Ben van Berkel and The Theatre of Immanence

Ben van Berkel & the Theatre of Immanence is a combined art and architectural exhibition wherein the different parts in the exhibition are synthesized into a complete whole. The exhibition stages a theatre or space of communication: communication between the visitors and the exhibited works, between the virtual and the real, between the different visitors in the gallery and between the different parts in the exhibition. Throughout its period, the architectural installation will serve as a hub for various events including lectures, art performances, and hosted talks with invited guests, DJ-sessions that are to be broadcast and more.

For the exhibition, Ben van Berkel & the Theatre of Immanence (25.11.2007 - 13.01.2008), in Städelschule’s Portikus gallery in Frankfurt, Städelschule professors Ben van Berkel (of UNStudio) and Johan Bettum (Archi|Globe) and Luis Etchegorry teamed up to design the main physical installation, referred to as the Thing. The design was realised with the consultancy of architectural theorist writer, Sanford Kwinter, and an elaborate shape-projection light installation by MESO Digital Interiors (Frankfurt). The dynamic, digital projections embellished the white, wooden CNC-produced surfaces of the Thing with multiple, dynamic image-sets and presented a state-of-the-art case of visually augmented architecture.

With the help of MESO Web Scapes (Frankfurt), the exhibition was extended as a virtual, interactive exhibition space to the Internet where visitors enjoyed live visual and auditory feeds from the gallery, could influence the dynamics of the shape projections and leave text messages that were relayed audibly to the gallery.

Ben van Berkel & the Theatre of Immanence marked the end of the one-year long exploratory project, the Space of Communication, supported by Deutsche Telekom. This project comprised a group of international artists and architects investigating various aspects of the contemporary conditions for social interaction and communication. The exhibiting participants in this project are the architects Asterios Agkathidis, Brennan Buck & Igor Kebel, Jonas Runberger and Gabi Schillig and the artists, Florencia Colombo and Dani Gal. Integrated with the end results of this project, the Thing divided the gallery space in two. The upper level served as a theatre for a series of different events – from lectures, via symposia and talks, to art performances; the lower level housed an exhibition space. The two levels were separated by the perforated, volumetric and live surface of the Thing, whereas the cell-like perforations linked the two areas visually and audibly.

Of the exhibition, Sanford Kwinter said: “…Our contemporary civilization is almost totally given over to the bias for communication, so much so that the means and instruments of communication are already in many ways so layered, embedded and automatic that they are nearly invisible. One can easily imagine the day when all communication will have become so integrated into leisure and work activity that it will form the unconscious background to everything we do. At that point it will have effectively become 'immanent' to our world and our actions reviving perhaps the deepest and most ancient modes of social existence that first made us human. The Theater of Immanence may be seen as a preliminary test or probe into a future that may well await us.”

With the multiple layers of material and immaterial events and composite information flow, Ben van Berkel & the Theatre of Immanence presented an architecture of considerable spatial complexity. The design and reactive surfaces of the Thing represent an advanced synthesis in architectural production. Writing for Frankfurter Allgemeine praising contemporary design (30.12.2007), Niklas Maak referred to the Thing as the nuclear core of a possible new educational architecture. "As a landscape for thinking, the theatre appears as a modern-day amphitheatre," he wrote.

The many events, which were organized as part of the exhibition program, contributed to the holistic nature of Ben van Berkel and the Theatre of Immanance, an exhibition that saw space and time synthesized through the multiple-layers and structure of the show.

Background

The exhibition Ben van Berkel & the Theatre of Immanence marks the end of the one-year long exploratory project the Space of Communication, which has consisted of an international group of artists and architects investigating various aspects of the contemporary conditions for social interaction, and communication. The exhibition aims to present the artistic and architectural results of this project to the public.

While some of the projects exhibited inherently engage with new electronic technology, some take it for granted and others merely reflect upon it in a distant fashion. Common to all the projects is that they address the social and inter-relational aspects or spaces of communication. In this manner the projects insist on the relevance of art and architecture to which new technology can only add but not change the basic missions or functions. Needless to say, the emergence and current ubiquity of electronic media have had a revolutionary influence on the nature of spaces of communication. Even today, the electronic and digital technologies continue to change the conditions in which we relate and communicate with one another.

These facts underlie the existence of the project, the Space of Communication, and the project has been developed with a keen interest in the many relevant historical and contemporary achievements within the arts and architecture. The investigations in the Space of Communication have been undertaken in an ongoing discussion conducted through a series of seminars, Internet-exchanges and in project development efforts. The investigations have been guided by a series of invited specialists, first and foremost professor and architectural theorist, Sanford Kwinter (Rice University, Houston), and artist and professor Peter Hagdahl (Royal Academy of Arts, Stockholm).