Standards for living and for art 88 89 - UQ eSpace
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88 89
Installation view of BTVV, Svizzera 240: House Tour, 2018, The Swiss Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2018
Standards for
living and
Triennial
for art
JOHN MACARTHUR
90 91
The standardisation of building components is intended to based on reading the proposal and prior to it being complet-
make for economical manufacture, predictable costing and ed, but visiting it surprised me.2 While cuttingly critical of
easy assembly. Once assembled into a house, they achieve the unthinking standardisation and flattening out of domes-
more primal aims – they put a roof over our heads. But tic space, I hadn’t expected that it would also be hilarious,
what should we make of the fact that in the vast majority and so perfectly ‘Instagrammatical’, with children playing
of new housing, the ceiling under that roof is exactly 2400 at being adults, and architects, even famous ones, playing
millimetres above the floor? The building code sets this at being children – literally laughing out loud. Experiencing
as the minimum height, and the plasterboard sheets that one’s body as abnormal is the mechanism of House Tour’s
make up the walls are, accordingly, 2400 millimetres long. critique of the insidious normalisation of domestic life, but
In apartment buildings these measures are simply multi- this uncanniness is also alarmingly funny, like the funhouse
plied, forming an even lamination of stacked apartments mirrors at a fairground, where one distorts the image of
that makes a datum observable from Adelaide to Zürich. oneself for the amusement of friends and passers-by. It is at
Around the middle-class world there is a familiar me- once endearing and monstrous.
trological order to life.1 We have the same space above our In another register, what House Tour does is repre-
heads, with light fittings and ceiling fans installed carefully sent to the public the kind of disquiet and fascination that
so as not to hang too low. Benchtops are at 900 millime- architects have with this same process of the rule of 2400
tres; balustrades at 1100 millimetres; and sills, tables and millimetres. Art, of course, should not be carried out under
chair heights, the depth of the door-handle lever, electrical instruction, which creates a problem for architects, whose
switches and air-conditioning diffusers are all the same medium is highly standardised. Tavor, Bosshard and van
Standards for living and for art
because of the interaction of building codes and the stan- der Ploeg’s installation is accompanied by photographs of
dardisation of industrial manufacture. The house is a kind finished but unoccupied apartments in Switzerland. These
of prosthesis where everything is sized to the body, but images are made by the architects for pragmatic reasons
also to the factories that make its materials, the containers of record. Yet with them comes a degree of resentment at
and trucks that carry them, the assumptions of architects the lack of architecture in apartment design. Architects
and the cost estimations of quantity surveyors. The body would not be artists, only mere technicians, if they oper-
Triennial
thus housed lies at the intersection of many normalising ated only under the instruction of rules and standards,
processes. This body is measured not only against other and here is a self-critique of exactly that process. This is
bodies, but also against the house that needs to fit it. It is not the usual problem of being made the agent of partic-
uncanny, if you think about it – the house knows how far ular client, but rather of the servitude of the profession to
we need to step back to swing the door open, the comfort- building material economies and supply chains, and with
able level of reach to the light switch, and it has a nuanced that their insidious, unintended, blind normalisation of
sense of how much air we need above our heads for a room bourgeois taste. Is it only about construction components
not to feel stuffy. But does the house fit us, or do we fit the and their iteration of standards?
house? It is not my body or yours that is housed, after all, The photographs also show an aesthetic sensibility,
but a standard. The level of mis-fit is rarely noticed nor one learned from the minimalism of the visual arts. It is not
remarked upon, except by disabled persons. Children, who just that the same cubic white spaces, with their manufac-
are not enfranchised to complain about the built environ- tured wooden parquetry flooring, lead the eye out through
ment, experience their bodies as on a path to achieve an the same glazing systems. It is also that someone (the
adulthood lived under the rule of 2400 millimetres, where architect photographer) or something (the real estate mar-
at last they will ‘fit in’. ket) knows the work of Robert Morris and Donald Judd.
