Lukas and I worked together to curate a small exhibition for the 2018 Orleans Architecture Biennale. The exhibition, curated under the theme ‘Walking Into Someone Else’s Dream’, focuses on the subject of dreams and design. Lukas and I worked on a small installation called ‘Sleepwalker Archive’, which was a set of 100 books, magazines and various texts that address the topics of sleepwalking, dreams and design. The compilation was very unique and uncanny, combining works from Freud and Immanuel Kant, to comic books and Dr. Seuss. Our aim was to create a collage of associations – much like an uncanny dream. The past year at MIT, and the various literature and resources I have been exposed to, helped give another angle and aspect to what Lukas has began to curate before our collaboration. I was specifically able to help to insert texts that come from architectural history, as well as social theory.
We then turned to designing the actual installation – limiting ourselves to a collection of 30 books out of the initial 100, and creating a sort of collaged aesthetics for the display; our aim was to create a ‘graphic topography’ of books and publication, which can be recombined into one large image.
The second part of my time in Berlin was dedicated to archival work at the Aedes Architecture Gallery and at the Tchoban Drawing Museum. In those I was exposed to both the current concerns within the Berlin architectural discourse, as well as to historical issues that the gallery and museum have dealt with in the past. I was also able to participate in several symposiums and discussion panels that took place at the Aedes Campus, with prominent architects and historians.
I believe that both my work with Lukas – who is a substantial pillar in the design community in Berlin – as well as the connection I made in the two institutions – Aedes and Tchoban – have granted me access to more work and more collaboration in the future. I have been invited during my stay in Berlin to serve as a guest juror on an architecture studio review, which was a collaboration between Aedes and Pratt Institute. I have also started to plan a collaboration of such character between Aedes and MIT, hopefully in the next summer.
