Surface Tension Supplement: No. 2 [Paperback] [Feb 01, 2007] LaBelle, Brandon and Ehrlich, Ken

Continuing the work initiated in Surface Tension: Problematics of Site, this second in the Supplement series engages questions of location and performative interventionist practices through essays and creative projects. Probing the intersection of art and architecture, Surface Tension No. 2 offers a critical glance at recent urban planning policies in China and a history of "participatory" architecture. It includes temporary architectural work by the Tijuana-based consortium of artists, designers and musicians known as Torolab, as well as a study of Nis Roemer's innovative Hot Summer urban farming project in Copenhagen. With essays digital culture in Brazil, electronic waste and camouflage as creative strategy, this volume offers fresh reading on the specifics of site.

The second publication in the Surface Tension Supplement series marks the ongoing evolution of a platform for publishing and organizing exhibitions related to international contemporary spatial practices. Initially developed as a comprehensive anthology devoted to documenting a broad range of site-specific work in art, architecture and performance and reflecting critically on the history of the notion of "site", the project has blossomed into a vehicle for engaging modes of locational exchange across a range of disciplines and media.
The current volume in the series takes as its title a modified and slightly subverted version of another title-the title of an essay by Jean Genet, "What Remains of a Rembrandt Torn Into Four Equal Pieces and Flushed Down the Toilet." In this text, Genet muses on the complexity of emotion found in a momentary, shared glance on a train and what can happen in the eyes and body of a viewer gazing at late Rembrandt paintings. He states, "A work of art should exalt only those truths which are not demonstrable, and which are even 'false,' those which we cannot carry to their ultimate conclusions without absurdity, without negating both them and ourself."

Excerpt is from Ken Ehrlich and Brandon LaBelle's Introduction to Surface Tension Supplement No.2: What Remains of a Building Divided into Equal Parts and Distributed for Reconfiguration.