Science versus fiction

View of the exhibition "Science Versus Fiction", Bétonsalon - Center for Art and Research, Paris, 2009. Image: Aurélien Mole

Artists: Berdaguer & Péjus, Olafur Eliasson, Judith Fegerl, Ceal Floyer, Héhé, Guillaume Leblon, Vincent Mauger, Michel Paysant, Tobias Putrih, Ariel Schlesinger,
Alberto Tadiello, Luca Vitone
Scientifics: Denis Bartolo, José Bico & Benoît Roman, Benjamin Haffner &
Rémi Margerin

Curators: Mélanie Bouteloup and Hélène Meisel

Imagination is just as impor­tant in the arts as in the sciences. New dis­cov­eries, new advances in science, even from a ret­ro­spec­tive point of view, do not follow a log­ical path. They raise new ques­tions, they open up the pos­si­bility of new avenues of explo­ration, just as new cre­ations in art do [1].

View of the exhibition "Science Versus Fiction" with Vincent Mauger, Chateau Millésime, 2009. Bétonsalon - Center for Art and Research, Paris, 2009. Image: Aurélien Mole

In the ZAC Paris Rive Gauche dis­trict, as yet still a building site, the exhi­bi­tion “Science versus fic­tion” – bor­rowing its title from an art­work by Tobias Putrih - will attempt to uncover and open up the rela­tion­ship between archi­tec­ture and sci­en­tific exper­i­ments. Somewhere between the archi­tect and the engi­neer, the fig­ures of the artist and the researcher inter­pose them­selves, united by a taste for exper­i­men­ta­tion and DIY, both caught between the intu­ition of a hypoth­esis and its prac­tical appli­ca­tion. "Science versus fic­tion" will pro­pose a prag­matic approach to archi­tec­ture, with exam­i­na­tion, exper­i­men­ta­tion and testing of mate­rials. By mul­ti­plying the pos­si­bil­i­ties of inter­pre­ta­tion, a sen­si­tive and per­sonal approach to archi­tec­ture will be encour­aged. "Science versus fic­tion" is looking to ques­tion the sup­posed inno­cence of artistic prac­tices, the abstrac­tion of sci­en­tific research and the arro­gance of archi­tec­tural pos­turing. [2] In order to do this, we will put limits to the test: by breaking the boundary that dis­tin­guishes the art object from the sci­en­tific object, by testing the phys­ical and psy­chic qual­i­ties of human and archi­tec­tural bodies, and by revealing the sur­face of mate­rials. In this instance, "versus" in fact means bringing together rather than an oppo­si­tion.

The exhi­bi­tion will bring together works resulting from prospec­tive tests and anal­yses (much as in psy­cho­anal­ysis) but will also include the obser­va­tion of sev­eral sci­en­tific exper­i­ments car­ried out in the lab­o­ra­tory: research pro­to­cols inter­ro­gating the resis­tance of mate­rials or the mechanics of fluids (the cir­cu­la­tion of drops of water put under ten­sion, the move­ment of sand in the wind, the study of organic life...). By studying the molec­ular, the details and the inci­den­tals, it is pos­sible to under­stand the whole. Architecture is an assembly of living forms. Therefore, "Science versus fic­tion", by bringing to bear cer­tain exper­i­mental pro­to­cols taken from the study of nat­ural phe­nomena, could allow the pos­si­bility of a dif­ferent archi­tec­ture: quasi organic, reac­tive, more per­sonal, even pre­car­ious and resulting from our sen­si­tive and sen­tient expe­ri­ence of the world. Neither harmful or ben­e­fi­cial, this archi­tec­ture would be as unstable and unpre­dictable as the rapidity of a chem­ical reac­tion.

Rather than thinking about "archi­tec­ture for archi­tects" born from rig­orous plan­ning, it would be a case of envis­aging con­struc­tions dreamt up by end-users/ama­teurs, lib­er­ated from con­formism and pure util­i­tar­i­anism. The imag­i­na­tion of the passer-by could also be put to con­crete, useful appli­ca­tions. There is no magazine of prac­tical archi­tec­ture. By putting aside the usual spe­cialist models, posters and high-tech sim­u­la­tions, we are acknowl­edging the empir­ical knowl­edge, sen­si­bility and con­sid­er­able imag­i­na­tion of the indi­vidual user. The inhab­i­tant, prey to the deter­minism of urbanism, reveals them­selves to be actively par­tic­i­pating in the fur­nishing of their own ter­ri­tory. According to Yona Friedman, "The power of deci­sion legit­i­mately belongs to the future user". [3] Therefore their psy­chology and their capacity to appro­priate what they see will be anal­ysed, in rela­tion to per­ceiving and feeling the built envi­ron­ment. Psychological tests and sci­en­tific method­ology will be our pre­ferred tools. Then it will be a case of returning to less spec­tac­ular, more straight-for­ward and con­crete prepara­tory plastic stages. "Experimental objects". In the public and domestic space, the artist’s studio and the sci­en­tist’s lab­o­ra­tory, the "cooking up" of con­struc­tions is played out, intu­itive, some­times visionary, some­times failed, favourable to fan­tasies and utopias.

Urbanism con­di­tions behaviour and gen­er­ates emo­tions; in this respect, it is also a science of the senses. Le Corbusier wrote: "Architecture is making moving rela­tions, using raw mate­rials". [4] Certain archi­tec­tural edi­fices, despite being born of utopic desires, have shown them­selves to be unliv­able or anx­iety-inducing. The ZAC Paris-Rive Gauche dis­trict can seem cold and unwel­coming as the bird flies: right-angled, grey and cuboid. However, the exhi­bi­tion has an ambi­tion to sup­plant this aerial point of view with a phys­ical, tac­tile approach which will once more allow the build­ings to be seen as "poetry-inspiring objects", as Le Corbusier termed them.

Download the press release (only in French)