE RAMBLE INTERLUDES. The Ramble Interludes cycle proposes a series of walks; each one will depart from a space that have a special connection with art and the city and will focus on a specific urban context, a certain neighborhood. Representatives of ten different spaces will guide subjective visits to the urban surroundings the building belongs to; they will point out spontaneous situations that have sparked their interest or anonymous architectural landmarks. This series of encounters thus sets out to investigate the relation between the architecture of the city and its users through case studies where different communities and collectives are connected with their districts thanks to cultural programmes.
Ramble Interludes: Santa María de la Ribera/Doctores-Obrera neighbourhood
Walk: Doctores-Obrera neighbourhood
Guide: Ladrón Galería (Marco Aviña, Marek Wolfryd and Wendy Cabrera Rubio) and historia Guadalupe Aguilar Guzmán
May 23, 2017
This ramble arises from a collaboration with historian Guadalupe Aguilar Guzmán, a Doctores neighbourhood chronicler who has worked in an investigation of the neighbourhood for seven years, seen from its social and economic characteristic.
ABOUT THE RAMBLE INTERLUDES. The Ramble Interludes cycle proposes a series of walks; each one will depart from a space that have a special connection with art and the city and will focus on a specific urban context, a certain neighborhood. Representatives of ten different spaces will guide subjective visits to the urban surroundings the building belongs to; they will point out spontaneous situations that have sparked their interest or anonymous architectural landmarks. This series of encounters thus sets out to investigate the relation between the architecture of the city and its users through case studies where different communities and collectives are connected with their districts thanks to cultural programmes.
Ramble interludes. Santa María de la Ribera
Walk: Santa María de la Ribera
Guide: La Embajada
May 16, 2017
The tour through Santa María la Ribera (SMLR) neighbourhood suggested by La Embajada goes through this multicultural zone where diversity is revealed through dozens of schools, laundry rooms, bakeries and typical restaurants. The meeting point was Kiosco Morisco: an emblematic place in the heart of Santa Maria La Ribera district that was manufactured in Pittsburg and built at the end of the 19th century by José Ramón Ibarrola as the Mexican Pavilion at the 1886 World’s Fair in New Orleans and at the Exhibition of San Luis of 1902.
Along the way, we walked through some of the district’s centenarian streets, named after their illustrious inhabitants of the past and other personages, such as the writer Amado Nervo, the diplomat, essayist and poet Jaime Torres Bodet, the mineralogist and painter Dr. Atl, the doctor and novelist Mariano Azuela, and the teacher, lawyer, play-writer, journalist and politician Eligio Ancona.
ABOUT THE RAMBLE INTERLUDES. The Ramble Interludes cycle proposes a series of walks; each one will depart from a space that have a special connection with art and the city and will focus on a specific urban context, a certain neighborhood.
Representatives of ten different spaces will guide subjective visits to the urban surroundings the building belongs to; they will point out spontaneous situations that have sparked their interest or anonymous architectural landmarks.
This series of encounters thus sets out to investigate the relation between the architecture of the city and its users through case studies where different communities and collectives are connected with their districts thanks to cultural programmes.
Ramble Interludes: Historical Centre neighbourhood
Walk: Historical Centre neighbourhood
Guide: Casa Vecina
May 11, 2017
For Ramble Interludes, the curatorial team of Casa Vecina propose Bodily Planes, a guided tour through the Historical Centre neighbourhood in collaboration with the National School for the Blind with Esaú Daniel Montes Cornelio, Octavio Eduardo Báez Salgado, José Ismael Viveros Monroy and Miguel Ángel Nava Jiménez. A project that establishes new sensory approaches to the city.
ABOUT THE RAMBLE INTERLUDES. The Ramble Interludes cycle proposes a series of walks; each one will depart from a space that have a special connection with art and the city and will focus on a specific urban context, a certain neighborhood. Representatives of ten different spaces will guide subjective visits to the urban surroundings the building belongs to; they will point out spontaneous situations that have sparked their interest or anonymous architectural landmarks. This series of encounters thus sets out to investigate the relation between the architecture of the city and its users through case studies where different communities and collectives are connected with their districts thanks to cultural programmes.
