Celia Ghyka, Chair of the Department of History& Theory of Architecture and Heritage Conservation, Associate Professor, PhD in architecture, teaches theory of architecture at the "Ion Mincu" University of Architecture and Urban Planning, Bucharest. Her interests refer to public space, monument, memory, art and psychoanalysis, contemporary art and architecture, post-communism, art history, themes that she has approached in several writings published in Romanian academic journals and books, as well as guest lecturer in postgraduate joint courses at Ecole Nationale d'Architecture de Paris la Villette.
Currently a Scholar at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (Winter 2019).
Address: Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urban Planning
Academiei 18-20, 010014 Bucharest
Currently a Scholar at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (Winter 2019).
Address: Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urban Planning
Academiei 18-20, 010014 Bucharest
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Exhibitions by Celia Ghyka
The TWIST: Five Provincial Stories from an Empire is a trans-disciplinary exhibition, based on the geological, topographical, morphological, and geopolitical evidence provided by the triangular region called the Romanian Banat, where the curators identified several elements characteristic to the historical trajectory of this cultural construction: the twist, the conversion, the comeback—that may all be related to Plato’s concept of “turning around of the soul” (defined in “The Republic”). The TWIST surveys the visual wingspan of the topic, examining how various motifs of the “turning around” are reflected in the cultural practices of that specific region. The format is an essay-type exhibition, where the coexistence of genres, techniques, and historical periods are assembled into a complex, multi-layered installation.
Based on vast research of historical, bibliographical, visual, and literary sources, and of the heritage preserved in the public and private collections from the region, The TWIST covers an interval starting from pre-Roman and Roman antiquity, reaching into post-WW2 modernity, and groups together, in unconventional associations, archeological, ethnographic, decorative arts, apparel, domestic, and mass-produced objects, with artworks created in the 20th and 21st centuries.
The show gathers a large number of artefacts, displayed in an original, custom-designed architectural setting. The pieces were selected according to various criteria, ranging from iconographical (spiral, twist, intersection), functional (column, vault, door, hinge, wheel, clock, compass) to actions that may be utilitarian (mowing, weaving, twisting, sifting, sowing, milling, lathe working), ritualistic (dancing, praying, drumming, magical conjuring), ontological (conversion, resurrection, transfiguration, recovery, repetition), and political (exodus, immigration, redemption, penance, revenge).
The narrative threads of this visual and poetical journey suggest a reading through five layers that establish various links, some more apparent than others: protohistory (archaeological and geological pieces), pre-modernity (etnographic, vernacular pieces), a locally crafted modernity (household inventory, fashion, furniture, industry), above history (immaterial heritage, such as music or poetry) and the now (contemporary art).
The Twist, spiritual but also morphological, is indeed the identifying mark of a surprisingly large number of Romanian contemporary artists. Works by Horia Bernea, Ștefan Bertalan, Ion Condiescu, Roman Cotoșman, Cristian Dițoiu, Constantin Flondor, Dani Ghercă, Ion Grigorescu, Ana Maria Micu, Ciprian Mureșan, Paul Neagu, Sorin Neamțu, Mihai Olos, Șerban Savu, Liviu Stoicoviciu, Napoleon Tiron, and Bogdan Vlăduță will complete by contrast this cultural itinerary delivered in a site-specific installation.
Papers by Celia Ghyka
We argue that the strength and potential of these equally short-lived structures rely on and at the same time elevate the performative and theatrical dimension of architecture: Rossi’s building by definition, while Ptolemy’s pavilion was tantamount to a secular temple to Dionysus, god of the theater, decorated with statues of characters in tragedies and comedies, and in the center of which the king was on display during a triumphal symposion.
In both cases, the ephemeral character of the building allows for aesthetic, respectively ideological experiments otherwise rather tricky. One caters more easily to the needs of a multifarious public (Graeco-Macedonian, Egyptian, Persian clues abound in the description of Ptolemy’s pavilion), while Rossi’s theater elegantly blends a subtle array of heterogeneous influences (from the Anatomical theater of the Renaissance to lighthouse architecture, Elizabethan theatres and floating Venitian carnival structures). They are also each an itinerant center of the world which either receives a procession charting Alexandrian urban benchmarks, or reenacts the network of former Venetian colonies.
