Please join us for a book launch and quasi-reading with Jimenez Lai to celebrate the publication of his new book Citizens of No Place. A manifesto, the book is an homage to other architects who drew, imagined, and told stories. Citizens of No Place was supported with a grant from the Graham Foundation and was published by Princeton Architectural Press. Lai is creating a customized limited edition of Citizens of No Place for the Graham Foundation, which will be available for purchase at the event. The talk will be followed by a book signing and reception in the Madlener House library.

Jimenez Lai is an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and leader of Bureau Spectacular. He graduated with a master's degree in architecture from the University of Toronto. Previously, Lai lived and worked in a desert shelter at Taliesin and resided in a shipping container at Atelier Van Lieshout on the piers of Rotterdam. Before founding Bureau Spectacular, Lai worked for MOS, AVL, REX, and OMA/Rem Koolhaas in Toronto, Rotterdam, and New York. In the past years, Lai has built numerous installations and has been widely exhibited and published around the world. Draft II of this book has been archived at the New Museum as part of the show Younger Than Jesus. In 2012, Lai was named a winner of the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects.

Renowned architect and former director of the Venice Architecture Biennale, Massimiliano Fuksas will discuss his major public and cultural buildings, including  recently finished and new projects under construction.

Massimiliano Fuksas (born 1944, Lithuania) graduated from La Sapienza University in Rome with a degree in architecture in 1969. He set up his first studio in Rome in 1967, added a second in Paris in 1989, and a third in Shenzhen, China in 2008. From 1998 to 2000 he was director of the VII International Architecture Exhibition in Venice: Less Aesthetics, More Ethics. Fuksas has been a visiting professor at several universities, including the École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris, the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste in Vienna, the Staadtliche Akademie des Bildenden Kunste in Stoccarda, and Columbia University in New York. He is the author of the architectural column founded by Bruno Zevi in the weekly magazine L’Espresso. Fuksas currently lives and works in Rome and Paris.

This event is co-presented by the Graham Foundation and the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago.

Irena Knezevic, Small Film About Architecture, 2012.

Join us for a series of talks and a conversation with graphic designer Jörg Becker, artist Irena Knezevic, and architect Jimenez Lai as we mark the last day of the five-week Breaking Glass seminar.

Jörg Becker: if. iffer. the iffest.

Irena Knezevic: World Without Art

Jimenez Lai: Sensibility vs. Convention in Graphics

Jörg Becker is a German Typographer and(!) non-Expert. He is an Assistant Professor at University of Illinois at Chicago. Before graduating with a Master of Design at Post St Joost Academy in Breda (Netherlands), Becker communicated for the German Government and its Ministries, several German Artists (e.g Hans-Jürgen Breuste), Cultural operators (e.g. Kestner Gesellschaft). Becker presented his thoughts about the "do's and do's" of creativity and decidability at the "typo Berlin", Germany; North Carolina State University, Raleigh; Washington University, St Louis; TypeCon, Atlanta; Otis College of Art and Design (visiting Artist), Los Angeles. His writing has been published in Blast Counterblast, published by Mercer Union and WhiteWalls; International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities, Universidad de Granada (Spain).

Irena (Ika) Knezevic works in various visual art formats, music, and architecture. Her current research spans exhibition design, second- and third-base superarchitecture, institutional zombification, and paradoxes within post-socialist transitional states. Knezevic's work has been exhibited and performed Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Harvard University, Cambridge; Jan Van Eyck Academie, Mastricht; Control Room, Los Angeles; Institute for Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; 4th Athens Biennale, Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Logan Center Exhibitions, University of Chicago; and AKUD, Berlin. She is currently visiting artist in the Department of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University.

Jimenez Lai is an Assistant Professor at University of Illinois at Chicago and Leader of Bureau Spectacular. He graduated with a Master of Architecture from University of Toronto. Previously, Jimenez Lai has lived and worked in a desert shelter at Taliesin and resided in a shipping container at Atelier Van Lieshout on the piers of Rotterdam. Before founding Bureau Spectacular, Lai worked for MOS, AVL, REX, and OMA/Rem Koolhaas in Toronto, Rotterdam, and New York. In the past years, Lai has built numerous installations as well as being widely exhibited and published around the world. His first manifesto, Citizens of No Place, was published by Princeton Architectural Press with a grant from the Graham Foundation. Draft II of this book has been archived at the New Museum as a part of the show Younger Than Jesus. In 2012, Jimenez Lai has been named a winner to the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects.