Ramble Interludes: Obrera Centro
Guide: Obrera Centro Workshop (Marcos Castro, Mauro Giaconi, Alejandro de Villar and Arturo Dib)
May 4, 2017
Founded in an irregular way in the mid 1800’s, without having officially installed basic services until the beginning of the XIX century, the Obrera neighborhood has been distinguished for its irregular streets, with the existence of hundreds of workshops dedicated to manual trades and shops, from carpenters cabinet makers, cobblers, blacksmiths, engravers, mechanical technicians, lathe operators, to taxidermists and jewelers.
ABOUT THE RAMBLE INTERLUDES. The Ramble Interludes cycle proposes a series of walks; each one will depart from a space that have a special connection with art and the city and will focus on a specific urban context, a certain neighborhood. Representatives of ten different spaces will guide subjective visits to the urban surroundings the building belongs to; they will point out spontaneous situations that have sparked their interest or anonymous architectural landmarks. This series of encounters thus sets out to investigate the relation between the architecture of the city and its users through case studies where different communities and collectives are connected with their districts thanks to cultural programmes.
2016
Threefold Interludes. Mimi Zeiger, Ana Paula Galindo and Alejandro Hernández
Dialogue: Mimi Zeiger, Ana Paula Galindo and Alejandro Hernández
August 23, 2016
For the second event in the series, an experimental conversational structure was employed around visual culture, speed and the types of filters and the level of reflection with which we absorb and react to stimuli that are codified for us in the form of images. The three guests, Mimi Zieger, architecture critic based in Los Angeles, philosopher Alejandro Hernández and architect Ana Paula Galindo took part in a virtual ping-pong match, in a dynamic that involved throwing out images for the other players to comment on.
ABOUT THREEFOLD INTERLUDES. The Threefold Interludes series aims to transform the traditional conference format of a speaker facing an audience by using a non-hierarchical conversation structure involving at least three participants who provide feedback to each other in real time. In turn they intend to explore different spatial and program arrangements that motivate alternative dynamics of discussion. In this regard, LIGA seeks to foster an innovative format for each occasion, with the aim of expanding the spectrum of possibilities and involving all those present.
studio Interludes. Thomas Glassford House Studio
Studio Visit: Thomas Glassford House Studio
June 29, 2016
ABOUT STUDIO INTERLUDES. How does architectural space influence artistic production—and vice-versa? This is the question to be examined by means of a series of visits to the homes and studios of leading Mexican artists. The investigation will address the connections between a spatial and sensorial context—visual, auditory, material—and the work that is conceived or created within it. The discussion will successively advance more deeply, over several months, into the creative atmosphere in which a number of a key artists produce their work. Each event literally evolves in situ, with a specific character arising from the personality of the space visited, and of the person who inhabits it.
In this way, this series establishes a conceptual link between the traditional journeys made by modern architects to visit emblematic works from antiquity, and the contemporary practice of studio visits.
studio Interludes: Danh Vō House
Studio visit: Danh Vō House
Guides: Area (Héctor Módica, Carlos Ledezma and Lourdes del Río)
June 9, 2016
ABOUT STUDIO INTERLUDES. How does architectural space influence artistic production—and vice-versa? This is the question to be examined by means of a series of visits to the homes and studios of leading Mexican artists. The investigation will address the connections between a spatial and sensorial context—visual, auditory, material—and the work that is conceived or created within it. The discussion will successively advance more deeply, over several months, into the creative atmosphere in which a number of a key artists produce their work. Each event literally evolves in situ, with a specific character arising from the personality of the space visited, and of the person who inhabits it. In this way, this series establishes a conceptual link between the traditional journeys made by modern architects to visit emblematic works from antiquity, and the contemporary practice of studio visits.
studio Interludes: Graciela Iturbide Studio
Studio Visit: Graciela Iturbide Studio
Guides: Taller | Mauricio Rocha + Gabriela Carrillo
June 2, 2016
ABOUT STUDIO INTERLUDES. How does architectural space influence artistic production—and vice-versa? This is the question to be examined by means of a series of visits to the homes and studios of leading Mexican artists. The investigation will address the connections between a spatial and sensorial context—visual, auditory, material—and the work that is conceived or created within it. The discussion will successively advance more deeply, over several months, into the creative atmosphere in which a number of a key artists produce their work. Each event literally evolves in situ, with a specific character arising from the personality of the space visited, and of the person who inhabits it. In this way, this series establishes a conceptual link between the traditional journeys made by modern architects to visit emblematic works from antiquity, and the contemporary practice of studio visits.
