INDOOR EXHIBITION
Indoor exhibition overview, Architectural Association, London. UK (2024)
Video by Arturo Bandinelli & Chen Zhan
Cover image by Anne Tetzlaff
Editing by Chen Zhan
Gallery install by Install Archive
To walk through the 3D scan of the indoor exhibition at the Architectural Association, click HERE︎︎︎.
'Rippling' as an image of thought: exhibition feature wall with sanded pattern, Purbeck stone and site-marking rope.
Image credit: Chen Zhan
Running fingers across the patch, the one-millimeter ‘topographic’ difference between the inner and outer rings feels a lot more present than it looks. This 1mm change of depth is 16 years of exhibition history of the Architectural Association. Each colourful ring is one exhibition that took place in the gallery: from the yellow in the middle by AADRL in 2008 to the black as in Ripple Ripple Rippling in 2024.
This is a somewhat accidental discovery. When we got the space for Ripple Ripple Rippling, we were told that the gallery walls had never been sanded since its last refurbishment in 2008. Three exhibitions a year at the AA, the walls just being painted over and over. We were curious to take a look via a sanding machine and loved what we discovered, so we actually abandoned the content originally planned for the wall and just showed these sanded patches instead.
Sanded storytelling patches & ‘Archeology’ of the gallery wall colours
Image credit: Chen Zhan
Sanding work by Mariusz Stawiarski from the AA Facilities team
Video credit: Chen Zhan
Walking-around screeninig of the Ripple Ripple Rippling Film Trilogy
Image credit: Anne Tetzlaff
Image credit: Anne Tetzlaff
An immersive spatial projection onto a floating mesh screen encourages the audience to break the spectator gaze and walk around and into the projected village streets, family yards and even interior rooms.
This is a film screening to be walked into and around rather than just being watched.
For more details of the RRR film trilogy, please click here︎︎︎.
This is a film screening to be walked into and around rather than just being watched.
For more details of the RRR film trilogy, please click here︎︎︎.
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Storytelling Patches
Image credit: Anne Tetzlaff
Image credit: Anne Tetzlaff
Presenting fragments of life and landscape around the Shigushan village: ‘Dried Lake and Roadside Nursery’, ‘Pond’, ‘Yard and Foundation’ and ‘Pinewoods’, as well as ‘Rippling Grannies’ and ‘Rippling Aunties’.
Each fragment is paired with field footage, alluding to the so-much-more out there.
Each fragment is paired with field footage, alluding to the so-much-more out there.
Scroll lightbox installation
Image credit: Anne Tetzlaff
Image credit: Anne Tetzlaff
A scroll drawing juxtaposed with road footage, situating the floating travel route taken by villagers between their workplaces and their rural homes. Territory here is a machine, wherein political and economic forces push and pull the flows of materials and labour.
Stools placed around the scroll installation have been gifted to us by the grannies of Shigushan. The low level of the stools and the scroll invite visitors to get closer to the ground and to experience the bodily way in which space in the village is inhabited.
Stools placed around the scroll installation have been gifted to us by the grannies of Shigushan. The low level of the stools and the scroll invite visitors to get closer to the ground and to experience the bodily way in which space in the village is inhabited.
Viewing Frame A towards drystone houses in Shigushan, Wuhan, China
Image credit: Anne Tetzlaff
These frames within the windows connect the AA Gallery with the house foundation on Bedford Square and with one in Shigushan village.
Image credit: Anne Tetzlaff
These frames within the windows connect the AA Gallery with the house foundation on Bedford Square and with one in Shigushan village.
Viewing Frame B towards drystone installation on Bedford Square, London, UK
Image credit: Anne Tetzlaff
Image credit: Anne Tetzlaff
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OUTDOOR INSTALLATION:
DRY STONE HOUSE FOUNDATION
One-month timelapse of the drystone installation on Bedford Square, London. UK
Video credit: Chen Zhan & AAVA Team
Video credit: Chen Zhan & AAVA Team
A work-in-progress house foundation at 1:1 scale on Bedford Square. This temporary structure, in place for 28 days, provides a stage for performances and events as well as a meanwhile garden. House foundations in Shigushan are usually made of stones reused from demolition sites in the village, and they always host multiple futures, oscillating between a potential home and a ruin depending on the family’s financial situation. While waiting for their next phase, these foundations often function as kitchen gardens and childern’s playgrounds.
