Radical Architecture Across the Seas

As the 1970s turn 50 years old, the avant-garde experiments of the ‘radical’ architecture era emerge as an archive of fruitful pasts and a time-capsule of potential futures. The research and understanding of the exceptional significance of the previsions and proposals elaborated during such a time of architectural and artistic experimentation paves the way for bridging scholarly research, artistic practices, and virtual reality. On these premises, we have conceived our collaborative practice using guidelines developed by media theorist Paul Ryan in his seminal book “The Three Person Solution: Creating Sustainable Collaborative Relationships,” to develop a trans-disciplinary project. The subject of the research effort is an art studio building on Antioch’s southern Ohio campus that was designed by radical media art and architecture group Ant Farm in 1971. The building was used by generations of creative innovators for over 35 years, before being mothballed by the college in 2008. With all its repair and conservation challenges, the integrity of the still-standing Antioch Art Building allows us to bear witness to an original design in its authentic site. Under the reversible gray layer of paint that currently covers the colored elements of the building, the Antioch Art Building survives in its concrete and metal, beating beneath, waiting to be resuscitated. The direct outcome of the planned project is the organization of a conference and preliminary material for an exhibition, through a visit to the Antioch Art Building and a meeting with the Ant Farm. The conference is conceived as an event that aims at expanding the exhibition’s reach by involving a broader target group and a wider spectrum of radical theories and pedagogies from that era. The long-term goal, to take place after the pilot experience accomplished through the proposed project, is the setting up of an exhibition at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.