PROJECT RUSSIA 41 Alexander Brodsky

Dostępność: na zamówienie Monographs on the subject of architects who are still in good health are commonly regarded as the equivalent of monuments to people who are still alive - they supposedly put their subjects on a divine pedestal and stamp their buildings and designs with the mark of 'eternity'. Brodsky's Oblako ('Cloud') Bar and Ice Pavilion no longer exist, and yet you'll find them in the journal you're now holding, and this gives them a kind of 'immortal' glory. However, periodicals such as our own cannot afford to sacrifice immediate relevance to current issues to a memorializing impulse. In the present case this immediate relevance is not simply a matter of the fact that Brodsky has been chosen to represent Russia with a one-man show at this year's Venice Bien-nale. An equally important consideration is that by devoting an entire issue to Brodsky we are able to examine a question of persistent pertinence - the role of personality (and the personal) in contemporary architecture. Does modern architecture have room for genuinely personal statement? And if so, then in what form, in what format, and in the name of what greater good? By its very nature architecture is collective. This is true both of the process by which architecture is created and of how it is perceived. During its realization, an architectural project passes through many different hands, but this does not mean that the quality of the final product suffers. Gothic cathedrals are no less attractive for the fact that they were built by dozens of unknown craftsmen. But is it possible for a heartfelt statement to be anonymous in our day? Ideas which once seemed unshakeable truths have lost their authority. And consequently the commonly accepted rules for formalizing such ideas have lost their legitimacy. That to which creators could subordinate their individuality in the past has gone. Now architects are called upon to 'talk' on their own behalf. And it's for this that you need the ability to be yourself. After all, no one's going to empathize with a bad actor. Brodsky is someone with whom we empathize. We empathize with his architecture just as we previously empathized with the 'paper' works he produced together with llya Utkin and with his art installations. With the latter, Brodsky's buildings and designs share a thematic similarity and a formal continuity. But there are also differences. And these differences are not just a matter of the fact that Brodsky now employs different means of self-expression. The nostalgic note which imbued his non-architectural, artistic, work is gone. Like an ecologist fighting to save wild animals under threat, Brodsky discovers objects and meanings which have been with suspicious constancy thrown out of our everyday lives and conserves them in graphic and sculptural images. You get the impression that as the twilight thickens he's hurrying to bring out into the light of day murky fragments of the past. When people spend time in the half-dark, their gaze loses focus - giving rise to a kind of 'idealistic fuzzi-ness' (Sloterdijk) typical of both those who live in the past and the shortsighted, and thanks to which even that which is most worthless seems poetically sublime. Architectural projects model the future rather than the past. The danger of reconstructing the past, however beautiful it may have been, is that you turn it into theatre and so come into conflict with the natural course of our lives. Brodsky avoids this conflict. His architecture makes the language of art more abstract and so more modern, while preserving a typical 'twilight' accent. In his work tokens of the past refer both to our own historical way of life but also to more distant ages, cultures, and countries; and, though they take on nostalgically charged imagery, they are not opposed to the present day. They flow smoothly into the present, peacefully taking their place by its side. The tranquility of this coexistence is a heart-warming sight: modernity ceases to be perceived as a drama in which all movement in a forwards direction is devalued by numerous losses. A state of pacification sets in -that feeling which it is the job of architecture, unlike other arts, to generate