The materials and assembly techniques of this structure on Bedford Square have been adapted to the UK context. In addition to evoking the drystone walling practice common in parts of the British countryside, this structure also enacts the idea of reversible repair in construction that allows for material recycling and reuse. Alongside this, the superimposition of a domestic blueprint onto a privately owned public space in central London mounts a deliberate challenge to the fundamental split between the public and the private that is deeply rooted in the UK.
To walk through the 3D scan of the installation, click HERE︎︎︎.
* Drystone team led by Tim Mason and Richard Gray, with Max Higgins & Jonah Rollason from Building Crafts College, and volunteers Laura Stargala, Timothée Ryan and Octave Cusinberche.
* Foundation infill and planting by AA, RCA, LSA students and graduates: Sarah Teekay, Karmanya Gupta, Amitoz Boonga, Jassimar Singh Wahi, Selin Oktem, Ga Ho Jeffery Yu, Nazar Efendiev, Sedef Goke, Jiayi Wang, Lucy Stubbs and Clara; AA Facility staffs; Passers-by, lorry drivers, Jess & Kier building team and Bedford Estates gardeners.
* Stone advice: Juliet Haysom and Vanessa Norwood
* Supported by the Architectural Association, Graham Foundation and Huazhong University of Science and Technology
* In-kind material support: Haysom Purbeck Stone and Ty-Mawr Lime.
* Foundation infill and planting by AA, RCA, LSA students and graduates: Sarah Teekay, Karmanya Gupta, Amitoz Boonga, Jassimar Singh Wahi, Selin Oktem, Ga Ho Jeffery Yu, Nazar Efendiev, Sedef Goke, Jiayi Wang, Lucy Stubbs and Clara; AA Facility staffs; Passers-by, lorry drivers, Jess & Kier building team and Bedford Estates gardeners.
* Stone advice: Juliet Haysom and Vanessa Norwood
* Supported by the Architectural Association, Graham Foundation and Huazhong University of Science and Technology
* In-kind material support: Haysom Purbeck Stone and Ty-Mawr Lime.
ASSOCIATED EVENTS:
She offers a cup of water to you, to everyone that comes
Durational performance by Mengfan Wang & Alice Wang
Timelapse of the durational performance on the drystone house foundation at 2500+ speed
Video by Arturo Bandinelli
Editing by Chen Zhan
Video by Arturo Bandinelli
Editing by Chen Zhan
The 3-hour durational performance was set to activate the work-in-progress house foundation temporarily installed on Bedford Square, leading to the Ripple Ripple Rippling Exhibition Private View on the evening of Thursday 10 October, 2024.
The performance attempts to relay a collective image, mother – woman – granny, found and felt in Shigushan village. The lived histories and spiritual practices of female bodies are transformed into a series of movements. From there derives shared memories of ‘bitterness’ (ku 苦), alluding to ‘being old’ and ‘growing old’ in the present. Choreographed repetition of everyday gestures transforms the bodily experiences of village life into something familiarly strange yet strangely familiar, raising questions about the extent to which we can relate across bodies, contexts and histories.
Image credit: Anne Tetzlaff
Image credit: Chen Zhan
For this event, culinary artist
Barney Pau has developed an edible response to Ripple Ripple Rippling which explores his personal interpretation
of the project. Barney’s interpretation of the space is one of poignance and
reflection; a quietness of something missing, but which was also never really
there. These impressions are reflected in his choice of ingredients pertinent
to Shigushan village and the installation in Bedford Square; the mindful and
timeful processes of fermentation; and the care he has invested into their
elaboration. Weeks, months, sometimes years old; these ferments you’re eating
are the story of a long, ongoing mutually reciprocal relationship between
humans and the microbes that feed them.