The pavilion as a spatial type in Antiquity is itself part of an architectural continuum that includes a number of floating Nile palaces, i.e. Ptolemies’ ceremonial ships, boasting gardens etc., while Rossi’s experiment becomes an iconic image of the Venice biennale and simultaneously a metaphor for the world itself. To sum up, these Hellenistic and NeoRationalist monuments share elements of floating (and fleeting) architecture that include ritualized events, performativity, and the oneiric, all of which would have been moot points, or plainly lost, if translated into permanent structures.
One of the most important modern public edifices in the New Belgrade, and housing a major collection of Yugoslav modern art, the museum was also among the first institutions of its kind in Europe. The MoCAB was founded in 1958, and was followed by an architectural competition
in 1960, won by Ivan Antić (1923-2005) and Ivana Raspopović (1930-2015), both young
and promising architects trained in the Modernist tradition. This was their first commission together, a remarkable example of experiment with modernist architecture at the margins of canonical Western Europe. The building was completed in 1965, and was awarded the same year the October Prize of the City of Belgrade for architecture and urbanism, the highest and most respected local award of the time.
In order to understand the role of the Museum and of its re-opening exhibition within the
contemporary Belgrade cultural scene, the article recalls the context of its appearance in the mid-1960s, discussing the role that modern architecture played in the political construct of a ”contemporary socialist architecture” (Ljiljana Blagojevic), as well as its gradual decline after 1990, leading to its closing in 2007.
After a decade of works, the MoCAB reopened in 2017, following a meticulous
restoration that managed to conserve the crystal-shaped iconic image of the modernist original, while introducing new functionalities and new conservation requirements, and carefully enhancing the spatial and architectural qualities of the building.
The re-opening of the MoCAB and the curatorial concept of the collection exhibition introduces questions about the contemporary museum, a dynamic public space that has to constantly negotiate between its normative function of displaying canonical art and its mission as a mediator and facilitator of the current art scene, challenging the role of the museum as both a place of education and of research, one that also actively contributes
to re-writing the history of recent art, as a site for curatorial debate and public interaction.
In 1971 he founded and was the first editor of the Swiss journal Archithese, a vibrant forum for architectural debate and critique.
Besides his prolific and momentous work as a writer of the architectural history of the 20th century, he has been teaching in various prestigious institutions, such as the Yale School of Architecture, Princeton University, Harvard University, Technische Hogeschool, Delft, the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio. He is a Professor Emeritus of History of Art at the University of Zürich.
I had the great honor and joy to meet professor von Moos during the winter semester 2018/2019 at the Getty Research Institute (GRI) in Los Angeles, where we were both working around the topic of Monumentality. An incredibly generous and genuinely inquisitive person, he accepted to have a conversation for this year’s issue of our journal.
The study looks at violent manifestations in the city from a pluridisciplinary perspective, approaching various subjects, such as the destruction of architecture (its causes and cumulative effects), gentrification and urban segregation, forced evictions, urban resistance. Given the tragic events that have been happening globally during the last decades, and especially the urban world of today, a rereading of urban resilience through the lens of trauma and the concept of spatial violence, destruction and renewal may prove a useful tool in renegotiating the future of cities.
The article is based on the preliminary conclusions of an ongoing research and artistic project entitled “Collective Authorship” that uses the methods of oral history in order to reconstruct a possible social history of political architecture. The reading of the House of the People through the lens offered by Foucault’s theories of governmentality offers a novel understanding about how, in the context of a closed, authoritarian regime, technologies of power proved to work discontinuously, allowing for unexpected accumulations of individual territories of action and reflection.
Limits within the Urban Realm
Mobility and flows are considered to be key characteristics of the post-modern era. While for some scholars it means the «end of place», others are trying to re-conceptualize it by bringing together notions of space, place, mobility and identity. Still surprisingly few authors address the concept of public space in this respect. Principles of aesthetic and diverse forms of aestheticization seem to have affected urban space and culture throughout Modernity, forming a dimension where power and conflict around urban space are performed. In this book nine authors with social science and arts backgrounds from six countries discuss how these processes shape the life of modern cities, and where the social sciences should move for a better understanding of them.