Threefold Interludes: Sam Auinger, Pablo Kobayashi and Pablo Padilla
Lecture-performance: Sam Auinger, Pablo Kobayashi and Pablo Padilla
May 10, 2016
As a part of the sonic art project Between Limits, the Goethe Institute in Mexico City and Singuhr Projects of Berlin invited the composer and Austrian sonic artist Sam Auinger to participate in an artistic research residence from mid April to mid May 2016 in Mexico City. The first event of the Threefold Interludes is the completion of this stay. Sam Auinger will establish a dialogue with architect Pablo Kobayashi and composer Pablo Padilla, combining the talk with sonic demonstrations.
ABOUT THREEFOLD INTERLUDES. The Threefold Interludes series aims to transform the traditional conference format of a speaker facing an audience by using a non-hierarchical conversation structure involving at least three participants who provide feedback to each other in real time. In turn they intend to explore different spatial and program arrangements that motivate alternative dynamics of discussion. In this regard, LIGA seeks to foster an innovative format for each occasion, with the aim of expanding the spectrum of possibilities and involving all those present.
Studio Interludes: Melanie Smith Studio
Studio visit: Melanie Smith Studio
April 28, 2016
ABOUT STUDIO INTERLUDES. How does architectural space influence artistic production—and vice-versa? This is the question to be examined by means of a series of visits to the homes and studios of leading Mexican artists. The investigation will address the connections between a spatial and sensorial context—visual, auditory, material—and the work that is conceived or created within it. The discussion will successively advance more deeply, over several months, into the creative atmosphere in which a number of a key artists produce their work. Each event literally evolves in situ, with a specific character arising from the personality of the space visited, and of the person who inhabits it. In this way, this series establishes a conceptual link between the traditional journeys made by modern architects to visit emblematic works from antiquity, and the contemporary practice of studio visits.
Studio Interludes: Carla Fernández and Pedro Reyes
Studio Visit: Pedro Reyes and Carla Fernández House Studio
Guides: Carla Fernández and Pedro Reyes
March 31, 2016
ABOUT STUDIO INTERLUDES. How does architectural space influence artistic production—and vice-versa? This is the question to be examined by means of a series of visits to the homes and studios of leading Mexican artists. The investigation will address the connections between a spatial and sensorial context—visual, auditory, material—and the work that is conceived or created within it. The discussion will successively advance more deeply, over several months, into the creative atmosphere in which a number of a key artists produce their work. Each event literally evolves in situ, with a specific character arising from the personality of the space visited, and of the person who inhabits it.
In this way, this series establishes a conceptual link between the traditional journeys made by modern architects to visit emblematic works from antiquity, and the contemporary practice of studio visits.
Studio Interludes: Vicente Rojo Studio
Studio Visit: Vicente Rojo Studio
Guide: Felipe Leal
March 10, 2016
ABOUT STUDIO INTERLUDES. How does architectural space influence artistic production—and vice-versa? This is the question to be examined by means of a series of visits to the homes and studios of leading Mexican artists. The investigation will address the connections between a spatial and sensorial context—visual, auditory, material—and the work that is conceived or created within it. The discussion will successively advance more deeply, over several months, into the creative atmosphere in which a number of a key artists produce their work. Each event literally evolves in situ, with a specific character arising from the personality of the space visited, and of the person who inhabits it.
In this way, this series establishes a conceptual link between the traditional journeys made by modern architects to visit emblematic works from antiquity, and the contemporary practice of studio visits.