Menu:- Buckwheat & flaxseed ‘bark’ crackers infused w/ fermented umami-paste & molasses.
- Pumpkin purée w/ chilli, fermented Japanese knotweed vinegar & tahini [sesame].
- Fermented pumpkin seed ‘cheese’ sauce, aged for 8 months.
- Waste-vegetable sauerkraut w/ foraged alexanders & hogweed seeds.
- Rocket & sunflower seed dressing w/ fermented Japanese knotweed vinegar.
- Fermented wild garlic powder.
Dry Stone Deconstruction Workshop
Laura Stargala and Timothée Ryan with AA Material Arcade
Laura Stargala and Timothée Ryan with AA Material Arcade
Gathering particles and stones,
accumulating dust -
on our body, our soils.
The rain washes off our skin, the leaves and the surface of the rocks.
Lunging into the living,
we seek shelter and nourishment.
Drinking from the springs,
moving stones for shelter.
Herbs growing from the earth,
creating fertile soil as time passes.
Sedimenting into layers of decomposed plant matter, silt & clay.
As the dust settles,
water runs down the stream,
past the roots,
and into our hands.
-- Material Relations, by Laura Stargala
accumulating dust -
on our body, our soils.
The rain washes off our skin, the leaves and the surface of the rocks.
Lunging into the living,
we seek shelter and nourishment.
Drinking from the springs,
moving stones for shelter.
Herbs growing from the earth,
creating fertile soil as time passes.
Sedimenting into layers of decomposed plant matter, silt & clay.
As the dust settles,
water runs down the stream,
past the roots,
and into our hands.
-- Material Relations, by Laura Stargala
Dry stone walling is known for its re-use after demolition, acting as a circular method of construction. And dry stone builders in the UK typically learn dry stone construction by deconstructing historic walls in order to learn how master craftspeople built the original walls.
This workshop engages with the tectonics and poetics of stone as well as soil, sand and plants – all those coming from the earth. As part of the deconstruction process, the participation directly contributes to the material recycling and reuse of the drystone house foundation on Bedford Square, as part of the Ripple Ripple Rippling exhibition.
Image credit: Chen Zhan
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SYMPOSIUM & TALK
Transversal Alliances: Architecture, Anthropology, Filmmaking and Performance
Friday, 11 October 2024.
Architectural Association, London, UK
The Transversal Alliances symposium takes the process-oriented, transdisciplinary approach explored in Ripple Ripple Rippling as its starting point while going beyond the specific Chinese context.
In a world where debates are becoming increasingly divisive, transversal alliances are needed more than ever to defy flattened narrative and reductive abstraction.
In a world where debates are becoming increasingly divisive, transversal alliances are needed more than ever to defy flattened narrative and reductive abstraction.
Through presentations, conversations, screenings and performative sections, this symposium shares boundary-pushing practices across architecture, anthropology, filmmaking and performance. Grounded in the complex, messy realities of life, this gathering charts ways of confronting the fractured, disjunctive conditions of all our existences, while affirming how one’s life is intricately connected to another.
SESSION 01:
Speakers: Jingru (Cyan) Cheng & Chen Zhan
In conversation with Ingrid Schroder and May Adadol Ingawanij
Cyan and Chen will share stories of ‘Rippling’ – Pond, Yard and Pinewoods, while unpacking the evolving methods and media of communication of this work over a decade, from architectural documentation to participant observation to performative improvisation to collective happening. They will then be in conversation with AA Director Ingrid and writer and curator May to further explore transdisciplinary practices.