We are children or giants in Li Tavor, Alessandro They know the critical reiteration of banality from the New
Bosshard and Matthew van der Ploeg’s House Tour, 2018, Topographers and the Bechers.3 What does Dan Graham’s
where nothing is the ‘normal’ size. Yet, in appearance, the Homes for America4 mean in Zürich, or Melbourne fifty-five
house on display is resolutely ‘normcore’. The installation years later? That minimalism and all that it meant in the
takes as its theme the showing of an empty apartment to break with modernism could ‘trickle down’ into an archi-
prospective buyers, but the familiar scale I’ve been describ- tectural style in the 1990s, and now into a genre of decor,
ing is adjusted. The scales of the different sections of House is what House Tour reveals. The specificity of the contexts,
Tour vary – 1.5:1, 1.3:1, 1.2:1, 1:1, 1:1.1, 1:1.3, 1:1.4. Not only the of the debates, all this has now sedimented into cultural
room proportions, but also the benches and sills, the door history, leaving only the clear liquor of a quality of ‘design’
furniture and electrical switches are all at an altered, unfa- that is the same in housing and consumer electronics. No
miliar scale. Winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale longer even ‘good design’, just design, or the unremarked
of 2018, House Tour (exhibited for the Swiss Pro Helvetia affinity of taste, commerce and manufacturing.
cultural foundation) was also the most popular national Art critic Michael Fried complained of the ‘literal-
pavilion. I (among others) wrote about it for the catalogue ness’ of what came to be called minimalism. He thought
Installation view of BTVV, Svizzera 240: House Tour, 2018, The Swiss Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2018
94 95
that its blank asemantic geometric forms, in their attempt Notes
to be merely empirical, became anthropomorphic instead. 1 For a wider understanding of measurement and power see Witold Kula,
The boxes, beams and cubes of Morris, Judd and Tony Measures and Men, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1986; and
James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the
Smith were hollow forms, like bodies containing organs, Human Condition Have Failed, Yale University Press, New Haven and
which Fried thought, given these blank things in space London, 1998.
2 John Macarthur, ‘The banality of 240 cm’, in Adam Jasper et al. (eds),
were rigorously non-representational, was vaguely mon- House Tour: Views of the Unfurnished Interior, Park Books, Zürich,
2018, pp. 112–15.
strous. So too, the ‘playful monstrosity’ of being the wrong
3 The exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered
size in House Tour can be seen to be a question of our Landscape, held at the International Museum of Photography, George
Eastman House, Rochester, New York, during 1975 and 1976, exhibited
experience of our bodies, a question at once metaphysical the photographers Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke,
and banal, but also one of the transmigration of cultural Nicholas Nixon, John Schott, Stephen Shore, Henry Wessel Jr and Bernd
and Hilla Becher. The exhibition crystallised artistic interest in everyday
motifs. What is an art concept of seriality when exercised landscapes and an aesthetic of the banal. The Bechers have gone on to be
in the actual modularity of the built environment? How and celebrated for their studies of serial form in the built environment. On
photography and the everyday built environment see Eugénie Shinkle,
why do we give ourselves over to it in this way? ‘Boredom, repetition, inertia: contemporary photography and the
House Tour is empty, like the architects’ photo- aesthetics of the banal’, Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal,
vol. 37, no. 4, 2004, pp. 165–84; Rosemary Hawker, ‘Repopulating the
graphs. Its emptiness makes plain the fact that the most street: contemporary photography and urban experience’, History of
Photography, vol. 37, no. 3, 2013, pp. 341–52; and Jesús Vassallo, Epics in
fundamental housing choices are largely made for us, with
the Everyday: Photography, Architecture and the Problem of Realism,
wealth determining position, the orientation to view or Park Books, Zürich, 2019.
4 Dan Graham, Homes for America, 1966–67, mixed media, Museum of
sun, the floor area, the number of bathrooms and parking Modern Art, New York. Graham documented suburban housing
spaces. If House Tour were really an apartment on display, developments, showing something of their socioeconomic condition and
at the same time, a formal relation to minimalist art.
