BestandTeile – Das Jahrbuch der KIT-Fakultät für Architektur 2022

The Greek origin found in the word technê (art,
skill, craft, or the way, manner, or means by which a thing is
gained) locates crafts as the primary human activity for the
collective construction of reality. Today craftsmanship holds
an intermediate position in the range of creative production
processes. In the hands of a few professionals, specialized
handicraft seems to be a residual and small-scale technique
within architecture. In contrast, it seems a vaster, supraindividual
practice compared to fine art endeavors.
The following artistic example combines aspects
of crafting and repairing. It also shows prototypically how
multi-layered the discussion of up- and downscaling can become
when relating it to references and established practices
of different domains. In his work, The Invisible Enemy
Should Not Exist (2018), the artist Michael Rakowitz recreated
an Assyrian statue destroyed in 2015 by ISIS in the
ancient Iraqi city of Nineveh. The sculpture has a height of
4,5 m. The artist decided to add to this topic another cultural
layer by covering the form with 10,500 colorful and recycled
cans of date syrup which formed a major export
branch of the country. Thus, he could comment on the geopolitical
dependencies of global markets that traditionally
connect Great Britain and Iraq (another line of transfer is
one of cultural goods into British museums). As in the original
usage in the food industry, the Middle Eastern packaging
provided protection. It comes in durable, colorful patterns
as it originally was a self-advertising product on the shelves.
The cans were varied enough to allow for a selection of motives
to emphasize the form in the sculptural structure.
The original aluminum cans already had rills, and thus, the
sculpture’s expressive needs led to modifying the cans’ form.
Each one got reworked (cut, pressed) and foreseen for a
specific part to be mounted in an overlapping manner (the
model being reptiles/scale armors and birds) with screws,
much like shingle roofs. From a house cladding or roofing
perspective, this might be a downscaling. In terms of the
number of items needed for the decommercializing covering,
it remained equally impressive. In terms of modeling the
Garriga Tarrés, Hartmann,
Hinterwaldner
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