SESSION 02:
Speakers: Mengfan Wang and Moe Satt
In conversation with Erin Li
This panel brings together theatre director and choreographer Mengfan, visual and performance artist Moe, and curator Erin to explore their shared interest in how everyday performative expressions inspire choreography and art making. Through a lecture performance, Mengfan will attempt to relay a collective image, mother – woman – granny, found and felt in Shigushan village. The lived histories and spiritual practices of female bodies are transformed into a series of movements. From there derives shared memories of ‘bitterness’ (ku 苦), alluding to ‘being old’ and ‘growing old’ in the present. Moe will screen his short video Hands Around in Yangon (2012), introduce his new solo exhibition Rest the Thumbs on the Cheekbones at Delfina Foundation, and detail how his observation of everyday hand gestures in various cultures developed into recent experiments in expanding embodiment through instructions, participatory installations, and performances. Moe, Mengfan and Erin will then be in conversation to explore the intersections and varying contexts of their practices.
RIPPLE RIPPLE RIPPLING AS A POINT OF DEPARTURE
Speakers: Jingru (Cyan) Cheng & Chen Zhan
In conversation with Ingrid Schroder and May Adadol Ingawanij
Cyan and Chen will share stories of ‘Rippling’ – Pond, Yard and Pinewoods, while unpacking the evolving methods and media of communication of this work over a decade, from architectural documentation to participant observation to performative improvisation to collective happening. They will then be in conversation with AA Director Ingrid and writer and curator May to further explore transdisciplinary practices.
SESSION 02:
BODY & THE PERFORMATIVE
Speakers: Mengfan Wang and Moe Satt
In conversation with Erin Li
This panel brings together theatre director and choreographer Mengfan, visual and performance artist Moe, and curator Erin to explore their shared interest in how everyday performative expressions inspire choreography and art making. Through a lecture performance, Mengfan will attempt to relay a collective image, mother – woman – granny, found and felt in Shigushan village. The lived histories and spiritual practices of female bodies are transformed into a series of movements. From there derives shared memories of ‘bitterness’ (ku 苦), alluding to ‘being old’ and ‘growing old’ in the present. Moe will screen his short video Hands Around in Yangon (2012), introduce his new solo exhibition Rest the Thumbs on the Cheekbones at Delfina Foundation, and detail how his observation of everyday hand gestures in various cultures developed into recent experiments in expanding embodiment through instructions, participatory installations, and performances. Moe, Mengfan and Erin will then be in conversation to explore the intersections and varying contexts of their practices.
SESSION 03:
Speakers: Laura Huertas Millán and May Adadol Ingawanij
In conversation with Stephen Hughes
This panel will start from an excerpted screening of artist filmmaker Laura’s experimental shorts in which architectural elements play a central role: The Labyrinth (2018), Jeny303 (2018) and Aequador (2012). The role of architecture in these works serves as a starting point to unpack the weaving together of ecology, fiction, historical enquiries, and diasporic trajectories via methods intersecting cinema and experimental ethnography. The unpacking will be carried out through a conversation with writer and curator May with interjections of May’s long-term work on Animistic Apparatus, a curatorial research project committed and connected to Southeast Asia exploring the relational, futurist, and agentive forms of artists’ cinema via exhibitions, screenings, artistic research field trip, commissioning, talks and publications. Animistic Apparatus places Southeast Asian contemporary artists’ moving image practices in constellation with the region’s animistic practices including itinerant film projection rituals performed as spirit offerings. Laura and May will be joined by RAI Film Festival Director Stephen to further explore the relationship between their practices and anthropology.
SESSION 04
Speaker: Francesco Garutti / Canadian Centre for Architecture
The Canadian Centre for Architecture presents Into the Island (2024, 41 min), the first documentary of Groundwork, a CCA ongoing film series on contemporary ecological practices. Into the Island follows architect Xu Tiantian during preliminary site visits on Meizhou Island. Famous as the site which gave birth to the cult of the sea goddess Mazu, the island is an environment where religious pilgrimages and mass tourism, traditional farming techniques, and strict conservation policies co-exist in a fragile balance. This screening opens a discussion on the CCA’s approach to cinema as a curatorial tool within their research and exhibition projects.
