Appendix 1
‘The Manhattan Transcripts’ by Bernard Tschumi
“The Manhattan Transcripts is a theoretical project of drawings, they differ from the most architectural drawings insofar as they are neither real projects nor mere fantasies. They propose to transcribe an architectural interpretation of reality. To this aim, they use a particular structure indicated by photographs that either direct or ‘witness’ events (some would say ‘functions’, others would call them ‘programs’) At the same time, plans, sections, and diagrams outline spaces and indicate the movements of the different protagonists – those people intruding into the architectural ‘stage set’. The effects are not unlike an Eisenstein film script or some Moholy Nagy stage …show more content…
The non-coincidence between meaning and being, movement and space, man and object is the starting condition of the work. Yet the inevitable confrontation of these terms produces effects of far-ranging consequence. Ultimately, the transcripts try to offer a different reading of architecture in which space, movement, and events are independent, yet stand in a new relation to one another so that the conventional components of architecture are broken down and rebuilt along different axes. “
“While the programs used for ‘The Manhattan Transcripts’ are of the most extreme nature, they also parallel the most common formula plot: the archetype of murder. Other phantasms are occasionally used to underline the fact that perhaps all architecture, rather than being about functional standards, is about love and death. By going beyond the conventional definition of use, the Transcripts use their tentative format to explore unlikely confrontations.” (Tschumi, The Manhattan Transcripts …show more content…
Sitting on top of 1,500 cow bones in a white dress, she spent four days, six hours a day, washing each of these bloody bones, surrounded by projected images of her parents and herself. The accompanying sound included her recorded description of methods used in the Balkans for killing rats and her singing of her native folk songs. The performance progression was made visceral due to the unbearable heat of the basement room and fetid smell. For Abramovic, it was not enough to simply recount the number of people lost in the modern-day war. Instead, she aimed to remember the lives, efforts and hopes of individuals killed by carefully touching and cleaning "their" physical bones and blood. Transforming her individual performative experiences into universal ideas was also an important concept for Abramovic throughout all her work. The comparison between the inability to scrub away all the blood and the inability to erase the shame of war is a concept she viewed as having universal reach.”
“Media and items used: Projections, cow bones, copper sinks and tub filled with black water, bucket, soap, metal brush, white dress “ (Gershman 2017)
Appendix 3
Instructions for ‘Rhythm 0’ (1974) by Marina Abramovic, Studio Morra Naples.