2015
Undisciplined Interludes: Adriana Lara
Installation: Less Is More
December 3, 2015
The last event of the Undisciplined Interludes cycle took place in the PH of LIGA, where the Mexican artist Adriana Lara occupied the space of LIGAs informative booklet with the conceptual character work Less is more, a reflection on the commercial value of the publications in line with the value of its contents. The piece, first exposed in 2014 in the section of advertisers of the magazine Spike Art Magazine # 41, it is to occupy space of a publication with a digit representing a minimum value by a decimal number. This figure becomes longer while its value is reduced by the number of pages that are acquired.
The artist uses the maximum of the German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for the title, in the context of a capitalist economy that has subverted the initial concept of the sentence. If the principles of modernism originally advocated the virtues of simplicity and standardization in favor of more affordable housing, today apply to a construction industry that seeks to reduce costs for increased production of questionable quality . Thus generating huge profits within a constant crisis triggering any room that just globables financial crisis. Paradoxically, according to economic theory lead to lower costs it is synonymous with efficiency and thus welfare.
ABOUT UNDISCIPLINED INTERLUDES: This cycle explores the relationships that spawn in the intersection of disciplines and collaborative work. Through the work of invited authors in Theater, Cinema, Literature and Visual Arts, a series of events around space appropriation are proposed. The encounters on this cycle are interventions in themselves which allow the artists to test and expand their practice from analytic, thoughtful and creative methods similar to the processes of architectural projection.
Undisciplined INTERLUDES. José León Cerrillo
Installation: Oh My Cannibal
November 12, 2015
The fifth Interlude of our cycle is conducted by José León Cerrillo. The artist revisits his project Oh My Cannibal—presented in New York in 2008— and presents his site-specific installation Carne at LIGA’s Penthouse as an echo of the original project.
Oh My Cannibal took as its starting point the figure of the Cannibal proposed by Oswald de Andrade in his Manifesto Eating (1928) transposed to local considerations, particularly central iconographies of the construction of the Mexican modernity. Thus, the project you met in a sort of index references to Mario Pani, University City and the Sculptoric Space of Mathias Goeritz, resolved as:
1. Serigraphs on paper and acetate in a rack poster, which were interrupted, completed and encimaban to be seen and / or swallowed
2. A structure taking proportions of the buildings collapsed by Multifamiliar Juarez demolished after the 1985 earthquake, which served as inspíration for a poem by Augusto de Campos
3. A blocked window with lime and water in the way in which black works are done
ABOUT UNDISCIPLINED INTERLUDES: This cycle explores the relationships that spawn in the intersection of disciplines and collaborative work. Through the work of invited authors in Theater, Cinema, Literature and Visual Arts, a series of events around space appropriation are proposed. The encounters on this cycle are interventions in themselves which allow the artists to test and expand their practice from analytic, thoughtful and creative methods similar to the processes of architectural projection.
UNDISCIPLINED INTERLUDES. Pablo López Luz and Sandra Rozental
Dialogue: Pablo López Luz and Sandra Rozental
November 5, 2015
Pablo López Luz presents the relationships he establishes between the pre-Hispanic past and contemporary architecture. Lopez Luz showed his latest book Pyramid (2014) and his new photographic series Neo-Inca made in Peru. Mexican anthropologist Sandra Rozental complemented the presentation with considerations on the use of architecture as a tool for representation of national identity.
Rozental established at the same time a dialogue between the work of Luz Lopez and his own film work. She showed a fragment of her film La Piedra Ausente, directed with Jesse Lerner, who narrates the transfer of large monolith that represents a pre-Hispanic deity of water, “the largest carved stone in America” from the village of San Miguel Coatlinchan up to the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.
ABOUT UNDISCIPLINED INTERLUDES: This cycle explores the relationships that spawn in the intersection of disciplines and collaborative work. Through the work of invited authors in Theater, Cinema, Literature and Visual Arts, a series of events around space appropriation are proposed. The encounters on this cycle are interventions in themselves which allow the artists to test and expand their practice from analytic, thoughtful and creative methods similar to the processes of architectural projection.