Standards for living and for art
what we would experience is a relation to our bank bal-
ance and credit capacity. In this way, House Tour leaves us
figuratively naked, deprived of the soft furnishings, pres-
tigious electronics, artworks and books that would allow
us to make a home. We are reduced to the facts of what we
can afford, and before the possibility of getting an edge,
Triennial
making a find, seeing what other prospective buyers have
not and making something of the place with our movable
possessions and personality. In real estate terms, the
apartments have not been ‘staged’ for sale with a truck-
load of ‘designer’ furniture and the accoutrements of a life
that might be ours. Instead, our inadequacy in staging the
apartment with the bare life of our bodies is where the hu-
mour of House Tour lies. If we were at the ‘right’ scale we
could imagine where to put that coffee table, where to have
sex. This is also the point. The changing scale of House
Tour halts the doll’s house play of ‘where my things would
go’. The unstage-ableness of the House makes life closer
to a social media platform. In the time of Facebook and
Instagram, the homemaking work that we must do to pro-
duce ourselves has changed. It is as if the apartment is an
internet platform, a blank screen, an empty account calling
out for images and experiences to be shared. It is the place
where, awake on a sleepless night, we will ‘like’ our friends’
witty Instagram posts. The flatness of housing lies not only
in the limited range of spatial variation that 2400 millime-
tres imposes, but also in the image of housing. Less and
less is one’s home an expression of self; more and more
it is like other shareable, monetisable forms of cultural
content production at which we must toil. What is revealed
in our clothing, online lives and our housing is not only us,
but also how successful we have been as entrepreneurs
of ourselves. Yet all the while we have worked so hard and
been so compliant as to fit it all into 2400 millimetres.
NGV Triennial 2020
Publisher: National Gallery of Victoria
Multi-volume hardback with slipcase
Outer case 236mm x 292mm
Volume 1 (Dossier) 230mm x 290mm, 120pp
Volume 2 (Illumination) 230mm x 290mm, 256pp
Volume 3 (Reflection) 230mm x 290mm, 240pp
Volume 4 (Conservation) 230mm x 290mm, 264pp
Volume 5 (Speculation) 230mm x 290mm, 208pp
Fully illustrated in colour
ISBN: 9781925432848
Category: Contemporary art and design
RRP: $79.95
Published: December 2021
Artists, designers and architects perform a vital
role in giving form to our collective imagination,
fears and aspirations. Throughout history, they
have demonstrated great resilience as they
actualise their visions, sometimes in the face of
considerable adversity. In 2020 this resilience
truly came to the fore.
This publication presents discourses by
ninety writers from across the globe, among
them academics, journalists, literary figures,
social commentators, artists, designers and
curators. Through essays, fiction, philosophy,
interviews, analysis and poetry, they explore the
practices and motivations of the artists and
designers featured in the 2020 NGV Triennial.
These artists and designers have examined, in
their individual ways, contemporary life and
possible futures with a sense that those futures
are dependent on the ability of individuals and
communities to both imagine and enact change.
In response to and in dialogue with the
exhibition, NGV Triennial 2020 is divided into
four themes: Illumination, Reflection,
Conservation and Speculation. Illumination
celebrates the poetic beauty of light as a
universal metaphor for a range of emotions and
knowledge; Reflection explores the importance
of examining and challenging histories, social
structures and cultural practices; Conservation
challenges us to recognise the accelerating
ecological decline resulting from human activity;
and Speculation proposes inspirational, and at
times challenging, investigations into the future.
NGV Triennial 2020 is richly illustrated
with images of works in the exhibition,
photographic essays, and source and research
material from featured artists and designers. This
expansive publication, the largest ever published
by the NGV, invites reflection and discussion on
the myriad ideas presented in the exhibition,
which are pertinent to our complex times.