On August 11th, the Graham Foundation hosted Chicago Matter, a one-day workshop organized by Tim Parsons and Michael Savona as an extension of the Zak Kyes Working With... exhibition. Referencing the format of Zak Kyes' and Can Altay's workshop, Leipzig Papers, conducted during the first showing of the exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig, this workshop took meaningful objects from Chicago as its starting point.

Tables designed by Can Altay provided the setting for a group discussion and working session about various modes of independent publishing and distribution. The participants' objects and experiences were then translated into two dimensions by a variety of means using a Risograph RP3700 duplicator to form a new publication entitled Chicago Matter.

Pages from the publication will be displayed throughout the duration of the Zak Kyes Working With... exhibition. Printed in a limited edition of 150, the publication will be distributed nationally and internationally. A limited number of copies will be available for sale at the Graham Foundation bookshop while supplies last.

For more information on the exhibition, Zak Kyes Working With..., click here.

"Victor School" 2011, Digital Video, 6 minutes, courtesy Ronnie Bass.

As part of the Graham Foundation Breaking Glass seminar, Ronnie Bass, Daniel Bauer, and Irena Knezevic will discuss the increasing prevalence of the movie projector used as a functioning object in the gallery space. Artists such as Rodney Graham and Tacita Dean have placed the projector at the center of their practice and others such as Sharon Lockhart and Blake Rayne have used the projector alongside photographs and paintings.

Through the presentation of Bass’ work we will analyze the projection of clocktime and alternative chronotopes as a foil to the fetish of the cinematic apparatus.

Suggested readings for the discussion include:

Giorgio Agamben; "Difference and Repetition: on Guy Debord’s Films", in Tom

McDonough ed., Guy Debord and the Situationist International, MIT Press, 2002

Boris Groys, “Comrades of Time”, Eflux Journal #11 December 2009.

Tom Gunning, "Animated Pictures: Tales of Cinema's Forgotten Future" Michigan Quarterly Review, Fall 1995

Jonathan Crary, “Spectacle, Attention, Counter-Memory” October, Vol. 50 (Autumn, 1989), pp. 96-107

Daniel Bauer holds a BFA from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem (1998) and an MFA from Columbia University, NY (2008). Exhibitions: Kunst Werke, Berlin; Malmo Konsthaal; Witte de With, Rotterdam; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Storefront for Art and Architecture, NY; Tokyo Wonder Site; Andrea Meislin Gallery, NY. Bibliography: The Power of Inclusive Exclusion; Hollow Land; Civilian Occupation; BORDERLINEDISORDER; Studio Magazine; Mute; Metropolis; Landscapes Abused, Institut Fur Landschaftscarchitektur; Frieze; AI-AP DART; Artforum; New York Magazine. Collections: Israel Museum Jerusalem. Awards: Gerald Levy Prize for Young Photographers.

Ronnie Bass (b. 1976, Hurst, Texas) is a New York-based visual artist and musician. He received an MFA from Columbia University. He works within video, sculpture, performance and sound. Bass has exhibited nationally and internationally at museums and galleries including Anthology Film Archives, MoMA P.S.1, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Performa07, the Kitchen, and James Cohen Gallery; all New York, ICA; Philadelphia, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Henry Art Gallery; Seattle, Transmission Gallery; Glasgow, The Building (e-flux); Berlin, and Centro de Arte de Sevilla among others. Musical compositions include the score for Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Guggenheim prize exhibition, Tomorrow Is Another Fine Day, Serpentine Gallery; London. Bass teaches digital art at New York University. He is currently working on his forthcoming book, Survival Journal.

Irena (Ika) Knezevic works in various visual art formats, music, and architecture. Her current research spans exhibition design, second- and third-base superarchitecture, institutional zombification, and paradoxes within post-socialist transitional states. Knezevic's work has been exhibited and performed Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Harvard University, Cambridge; Jan Van Eyck Academie, Mastricht; Control Room, Los Angeles; Institute for Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; 4th Athens Biennale, Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Logan Center Exhibitions, University of Chicago; and AKUD, Berlin. She is currently visiting artist in the Department of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University.

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