UNDISCIPLINED INTERLUDES. José Arnaud-Bello
Installation: Uncivilised Conduct Code and Some Applications
October 29, 2015
The third event of the Undisciplined Interludes was Mexican artist José Arnaud-Bello’s installation Uncivilized Conduct Code and Some Applications. Arnaud-Bello proposed stress to the limit the relationship between furniture and architectural space. For this, an inordinate number of chairs in the Penthouse and terrace of LIGA was introduced, silting both places. The chairs were placed according to preset management modules that created labyrinthine paths between them.
In the artist’s words “When I share a space with others variables multiply. It’s not just my body in space, but the modes of interaction that I have with others; . the ways in which our bodies change the space for others [This installation] allows you to share one of the things that most interest me in and out of the practice of architecture: the relationship and mutual determination between a social organization and a spatial-material condition. ”
ABOUT UNDISCIPLINED INTERLUDES: The Undisciplined Interludes cycle explores the relationships that spawn in the intersection of disciplines and collaborative work. Through the work of invited authors in Theater, Cinema, Literature and Visual Arts, a series of events around space appropriation are proposed. The encounters on this cycle are interventions in themselves which allow the artists to test and expand their practice from analytic, thoughtful and creative methods similar to the processes of architectural projection.
Undisciplined Interludes. Ramiro Cháves
Lecture: Ramiro Chaves
October 15, 2015
The Argentinian artist Ramiro Chaves talks about his new body of work on video: De Como Ser Amabilis, 2015. A project filmed in Parque las Americas in Mérida, México that revolves around identity, memory and nationalism based on the recurring appearance of the work of Manuel Amabilis Domínguez, architect from Yucatán, México and main exponent of the art decó neoindigenism style. This video portrays, through a non-linear narrative, the use of certain public spaces. The sockets are connected by the thread of the appearance of the X either as a graphic symbol, as part of architecture or three-dimensional object. X as central and as defining a particular place also permeates other works of Chaves as part of the XXXXXXXXXX project.
About Undisciplined Interludes: This cycle explores the relationships that spawn in the intersection of disciplines and collaborative work. Through the work of invited authors in Theater, Cinema, Literature and Visual Arts, a series of events around space appropriation are proposed. The encounters on this cycle are interventions in themselves which allow the artists to test and expand their practice from analytic, thoughtful and creative methods similar to the processes of architectural projection.
Indisciplined Interludes. Teatro Ojo
Lecture-Performance: Suspension of Activities
September 10, 2015
The artistic group Teatro Ojo presented a space character narrative which dislocated temporality to make way to the past. Having history as it scope, Héctor Bourges and Teatro Ojo group, took us through time to key moments of political violence in the history of Mexico City through a 360-degree panoramic tour supported by images made in situ over the glass surface of LIGA’s penthouse facade, and supported by pictures, audio and video that appear and overlap to the city’s skyline. In the same context, they shared with us the urban actions made in public spaces since the group was founded in 2002.
About Undisciplined Interludes: This cycle explores the relationships that spawn in the intersection of disciplines and collaborative work. Through the work of invited authors in Theater, Cinema, Literature and Visual Arts, a series of events around space appropriation are proposed. The encounters on this cycle are interventions in themselves which allow the artists to test and expand their practice from analytic, thoughtful and creative methods similar to the processes of architectural projection.
2014
Interlude 15
Lecture: Didier Faustino
July 3, 2014
During his lecture at LIGA, Didier Faustino described his work as a “personal architecture” where user´s experience is the key of his projects. Faustino presented some recent works as: Double Happiness, Hong Kong (2009); Doppelgänger (Paris, 2011); Hand Architecture (New York, 2009); Opus Incertum (2008) and We Can´t Go Home Again (Paris, 2013), and also a brief explanation of the project he is currently developing in Mexico, the new headquarters for Fundación Alumnos47.
Interlude 16
Lecture: Chic By Accident + Ludwig Godefroy
July 3, 2014
Emmanuel Picault is a renowned figure in the beau-monde of Mexico City: antiquarian, old book trader, specialist in Mexican Modernity but attracted to the pre-modern, Mexican countryside enthusiast, extravagant handcraft collector and ruins lover, this Frenchman (naturalized Mexican) has been flirting since his arrival to the capital city with architecture and design through his gallery Chic by Accident.
