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“There is an attempt to diminish RICHARD SERRA, “Interview”,1975 (1)
Architectonic Facts integrates the latest movement in Eduardo Coimbra's oeuvre. It is the most difficult too. That architecture, in its various dimensions and instances (including urban), has always been a central theme in Coimbra’s study is evident. Indeed, for a long time the artist has investigated, and above all challenged, some of the most elementary notions and categories of architectural discourse. The notion of “landscape” (not exclusive, but central to architecture) addressed exhaustively by Coimbra’s work, is perhaps the most obvious occurrence in the scope of a practice that often operates on the threshold between architecture and all that which, either by custom or precaution, architectural discourse refrains from incorporating. These incursions into the discursive territory of architecture have always reaped fruit. In fact, they resulted in some of the artist’s most thought-provoking works. His Horizons and Landscapes, for example, are far more than strange, disconcerting things. They are things that cause us to raise our eyebrows at the conventional and, as a rule, ill-considered way in which we deal with the most familiar representations of natural or constructed “real” space. In other words, what these things enable us to do is question the prevalent notions of space – notions without which the “real” world no longer seems familiar and welcoming, and is transformed into an inhospitable, impractical place. The Stadiums series demonstrates, moreover, that Coimbra’s incursions into the territory of architecture are not limited to the deconstruction of elementary notions and categories of architectonic discourse; they have also involved the destabilization of one of the dearest devices to architectural design: the scale model. In this case, too, Eduardo Coimbra’s operation has proven to be highly productive. Those who see such curious scale models distinguish not only the possibility of unusual sporting practices; they recognise the essentially problematic character of one of the most established devices of architectural endeavour, founded on the principle of the more or less logical and natural correspondence between a metonymic representation of the real (the scale model) and the real itself (the building). When, through the force of the strangeness caused, this more or less immediate, and supposedly logical connection between real and representation of the real is broken, Coimbra does not compromise only the operationality of a traditional device of representation of the real (and if you so wish, of the real of architecture); but he exposes the degree of dependence between an idea of real and the, as a rule, naturalized, prevalent devices (in this case, analogical devices – drawings, graphics, diagrams, etc.) of representation of the real. Moreover, the possibility emerges to perceive, often in a dizzying manner (dizziness is, after all, one of the characteristic traits of the artist’s poetics) the degree of interdependence between that which we customarily call (semi-automatically in post-neo-concrete Brazil) “experience” of the real and preconceived models of space – in this case, a model which, among other things, presupposes a categorical and hierarchical distinction between, on the one hand, (graphic, volumetric, but also mental) representations of the building and, on the other, the phenomenological experience of the building itself. Significantly, Eduardo Coimbra’s Stadiums give rise to a kind of relationship with the scale model that extrapolates that which underlies the discourse of architectonic representations, according to which experience per se of the architectural space should always be limited to the scope of the building itself, and not to its graphic, volumetric etc. representations. What all these operations clearly accuse is this: the regime of iconic representation (based on the principle of self-evident similarity between sign and referent) is no less arbitrary and in a sense metaphysical than the symbolic regime (which uses codified signs). Another essential aspect of all of Coimbra’s architectural operations should be highlighted – namely the fact that everything or almost everything represented there was always intended to be explicitly absurd: sky embedded in a concrete portico (Welcome Rio, 2001), sky underneath the floor (Silent Steps, 1994), floor that floats over the sky (Landscape, 2000). This means that, in practice, the semiotic effectiveness (but also the aesthetic efficiency) of all these operations has always benefitted from the fact that we all know, and always have known, that the “real” sky does not lie beneath our feet, but above our heads – and so on. For those who see the works, therefore, there has never been much margin for hesitation or dilemma: faced with those image-things, adherence was either immediate or simply non-existent. There is obviously nothing reprehensible about siding with the logic of nonsense (as Duchamp would say!). But this has undoubtedly always constituted a facility (allied to the unashamedly seductive character of the things produced by Coimbra). More recently, however, Eduardo Coimbra seems to have chosen to explore the discursive territory of architecture