Philip Ursprung: Political Landscape

Galerie VI cordially invites you on Monday, March 11, 2019, at 7:00 PM to a lecture by Swiss architectural historian Philip Ursprung, which will take place as part of the accompanying program of the exhibition Logistics Landscapes.

The short-lived artistic movement Earth Art – a phenomenon that emerged from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s and includes artists such as Robert Smithson, Michael Heizer, Nancy Holt, Walter De Maria, and others – remains a source of inspiration to this day. Starting with the interpretation of the work Partially Buried Woodshed (1970) by Robert Smithson, Philip Ursprung will focus on the relationship between art, architecture, territory, and economy. The mentioned artwork consisted of an old shed, found on the university campus, which the artist had buried in soil until the roof collapsed. The process of building – that is, digging a hole and constructing a building – is reversed. Now non-functional, the building also reminds us that the older economy – specifically agriculture – has been expelled from the newly constructed campus. The construction remains a ghost of the previous economy that cannot find rest. Agriculture is thus latently present in the spaces of higher education.

In his lecture, Ursprung will attempt to show that Earth Art as such is based on Smithson's encounter with the practice of architecture and planning. He will focus on Smithson's work and legacy under the unifying term "political landscapes" (Martin Warnke), particularly on the relationship between power and artistic representation. He will also inquire what contemporary architects, artists, designers, and theorists can learn from the historical phenomenon of Earth Art, including how it may be useful in the context of logistics. Earth Art reflects the context and randomness of architectural practice and is, as Ursprung will demonstrate, an effective substitute for the missing theory of architecture.

Philip Ursprung serves as the dean of the School of Architecture at ETH Zurich, where he is also a professor of art history and architecture. Born in Baltimore (USA), he studied in Geneva, Vienna, and Berlin. He has taught, among others, at the Universität der Künste in Berlin, Columbia University in New York, Universität Zürich, and the Barcelona Institute of Architecture. His research focuses on the history of modern and contemporary art and architecture, with a focus on art from the 1960s and 70s in North America and architecture in Europe after 1980. As a guest curator at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal, he prepared the exhibition Herzog & de Meuron: Archeology of the Mind and edited its catalog Herzog & de Meuron: Natural History (Montreal, 2002). Some of Ursprung's latest books include Allan Kaprow, Robert Smithson, and the Limits to Art (Berkeley, 2013) and Representation of Labor / Performative Historiography (Santiago de Chile, 2018). A collection of texts by Gordon Matta-Clark, which he is preparing with Gwendolyn Owens, will be published by University of California Press.

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