In 2010 he associated with the architect Ludwig Godefroy, another frenchman cought by Mexico City’s synergy to create Chic by Accident Project + Ludwig Godefroy. Godefroy’s professional experience, endorsed by his cultural and professional experience in Barcelona (Enrique Miralles), Holland (Rem Koolhaas) and Mexico City (Tatiana Bilbao), provides the duo with the ability to face more complex projects.
Approaching the world of Emmanuel Picault and Ludwig Godefroy is an inspiring trip that goes through History, exploring its different scales, languages and continents: an animated collage of references, projects, objects, ruins and memories.
Interlude 13
Lecture: Andrés Jaque and Luis Úrculo
March 18, 2014
Andrés Jaque and Luis Úrculo discuss about architectonic strategies that promote new ways of sociability and community. Jaque will talk about his work at Oficina de Innovación Política in Madrid and New York, focused on the potentiality of domestic spaces and their quality of politically active urbanisms. Urculo, architect in formation but dedicated to artistic production, will talk about projects of different formats where graphic language/architecture/design boundaries fade, polluting processes, developments and approaches.
About Andrés Jaque: www.andresjaque.net
About Luis Urculo: www.luisurculo.com
2013
Interlude 12
Offsite Project: Lisbon Architecture Triennale
Rebarding
November 16, 2013
Fundación Alumnos47 and El Proyecto Sonidero present ‘Rebardeando/Rebarding’, a work dedicated to the painting of walls or fences, traditionally used as mass media for dances of sound systems (sonideros) and northern or rock music concerts. An element that was ubiquitous in Mexico City, the walls or fences have been progressively displaced to the margins of the metropolis.
The project consisted in taking the logos of the institutions participating in Close, Closer: The Institute Effect of the Lisbon Architecture Triennale and intervene them, creating designs in synch with this particular popular aesthetic that prevails in those paintings. These logos were then painted in October 2013 on a wall of Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, a suburban area of Mexico City, with the support of local painters ‘Publicidades Rance’. This whole process was documented by photography and film and will be presented at MUDE, Lisbon.
Interlude 11
Walking tour: Ruta de la Amistad– Mexico 68
Luis Javier de la Torre
August 3, 2013
LIGA, in collaboration with Patronato Ruta de la Amistad A.C., organized a walking visit through the first phase of the relocation project of the sculptures designed for Mexico ’68, guided by Luis Javier de la Torre, founder of the project. We visited 12 of the 22 sculptures located in between the ‘Periférico’ and ‘Avenida Insurgentes’. Throughout the event we spoke about the beginning of the project conceived by Mathias Goeritz in collaboration with Architect Pedro Ramírez Vázquez as well as the ongoing rehabilitation project which includes the restoration of the public space and the landscape of ‘el Pedregal de San Angel’.
Interlude 10
Installation: The Story of the Sinking Ship Which is a Ship and Yet is Not
Iñaki Bonillas
April - May 2013
OMR in collaboration with LIGA, present ‘The story of the Sinking Ship which is a ship and yet is not’, a site-specific installation created by Iñaki Bonillas for the attic of Augusto H. Álvarez and Juan Sordo Madaleno’s 1950 building, located at Avenida Insurgentes Sur 348, which, occupying a small, triangular city block, bears a peculiar resemblance to a boat. This ephemeral exercise will be on view in May 2013, and will be open from 10am to 2pm, and 4pm to 7pm.
Interlude 09
Launch: Office KGDVS 2G Magazine
Kersten Geers and Wonne Ickx
March 7, 2013
LIGA in collaboration with Arquine and Gustavo Gili organized Interludes 09. Kersten Geers and Wonne Ickx discussed about the architecture drawing, photography and representation in relation to the recently released monograph of OFFICE KGDVS edited by 2G.