Contributors
Glenn Adamson (United States); Annika Aitken
(NGV); Asinnajaq (Canada); Elisabetta Barberio
(University of Melbourne); William ‘Badger’ Bates
(Australia); Merve Bedir (Hong Kong); Laurie Benson
(NGV); Tilly Boleyn (Australia); Benjamin Bratton
(United States); Ellen Broad (Australia); Kalia Brooks
Nelson (United States); Holly Buck (United States);
Elisha Buttler (NGV); Guido Casaretto (Turkey); David
Challis (University of Melbourne); Gabrielle Chan
(Australia); Brendan Churchill (University of
Melbourne); Jessica Cole (NGV); Claire G. Coleman
(Australia); Edward Colless (University of Melbourne);
Claire Collie (University of Melbourne); Wayne Crothers (NGV); Zena Cumpston (Australia); Stefano de Pieri (Australia); Jane Devery (NGV); Manoj Dias (Australia); Maria Cristina Didero (Italy); Myfanwy Doughty (NGV); Kimberly Drew (New York); Amanda Dunsmore (NGV); Tony Ellwood AM (NGV); Anastasiia Fedorova (United Kingdom/Russia); Rosie Findlay (United Kingdom); Tim Flannery (Australia); Ted Gott (NGV); Anna Gritz (Germany); Ashley Hay (Australia); Jörg Heiser (Germany); Stefanie Hessler (Norway); Lucy Ives (United Kingdom); Sigourney Jacks (NGV); Neelika Jayawardane (United States); Petra Kayser (NGV); Vicki Kirby (Australia); Frances Koya Vaka’utan (Fiji); Tessa Laird (University of Melbourne); Claudia La Rocco (United States); Venus Lau (Hong Kong); Simone LeAmon (NGV); Michelle Lim (Australia); Astrid Lorange (Australia); John Macarthur (Australia); Simon Maidment (NGV); Sarah Martin (Australia); Tony Matelli (United States); Hannah McCann (University of Melbourne); Donna McColm (NGV); Ewan McEoin (NGV); George Megalogenis (Australia); Tom Melick (Australia); Timothy Moore (Australia); David Moyle (Australia); Julie Nagam (Canada); Astrida Neimanis (Australia); Peter Otto (University of Melbourne); Tony Oursler (United States); Megan Patty (NGV); Hannah Presley (NGV); Katharina Prugger (NGV); Maria Quirk (NGV); Steven Rhall (Australia); Zoe Rimmer (Australia); Leah Ruppanner (University of Melbourne); Myles Russell-Cook (NGV); Judith Ryan AM (NGV); Kate Ryan (NGV); Michael Ryan (NGV); Tom Simonite (United States); Meg Slater (NGV); Simone Slee (University of Melbourne); Seetal Solanki (United Kingdom); Victor Steffensen (Australia); Maria Tumarkin (University of Melbourne); Lee Ufan (France/Japan); Susan van Wyk (NGV); Pip Wallis (NGV); Danielle Whitfield (NGV); Eva Wilson (United Kingdom/Germany); Fred Wilson (United States); Charles Yu (United States); Donna Zuckerberg (United States) Artists Tony Albert; Refik Anadol; Joi T. Arcand; Daniel Arsham; Asinnajaq; Atong Atem; Elliot Bastianon; Jonathan Ben-Tovim; Cecilie Bendixen; Naama Bergman; Girma Berta; David Bielander; Hannah Brontë; Danielle Brustman; Bosshard, Tavor & van der Ploeg, and Ani Vihervaara (BTVV); Carnovsky; Guido Casaretto; Megan Cope; Matt Copson; Ilan El; Véronique Ellena; Fallen Fruit; Fecal Matter; Yanni Florence; Adam Nathaniel Furman & Sibling Architecture; Yann Gerstberger; Bruce Gilden; Pirjo Haikola; Dale Hardiman & Stephen Royce; Stuart Haygarth; Talin Hazbar; Porky Hefer; Ayana V. Jackson; JR; Misaki Kawai; Phumzile Khanyile; Kim Sihyun; Tomo Koizumi; Jeff Koons; Siji Krishnan; Kengo Kuma & Associates with Geoff Nees; Alicja Kwade; Des Lawrence; Lee Ufan; Liu Shiyuan; Sabine Marcelis; Tony Matelli; Natasha Matila-Smith; Cristina de Middel & Bruno Morais; Clare Milledge; Pierre Mukeba; Aïda Muluneh; Dhambit Munuŋgurr; Erez Nevi Pana; Glenda Nicholls; Lakin Ogunbanwo; Julian Opie; Susan Philipsz; Adrian Piper; Alice Potts; Richard Quinn; Steven Rhall; Tabor Robak; Rive Roshan; Makiko Ryujin & Michael Gittings; Lara Schnitger; Jim Shaw; Scotty So; Bosco Sodi; Soheila Sokhanvari; Diamond Stingily; Kiran Subbaiah; Tomoaki Suzuki; Angela Tiatia; Faye Toogood; Frieda Toranzo Jaeger; Tromarama; Patricia Urquiola; Sarah Waiswa; Nari Ward; Lukas Wegwerth; Vicki West; Fred Wilson; Cerith Wyn Evans; Liam Young
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