The following are notes from my sections of the Presentation:
 

Radical Critique
· Structuralism was only a part of a broader radical critique
· Radical Critique is characterised by limitless self criticism
· The Frankfurt Group was in favour of objective solutions and rather than existentialism
    - believed in honest intellectual action in arts and otherwise
 

·Art as mystification-a pessimistic view of artistic production, art is not progress but a means of confusing/fooling people
· Have a Marxist like belief that art comes from a single social class imposing its values from an alienated society
 

· In this belief the role of the intelligenia is not to initiate new ideas but to provoke a nilhilistic self reflection
· Cites the belief that all production is ideology—marxist attitude aboutt being a result of economic dominance—calls it ideological hegemony
 

· Therefore artistic production is replaced by critical action—instead of concentrating on artistic production the focus should be on critiquing the ideologies beneath the art
· This critiquing was from an unmasking, destructive stance
 

· There was an artist’s mistrust in art unless it involved its own destruction
· Cobra, Fluxus
· Artists of this movement took objects from everyday life and disrupted them
· Kaprow, Beuys, Oldenburg, de Maria

· Art forms resulting from the movement were of a destructive nature-were an artistic translation of the critical programàpn artistic manifestation of the nihilistic criticism
· The death of art
· Dadaist strategies (“nihilistic protest against western culture") formed
 

· Situationalism
· “experience of an urban…….experiences”-our outlook derives not from some structure/notion but from an accumaltion of media etc we are exposed to
 

· Frankfurt school’s theories also led to a radical critique of modern arch by architectural historians
· Manfredo Tafuri
· “modern prduction of architecture as ideology in the negative Marxist sense of the term”
· Global Critique of modern art
· Ties criticism of arch to criticism of society
· Claims that the language of modern architecture is political mystifying in the Marxist sense
·“call for the destruction of arch”—which Tafuri feels from Brunelleschi onwards was full of deceit
· Difference between the lofty ideals of architectural/urban proposals and what he considers the resulting ruin
 

· Negativism and radical criticism had a crucial role
· Radical critique of architectural ideology manifested itself in practice and theory
· Also produced a biased reconstruction of modern history and a (pessimistic?) arch on paper showing the impossibility of arch and a feeling that it is impossible to create a truly buildable/culturally valid arch
 

Untimely Art
· The crisis of modernism was not fully resolved by the self analysis of structuralism and led to post-structuralism
· Cental idea is that there is no historical time, time does not proceed in an orderly fashion and there is an absence of foundation that relates back to the notion of weak architecture
· Deleuzian ideas-there is no one platform or reference point from which to view the worldàinstead there are multiple platforms or viewpoints-therefore can only produce provisional constructions
· Focus here is on the present/the moment-cannot make reference to the past or justify a project by predicting the future
· idea of the fold—made of up of many surfaces that dislocate spatial experience
· also the experience of time is dislocated
· not a continous flow in which we occupy a certain moment—more a discrete moments with instantaneous beliefs
· the present is temporary and untimely—without a frame of reference
 

· says it supports Kantian notion that the act of aesthetic production takes priority over the results-relates to thoughts in the autonomy section
· Importance of experience in understanding art-not one experience but a variety of experiences
· The receiever of the art is more important than the creator
· But author does not fully support this belief
 

· Talks about minimalism as also supporting the notion of experience over idea, production over final result
· Phenomenological rather than metaphysical-because experience over idea, therefore experience takes precedence
· Judd, Serra, Morris- the moment before you view something?
· No reference to the permanent things such as permanent typologies-untimeliness
 

· Describes notions of untimeliness further in relation to minimalism
· The temporary, the instant
· Indefiniteness of urban condition-cannot trap it in a ordered structure-I interpret this as meaning urban life is so complicated and has so many perspectives we must try to portray that without quantifying it into a order
 

· Untimely architecture
· Architecture without a system of established principles, traditions, liguistic codes which is a central part of a lot of architecture (such as Victorian architectural revivals)
· Instead untimely architecture rejects these codes/foundations in favour of a groundlessness-focus on the moment/the event as for itself
· Relates this to weakness in arch…something like groundlessness which would connote fragility is actually the strength
· Alvaro Siza, Tadao Ando, Frank Gehry
 

· SIZA
· Language of Siza work of abstract and temporary
· No procedure, does not involve itself with previous architectural text—even by deconstructing it
· Architecture that is produced ex novo each time-a temporary quality because your understanding/experience of it is a fleeting idea at a particular time and changes next time
 

· ANDO
· Also untimely
· Each scheme is independent—do not follow a grand overall theory
· Self defining quality relates back to autonomy
· Untimely in that have no tradition (time) and no context (platform)
· refer to local culture as void
· Occurs at a point—a instant—no before or after-essence of untimely arch
 

· GEHRY
· Different approach
· Untimely/inconclusive message
· Lack of reference to other codes/schemes
· Notion of “installation architecture”-deliberate fragility of materials-the lack of firmitas reinforces the notion of the temporary since temporary is associated with the fleeting and fleeting with fragility-weak architecture
· Erupts in a moment—untimely
· “exhausted in itself”-Independent/self contained-relates back to autonomy
· no method and no absolute truth because untimeliness is based on a notion that there is no absolute truth but multiple platforms
 

· refers to mythology
· Chronos vs Aeon
· Chronos/time-the moment in relation to past, present, future, has solidity
· Aeon as time without depth/extension—instantaneous-symbolic of untimely art/arch
· "Like a tale told by the actor on the stage, like the unexpected pirouettes of a graceful ballerina"