SESSION 05:
Roundtable moderated by Shumi Bose, bringing together Chen Zhan, Erin Li, Francesco Garutti, Jingru (Cyan) Cheng, Laura Huertas Millán, May Adadol Ingawanij, Mengfan Wang and Stephen Hughes.
FILM & THE ETHNOGRAPHIC
Speakers: Laura Huertas Millán and May Adadol Ingawanij
In conversation with Stephen Hughes
This panel will start from an excerpted screening of artist filmmaker Laura’s experimental shorts in which architectural elements play a central role: The Labyrinth (2018), Jeny303 (2018) and Aequador (2012). The role of architecture in these works serves as a starting point to unpack the weaving together of ecology, fiction, historical enquiries, and diasporic trajectories via methods intersecting cinema and experimental ethnography. The unpacking will be carried out through a conversation with writer and curator May with interjections of May’s long-term work on Animistic Apparatus, a curatorial research project committed and connected to Southeast Asia exploring the relational, futurist, and agentive forms of artists’ cinema via exhibitions, screenings, artistic research field trip, commissioning, talks and publications. Animistic Apparatus places Southeast Asian contemporary artists’ moving image practices in constellation with the region’s animistic practices including itinerant film projection rituals performed as spirit offerings. Laura and May will be joined by RAI Film Festival Director Stephen to further explore the relationship between their practices and anthropology.
SESSION 04
ARCHITECTURE, FILM & THE CURATORIAL
Speaker: Francesco Garutti / Canadian Centre for Architecture
The Canadian Centre for Architecture presents Into the Island (2024, 41 min), the first documentary of Groundwork, a CCA ongoing film series on contemporary ecological practices. Into the Island follows architect Xu Tiantian during preliminary site visits on Meizhou Island. Famous as the site which gave birth to the cult of the sea goddess Mazu, the island is an environment where religious pilgrimages and mass tourism, traditional farming techniques, and strict conservation policies co-exist in a fragile balance. This screening opens a discussion on the CCA’s approach to cinema as a curatorial tool within their research and exhibition projects.
SESSION 05:
ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION
Roundtable moderated by Shumi Bose, bringing together Chen Zhan, Erin Li, Francesco Garutti, Jingru (Cyan) Cheng, Laura Huertas Millán, May Adadol Ingawanij, Mengfan Wang and Stephen Hughes.
Planetary Everyday: Jesse Darling in conversation with Jingru (Cyan) Cheng and Chen Zhan
Architectural Association, London, October 2024
Field Forum is a series curated by Jingru (Cyan) Cheng and Chen Zhan that centres the interconnectedness embedded in the built environment, attuning our senses to material flows, planetary scales, intergenerational times and all the life entangled in these processes.
For full dertails of all sessions, please click here︎︎︎.
For full dertails of all sessions, please click here︎︎︎.
Jesse, Cyan and Chen hosted a casual floor-based conversation for the evening, transforming the AA Lecture Hall into a threshold space that facilitates bodily connections to the earthy ground.
Through the live-performed visual dialogue of works between Jesses’ sculptures and Cyan and Chen’s research and films, the conversation brings forward the view that everyday objects and experiences are planetary – that is, not grand and abstract but rather specific and grounded in situated contexts. Audiences were encouraged to sit low or lie down softly in any restful and comfortable way to listen and reimage the coming-into-being of things and materials in the everyday context and your relationships with them.
Through the live-performed visual dialogue of works between Jesses’ sculptures and Cyan and Chen’s research and films, the conversation brings forward the view that everyday objects and experiences are planetary – that is, not grand and abstract but rather specific and grounded in situated contexts. Audiences were encouraged to sit low or lie down softly in any restful and comfortable way to listen and reimage the coming-into-being of things and materials in the everyday context and your relationships with them.
Back to EXHIBITION ︎︎︎
Go to PROJECT ︎︎︎
Meet the TEAM ︎︎︎
More on CONTEXT ︎︎︎
Check FIELDWORK ︎︎︎
View FILM ︎︎︎
Return to HOME PAGE ︎︎︎