A Mouse Drowned in a Honey Pot

03.10.2014 - 08.11.2014

curated by_vienna 2014, The Century of the Bed, Wien / Österreich
Galerie Martin Janda, Raum aktueller Kunst, Wien / Österreich

Mice were everywhere, but they weren’t really seen until they dropped dead: under the bed, amongst the books, drowned in a honey pot, or inside a small cardboard box held by a young boy. The little boy would chase the little girl in the long corridor holding the dead mouse and throwing it at her when cornered behind a door. The boy and the girl would be sent to the house time and again. The derelict state of the place thus became normal. That was some thirty or forty years ago, the ruinous house being by then being no more than half of what it had been....

Our relation to ruins does not always imply going backwards in time—for in this case, there was not a prior time for them, and there was no nostalgia. The boy and the girl were young enough to believe that this was the time; this was the state of things that only existed in the present. For they didn’t know about the past, and probably didn’t even have a notion of the future, of what this place could come to represent in the long run when, paradoxically, its original referent would be obliterated. Neither could they know that its architect, Luis Barragán, would be praised for his commitment to architecture as a sublime act of poetic imagination.*

But here is what they knew: this was a dilapidated modern house and there was no other way to picture it, deserted in the morning and dark at night. There was the corridor leading to the bedrooms, particularly to the back room where they could hear the pigeons cooing and could watch through the window the silent shadows of the trees over a big white wall. There was the old black Bakelite telephone on a wooden table in a corner that would sometimes ring and cheerfully reach to the outside world. And there were many other things that can help to piece everything together and move forward into the past. This is not, however, about restoring past times; it’s about trying to understand whatever had happened that made everything fall apart. Life happened with its fortunes and misfortunes, the architect thus losing the mastery of all things. This is an exhibition that stands as a backdrop for understanding how lived architecture ceases to be a space for contemplation, and accidentally triggers new images and fosters alternative aesthetic experiences. It is about how everyday narratives redirect architectural history while distorted memories become the referent for a different story to be narrated.
Magalí Arriola

[Quelle: Einladung]