in far more complex, and, as mentioned from the outset, incomparably more difficult terms (more difficult for both him and his public). For, as far as I can tell, Coimbra seems determined to explore that which American architect and thinker Peter Eisenman perceptively called the metaphysics of architectonic presence. What defines it? According to Eisenman, the fact that, unlike other representational regimes (like the pictorial, for example), architecture is always accompanied by an unsurmountable “promise of reality”(2). In more detail, the metaphysics of presence emerges from the fact that, standing before a building, we never suppose we are before a representation of the constructed real, but in contact with the constructed real itself. In other words, in the presence of architecture, we never suppose we are before (not first and foremost, and even less so exclusively) a set of signs, but rather before the things themselves – starting with its most elementary components: floor, wall, ceiling, column, window, etc. And yet, states Eisenman, it is precisely this (supposedly obvious) presupposition that prevents us from relating to architecture in immediate fashion (that is, not mediated by a sign system). For, according to him, in practice we are simply incapable of separating the “substantive condition”(3) from the architectonic elements (its mere thingness) of its iconic condition (that is, the fact that such elements represent the function that they perform in the specific context of architecture). Eisenman is right. Given that, what has always been understood as architecture is bound to a very particular condition of construction and shelter (which has always ensured that it is not confused with all those things that, although also construction, and perhaps shelter, would never qualify as architecture stricto sensu – for example, obelisks, triumphal arches, embankments, but also sculptures, and above all those from the so-called “expanded field”(4)), in practice we are incapable of separating, for instance, the component column from the idea of column; in other words, the fact that, by definition, a column serves to maintain the building erect. Thus every time I find myself before that specific column, the column that lies before my eyes and within the reach of my hands, I am incapable of perceiving it in its mere thingness; on the contrary, having always, atavistically, to refer to its structural-architectonic function – to its “columnness”(5). The same is true of the elements that, in the specific context of architecture, fulfil the functions of floor, wall and ceiling: whenever walking on things that, in the building, find themselves under my feet, I am always walking over “slabs”, “ramps”, “stairs” – evidently, essential components of the buildings. Obviously, what can be said of the basic components of the building can be extended to the building as a whole: from the moment I step into the (physical and discursive) territory of architecture, I cease to see its components as mere constructed things, but rather, always as architectonic facts. Hence, I inadvertently and inescapably leave the physical world behind and enter the metaphysical world – the metaphysics of the architectonic presence. * Eduardo Coimbra’s first incursion into the field of metaphysics of architectonic presence occurred in September 2013, when he erected (in the Praça Tiradentes, in downtown Rio de Janeiro) two sculptures of eminently architectonic character. I am not referring solely to the fact that they resembled prismatic shapes of functionalist architecture; not that their dimensions corresponded to those of a small building. I am thinking, above all, about how their spatial units or cells (defined by partially hollowed cubes) as a rule emulated typically architectonic spaces; how their basic constructive elements also matched the most elementary components of architecture: floor, wall and ceiling; how it all seemed to be designed and moulded to shelter all those people who, at any time of the day or night, would feel at ease, or even the need, to enter those spaces and lie down, rest, sleep. In a word, I’m thinking about how those two sculptures were deliberately presented as typical architectural facts. That these two works, over the course of two months, have given way to “such disparate actions as being transformed into a room or acting as a partition for games” (as Felipe Scovino highlighted)(6), and here there is something unsurprising: everything in them actually seemed to be speaking to the subject of architecture, the subject that not only seeks shelter in architecture but that recognises in architecture the most archetypal representation of the complementary notions of shelter and abode. What Architectonic Facts, recently exhibited at the Galeria Nara Roesler (as well as A Sculpture in the Room constructed at the Casa de Cultura Laura Alvim)(7) make clear, however, is that if Eduardo Coimbra chose to emulate architecture, he did so with intentions (in a conventional sense) that are not particularly architectural. For what these works do is nothing other than deconstruct that which they apparently construct: the architecture, the presence of architecture. How do they do that? By neutralizing one of the most essential elements of architectural discourse – the notion of “human scale”; the idea that, by definition, all the measurements of a building, and of every and any architectonic component, should always refer to the human body. It should be pointed out that this notion is not restricted to the ideal of continuity between human body and building; it also and above all encompasses the idea that architecture can and should operate as a quintessential mediator between the human body and landscape. In other words, what the notion of human scale presupposed is the idea that, through architecture, landscape – any landscape, however inhospitable it may be – can itself become shelter and abode. Underlying the notion of human scale, therefore, is a desire toward integration and continuity between the three basic instances of the real: my body, this or that building, and this (natural and above all urban) landscape. To put it another way, underlying the notion of human scale is the ancestral desire to transform every and any notion of landscape (townscape, urbanscape, etc.) into humanscape. It is this basic anthropomorphic and anthropocentric principle of architectural discourse (which, as Nietzsche might say, is all too human), that Eduardo Coimbra’s Architectonic Facts attack. For the fact that they emulate the language of architecture does not mean that they are exclusively, or even primarily, aimed at the subject of architecture – that is, the subject that sees in architecture an essential device for the integration of his body with the surrounding real space, in its multiple dimensions and instances. That Eduardo Coimbra’s architectonic facts are steered toward another subjectivity and another body is something that is clear when one observes the way in which the artist has been manipulating them since late 2013. At Praça Tiradentes they presented a typically architectonic configuration. Transported to gallery and cultural centre spaces, they have taken on entirely new configurations, positions and dimensions; they have developed new relationships with the existing floor, with the surrounding walls, with the ceiling that covers them; they have been elongated, flattened, twisted, adulterated. And, as far as I can tell, all this has occurred contrary with the notion of human scale. And it is this radical distortion, this adulteration of the (supposedly architectonic) components that formed the Praça Tiradentes sculptures which, in practice (at least in my eyes) prevents the new configurations from being primarily or exclusively perceived as downscaled representations of the original intervention. On the contrary, what occurs is the sensation of a suspension of the logic that controls the system of architectural representations, based on the notion of human scale. Significantly, just as in the case of Horizons for Vera (in the terms of architectural discourse, a 1:1 scale construction of something previously represented in reduced scale), here we also witness the collapse of the principle according to which “real” architectural experience must always be reserved for the domain of the building itself, and not for that of the scale model; that the sufficient condition for an authentic experience of the real is, therefore, the presence of the body – more specifically, of a human body which is naturally sensitive to the things that emulate its scale; and all those things that were built in its image and semblance, and that, by force of the presence of architecture, are transformed into shelter and abode. What Eduardo Coimbra’s Architectonic Facts demonstrate, therefore, is the contemporary (i.e., neither classic/idealist nor modern/mundane) productivity of aesthetic regimes in which the experience of the work does not presuppose the presence of the sensitive and all too human body of its enjoyers (as occurs, for instance, in the case of the ellipses and earth works of Richard Serra, but also of Hélio Oiticica’s cosy and synesthetic Penetrables and Nests), but of a desensitized and denaturalized body – the body that has a dizzying perception that it is itself also representation, simulacrum, fiction. Thus, more than the “real” space, what Eduardo Coimbra’s architectonic operations intend to challenge, adulterate and above all dehumanise, is the “real” body. For if these Architectonic Facts are, as I believe, simulacrums of architecture, then the bodies that they conjure can only themselves be simulacrums of real bodies – characters capable of inhabiting something that is neither building, nor sculpture, nor scale model, nor, above all, humanscape; something which, as Eisenman would say, “popular knowledge would call disaster”(8). The extent of the divergence for Eisenman (but also with the extensive and lasting Neoconcrete lineage of Brazilian art, of eminently phenomenological extraction) is clear. For if Coimbra wants to deconstruct the metaphysics of presence it is never in order to replace it with a more original and authentic architectonic presence. On the contrary, if he deconstructs the metaphysical presence of the architectonic facts it is merely to reconstruct other architectonic fictions. A genuine disaster. 2015 obs: text written for the folder of the Fatos Arquitetônicos (Architectonic Facts) exhibition, held at Galeria Nara Roesler, Rio de Janeiro, in May 2015 notes:
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