Archinect
Harvard University

Harvard University

Cambridge, MA

Fritz Haeg, Nils Norman, and Julieta González

Tue, Oct 23 '186:30 PM  –  Tue, Oct 23 '188 PM
Cambridge, MA, US | GSD, Gund Hall Piper Auditorium
Please join us for a conversation between visual artists Fritz Haeg and Nils Norman and Julieta González, Artistic Director of Museo Jumex. They will discuss their recent project  Proposals for a Plaza at Museo Jumex.  Proposals for a Plaza  was commissioned as part of the series Agora: Blueprints for a Utopia , and the temporary sculptural installation invites the public to imagine and participate in an alternative vision for the museum’s plaza. Their design is guided by principles laid out in the 1977 book  A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction  by Christopher Alexander (PhD '63).   Julieta González works at the intersection of anthropology, cybernetics, architecture, design and the visual arts. More recently she has developed research and exhibitions addressing decolonial aesthetics in Latin America. She is currently artistic director of Museo Jumex in Mexico City. She has also held curatorial positions at Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, the Bronx Museum, Tate Modern, Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas, and Museo Alejandro Otero. She has organized over 60 exhibitions internationally, amongst which, Memorias del subdesarrollo (MCASD, Museo Jumex, MALI); Franz Erhard Walther - Objects, To Use/ Instruments for Processes (Museo Jumex); Jaime Davidovich: Adventures of the Avant-Garde (Bronx Museum); Juan Downey: A Communications Utopia, Stephen Willats: Man from the 21st Century (Museo Tamayo, Mexico City); Ways of Working: The Incidental Object (Fondazione Merz, Torino);  Parque Industrial (Galería Luisa Strina, S ão Paulo) ; Etnografía: modo de empleo (Museo de Bellas Artes Caracas). She has also been involved as co-curator or guest curator of international exhibitions such as the 2da Trienal Poligráfica de San Juan 2009, Biennale de Lyon 2007, Insite San Diego/Tijuana 2005, Prague Biennale 2003. Her essays have been published in  books, exhibition catalogues, magazines and journals. She holds an MA in Cultural Studies and Critical Theory from Goldsmiths, London, was a Helena Rubinstein Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, and studied architecture at Universidad Simón Bolívar, Caracas, and the École d'Architecture Paris-Villemin.   Fritz Haeg's  work has included animal architecture, crocheted rugs, domestic gatherings, edible gardens, educational environments, public dances, sculptural knitwear, temporary encampments, urban parades, wild landscapes, and occasionally buildings for people. Recent projects include Edible Estates – an international series of domestic edible landscapes; Animal Estates – a housing initiative for native wildlife in cities around the world; Domestic Integrities – installations and gatherings staged on massive crocheted rugs of discarded clothing and textiles that expand as they travel; various projects of designing, constructing, parading & rewilding; and Sundown Schoolhouse – an evolving series of educational environments and initiatives which evolved out of the Sundown Salon gatherings at his geodesic home base in the hills of Los Angeles. In 2014 Haeg began a new chapter of work with the purchase of the 1970’s commune Salmon Creek Farm on the Mendocino Coast. It continues as a place to take a step back from contemporary urban society and starts a new chapter as a long-term art project formed by many hands, a new sort of commune-farm-homestead-sanctuary-school hybrid. Haeg has produced and exhibited projects internationally, including at the 2008 Whitney Biennial, the Walker Art Center, the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, the Hayward Gallery, the Liverpool Biennial, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Berkeley Art Museum, and the Hammer Museum among other institutions.   Nils Norman is an artist living in London working across the disciplines of public art, architecture and urban planning. His projects
 challenge notions of the function of public art and the efficacy of mainstream urban planning and large-scale regeneration. Informed by local politics and ideas on alternative economic, ecological systems and play,
 Norman’s work merges utopian alternatives with current urban design to create a humorous critique of public art and urban planning. He exhibits and generates projects and collaborations in museums and galleries internationally. He has completed major public art projects, 
including pedestrians bridges, playgrounds and theatre curtains. He has participated in various biennials worldwide and has developed commissions for SculptureCenter, Long Island City, NY; London Underground, UK; Tate Modern, UK; Museo Jumex, Mexico City; Creative Time, NYC and the Centre d’ Art Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland. He has developed  a play strategy and designs for Mereside in Blackpool; designed a playground for the St Fagans Museum of National History in Cardiff; designed a new library for the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam; and has created theatre curtains for a school and community centre in Bristol. He is also the lead artist for the city of Cambridge’s project to redevelop part of Trumpington, an area on the city’s southern fringe.  He is the author of: Edible Park, Nils Norman. Eds. Taco de Neef, Nils Norman, Peter de Rooden, Astrid Vorstermans. Valiz, NL. 2012; Thurrock 2015, a comic commissioned by the General Public Agency, London, UK, 2004; An Architecture of Play: A Survey of London’s Adventure Playgrounds, Four Corners, London, UK, 2004; and The Contemporary Picturesque, Book Works, London, UK, 2000.  

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