Interlude 08
Book launch: ATLAS of projects for Mexico City
Alberto Kalach and Javier Toscano
January 30, 2013
Architect Alberto Kalach and philosopher Javier Toscano talk about urbanism in Mexico City and the power of tools like Google Earth to visualize and design this city. During the lecture the book ATLAS of projects for Mexico City, made by Kalach in 2012, will be discussed.
“Nobody really gets to know Mexico City. There are as many Mexico Cities as there are inhabitants. Everyone lives his city differently, according to their activities, their routes and their habits. Over the course of time, through millions of partial decisions, some less and some more fortunate, the city has been transformed, giving it its actual ‘informal form’, a shape hard to define as real form, but rather as a system, an organism, as the exoskeleton of the urban man that eats away the territory. An insensitive crust that destroys lakes, fields and woods; that dries out, turns into deserts and kills. Stopping the growth of Mexico City seems impossible. Could we direct it?
This ATLAS of projects for Mexico City sets from a dominant physical reality and aims, using imagination and knowledge as a tool, towards a new conformation of a possible city: more beautiful, efficient, and sustainable. The document gathers thirty seven projects in a conceptual level of diverse scales and topics, seeking not only to arouse interest and knowledge to the urban problematic of Mexico City but also to point out specific solutions”.
Alberto Kalach
2012
Interlude 07
Void Temple
Mirador Las Cruces
Mirador Espinazo del diablo
Pilgrim Route Refuge
The Sanctuary
Gratitude open chapel
Offsite Project: Cine Tonalá
Ruta, movie
November 30, 2012
After its premiere at the XIII Architecture Biennale in Venice, LIGA and Cine Tonalá proudly present for the first time in Mexico: ‘RUTA’. The movie takes us to the mountains of Jalisco to introduce us nine architectonical pieces that form part of the project, The Pilgrim Route. The first screening will take place on Saturday November, 24 as part of the ‘Corredor Cultural Roma Condesa’. The movie will show at 9:00 pm at Cine Tonalá. LIGA and Cine Tonalá are furthermore organizing a special screening in presence of the architects Tatiana Bilbao, Derek Dellekamp and Rozana Montiel on Friday November, 30. The movie will show at 8 pm and afterwards there will be time to dialogue with the architects.
Each year, hundreds of people take part in the Ruta del Peregrino (Pilgrim’s Route) – a 117 kilometer pilgrimage through the mountains range of Jalisco that is centered around the adoration to the Virgin of Talpa. This religious voyage has been taking place since the 17th century and represents the pilgrim’s act of faith carried to penitence. In an effort to provide the route with better conditions, nine architecture firms collaborated to build seven architectural landmarks that provide shelter, services and outlook points for the pilgrims.
The Master Plan, designed by Tatiana Bilbao, Derek Dellekamp and Rozana Montiel, was presented in a special exhibition to resonate with the Venice Biennale 2012 theme “Common Ground”. The nine practices involved since the start of the project are Ai Weiwei (Fake Design), Luis Aldrete Arquitectos, Tatiana Bilbao, Christ & Gantenbein, Dellekamp Arquitectos, Alejandro Aravena (Elemental), Godoylab, HHF Architects, and Rozana Montiel (Periférica).
About Estudio de Producción: www.estudiodeproduccion.net
Interlude 06
Lecture: Thoughts on Weight and Lightness. Object, Space and Void
Luis Felipe Ortega
September 27, 2012
Luis Felipe Ortega’s lecture establishes a review of his work by means of the some recurrent keyword and themes: time, space, void, fragility, lightness and weight. He will talk about the different references and displacements from literature and philosophy that inform his creative process: from Michel Foucault and the writer Céline to the architecture of Rem Koolhaas.
