L’air pour l’air, a performance by SO-IL. Mask and shelter in Chicago Biennial

The 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial has a lot of places to celebrate its opening week. One of them is the Garfield Park Conservatory, one of Chicago’s great landmarks, not to mention one of the finest conservatories in the country.

The sprawling ferrovitreous complex, and the many varieties of flora it and habitats it contains, have been form the stage of a musical performance piece titled "L’air pour l’air". Where each piece was designed to clean and filter the air through breathing.

"L’air pour l’air" by SO-IL and Ana Prvački. Photograph © Iwan Baan

The performance devised by New York architecture firm SO-IL and the artist Ana Prvački. The team has created a production of a musical troupe (from the Chicago Sinfionetta) dressed in air-filtering costumes that the collaborators developed out of white mesh, a translucent PVC mesh so creates different depths and translucency. The intent, says composer Veronika Krausas, who created a new work for the occasion, is to "clean the air that produces the music," with a a translucent PVC mesh so creates different depths and translucency.

"The installation and performance encourage its viewers to meditate upon the complex notions such as the relationship between purity and pollution, and the distinctions between self, body, objects, and nature," explains the design team.

Description of project by SO-IL

In conjunction with Making New History, the second edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, SO–IL and artist Ana Prvački will debut a special project during the Biennial’s opening week. Titled L’air pour l’air, the project aims to ensure the continued legacy of musicians as our cities’ atmospheres grow more polluted.

Inspired by the abundant plant life in the Garfield Park Conservatory, SO–IL and Prvački have created an ensemble of air-filtering mesh enclosures, designed to clean the air through breathing. Part mask, part shelter, the enclosures will be worn by an ensemble of saxophone, flute, trombone, and vocals from the Chicago Sinfionetta. Through performing an original composition, De Aere (concerning the air), by composer Veronika Krausas, the musicians will “clean the air that produces the music.” The installation and performance encourage its viewers to meditate upon the complex notions such as the relationship between purity and pollution, and the distinctions between self, body, objects, and nature.

Enlightening our senses has been a consistent endeavor of SO-IL. Prior to L’air pour l’air, SO-IL has created Passage, a reflection on the spatial qualities of the ramp, for the Chicago Architecture Biennial in 2015.

In response to a perceived incline and distance, one’s navigational sense corrects one’s movement by adjusting pace and posture. This installation endeavors to interrupt this automatic response by heightening an awareness of one’s body in space. The Biennial selected Passage to remain on site, which is now on view at the Chicago Cultural Center.

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More information

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Architects

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SO-IL.

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Collaborator

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Ana Prvački

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Team

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Florian Idenburg, Jing Liu, Ilias Papageorgiou, Seunghyun Kang (Project Lead), Anna Margit, Diandra Rendradjaja, Yan Ma, Qionglu Lei, Sophie Nichols, Iason Houssein

Florian Idenburg, Jing Liu. SO-IL

Solid Objectives – Idenburg Liu (SO – IL) is an idea-driven design office founded by Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu in 2008, and is currently led together by Ilias Papageorgiou. With a global reach, it brings together extensive experience from the fields of architecture, academia and the arts. The firm has extensive recognition and prizes, including the Emerging Voices award from the Architectural League, the MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program Award, and the AIA Young Architects Award. The office has received praise for many of its works including the design of the Frieze Art Fair New York, and for their largest building to date, the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at the University of California at Davis.

Partners.
Florian Idenburg, principal. Florian Idenburg (1975, the Netherlands) holds an MSc. in Architecture from Delft University of Technology. Prior to founding SO–IL, Idenburg gained eight years of experience at the practice of Pritzker laureates Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / SANAA. Idenburg is a recognized voice in academia and has held teaching positions at Harvard, Columbia, Princeton and the University of Kentucky.

Jing Liu, M Arch, principal. A native of China, Jing Liu received her education in China, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, concluding with a Master of Architecture from Tulane School of Architecture in New Orleans. Liu has been a faculty member at The Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University since 2009, and advises the Master’s thesis at Parsons The New School of Design. In addition to her professional and academic pursuits, Liu serves on the board of the Van Alen Institute.

Ilias Papageorgiou, partner. He was born in Athens, Greece. He holds a Diploma in Architecture from Aristotle University in Greece, and a Master's in Architecture from Harvard University. Papageorgiou has been with SO–IL since its inception in 2008 and has played a key role in the firm’s recognition and success. He became a partner in 2013. Besides practising, Papageorgiou is a frequent lecturer and visiting critic at various universities and has taught design studios at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation.

Team.
Sooran Kim, associate, joined SO–IL in 2011 and relocated to Seoul to oversee the construction of the Kukje project. Sooran holds a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from Harvard University.

Ted Baab, associate, joined SO–IL in 2011. Ted holds a Master of Architecture from Harvard University.

> 2013.

Ana Prvački

Ana Prvački. Born Pančevo, former Yugoslavia (Serbia), 1976. Lives and works in Los Angeles. MA Fine Arts, LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts, Singapore, 2005. Master Arquitecturas Genéticas, El Nuevo Proyecto Cibernetico y Ecologico, Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Barcelona, 2001. BFA Fine Arts, Pratt Institute, New York, 1999.

Artist Ana Prvački is a theatre and music trained performance and installation artist. Prvački's interdisciplinary work often deals with sound and sensuality. She uses a gently pedagogical and comedic approach and aims for a conceptual practice with a low carbon footprint.

Her work has been included in many international exhibitions including 14th Istanbul Biennial SALTWATER: A Theory of Thought Forms, Istanbul Turkey 2015, Contour Biennial in Mechelen Belgium 2015, dOCUMENTA 13 2012, Sydney Biennial 2007, Singapore Biennial 2006, and the Turin Triennale 2005.

Solo exhibitions and projects include the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston; Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Turin; Institute of Contemporary Arts, Singapore and 1301PE Gallery, Los Angeles.

Her works are included in private and public collection and institutions such as MOCA, LACMA and Castello di Rivoli. Prvački has produced a series of ideas catalogues with the intention of filing and documenting her imagination. Some of the thoughts have been realized as performances, such as “Tent, Quartet, bows and elbows” and “The leap of faith”. Her new catalogue of ideas “Finding comfort in an uncomfortable imagination” is published by ICA Singapore.

Prvački is currently the artist in resident at the de Young Museum in San Francisco.