Interlude 05
Offsite Project: Museo Experimental El Eco
Workshop: Exquisite Corpse
June 23, 2012
LIGA, TOMO and el ECO organized an afternoon in which well-established architects and artists shared their paper with younger colleagues by means of the ‘exquisite corpse’ principle. With participations from: Jose Castillo y Saidee Springall (Arq 911), Teddy Cruz, Miquel Adria, Enrique Jezik, Tania Kandiani, Franscisco Pardo (AT103), Salvador Arroyo (TEN), Alejandro Rivadeneyra, Tatiana Bilbao, Jorge Ambrosi, Esteban Suarez (BNKR), Juan Pablo Maza (FRENTE), Eric Meyenberg, Alejandro Hernandez, Wonne Ickx, Abel Perles, Victor Jaime y Carlos Bedoya (PRODUCTORA), Surella Segu y Armando Hashimoto (EL CIELO), Arturo Ortiz, Lucio Muniain, Jorge Munguia, Andrea Griborio, Ivan Hernandez (LUDENS) and many more.
A game invented in 1925 by Surrealists Yves Tangui and Jacques Prevert: cadavre exquis would be defined in the Dictionnaire Abregé du Surréalisme as “a game of folded paper that consist of composing a phrase or drawing by different people, without any of them fully knowing about the involvement of the others”. The Surrealists took the body as a basis, to later distort it intuitively through sketch. At the end, a joint work is achieved where the author disappears and the outcome acquires value by itself.
Interlude 04
Offsite project: Cine Tonalá
Daalder & Koolhaas
March 12, 2012
The documentary film festival DISTRITAL and LIGA, Space for Architecture, present one of the latest works of Dutch filmmaker Rene Daalder, who wrote in 1969, together with the architect Rem Koolhaas, the experimental movie The White Slave. His last documentary – still under development – is focused on the biography of his close friend Rem Koolhaas.
Rene Daalder has written and directed 6 feature films as well as numerous television and music related projects. In his native Holland he worked as a team with Jan de Bont, made numerous films with Dutch documentary filmmaker Frans Bromet, and wrote several screenplays with his frequent collaborator Rem Koolhaas. Together they made some highly acclaimed, award winning movies, culminating in Daalder’s directorial feature film debut The White Slave. Often operating at the cutting edge of his medium and heavily involved with special effects, software development and music, Daalder has gained worldwide recognition as a pioneer of Virtual Reality and digital motion picture technologies.
About Cine Tonalá: www.cinetonala.com
Interlude 03
Lecture: L´Africa e´vicina
Peter T. Lang
February 17, 2012
Peter T. Lang, professor of Theory and History by the Stockholm Royal Institute of Art, revises the evolution of the architectural discipline in post-war Italy, specially focusing on experimental design. T. Lang talks about the cultural transformations that took place during the 60s and 70s in Italy, using as a reference the exhibition Italy: The New Domestic Landscapes, organised in New York’s MoMA in 1972 by Emilio Ambasz, and in which Superstudio, Archizoom, 9999 Space Electronic, Gae Aulenti, Joe Colombo, Ugo La Pietra, Gaetano Pesce, Gruppo Strum, participated.
About Peter T. Lang: www.petertlang.net
2011
Interlude 02
Lecture: Holcim Awards Latinoamérica
November 26, 2011
The Holcim Awards is an International competition that recognises innovative projects on sustainable development of the cities and the respect for the environment. In the lecture at LIGA some of this edition’s most distinguished projects by Mexican architects and urbanists were presented: José Castillo and Saidee Springall (arquitectura 911), from the urban regeneration master plan for Ciudad Juárez; Jorge Ambrosi and Pablo Rodolfo Padro (Pardo Cué Architects) with his project “Ecological Conscience and Recreation of Reserves on Banderilla, Mexico”; Gustavo Madrid Vázquez (Space Between Time Architects) and the railway network recovery project of Oaxaca Valley and Elías Cattan (Taller13 Regenerative Architecture) with the Master plan of the urban transit passageway and sanitation of the Piedad river in Mexico City.
Interlude 01
Round table: About Pilotis and other recurring images
Participants: Santiago Borja, Michel Blancsubé and Lorenzo Rocha
October 13, 2011
Santiago Borja’s work emphasises in craft production and traditional knowledge of non-western cultures, reconfiguring its value in the present. His most recent projects arise from the formal similarities between indigenous techniques and procedures and the Magical Thinking contained in the Modernist Architecture line of thought. In his interventions, Borja often collaborates with artisans, where dialogue and exchange of knowledge become key to the final resolution of each project.