Harry Catterns 2012 Student BHTS report - Architecture Insights

‘Behind the Blinds’
Harry Catterns

This spring, from the people who brought you ‘Venetian
Blinds’, comes ‘The Venice Architecture Biennale’.
Filmed and edited by Harry Catterns supported by
The Byera Hadley Travelling Scholarship ‘Behind the
Blinds’ explores the temporal and spatial qualities of
architecture old and new, as well as the inherent ironies
born of this collision. This report consists of 6 films and
1 photograph produced over 7 days of the 2012 Venice
Architecture Biennale, listed here. They are:
1. Venice doppelgänger – a pre-Biennale premonition
of Venice made in Sydney.
2. Trains and boats and planes – a journey to Venice.
3. Tide – a square as familiar as San Marco changes
radically with an aqua alta.
4. Spaghetti Nightmare – tribute to Venetian cuisine.
5. Lilliput – architecture that is realised only by models
has its own particular audience.
6. Peter Eisenman’s homage to Kanye West – “All that
glisters is not gold” (The Merchant of Venice, II, vii).
7. Snap – an infinite recursion of photography.

Venice Doppelgänger
Day: 1
Location:
University of Sydney
Duration: 00:40
Resolution:
720p
Scenario:
Ex tempore
Effects:
Loop
Thoughts:
Pre-Venice daydreams

Trains & Boats & Planes
Day: 2
Location:
Flinders St Station Melbourne/ Venice form the air/ Grand Canal
Duration: 01:11
Resolution:
HD
Scenario:
Ex tempore
Effects:
None present
Thoughts:
We travel to the same places, but whether we perceive different things depends on how closely
we look. Perhaps this is a question of distance or possibly of how much time we give to each
experience.

Tide
Day: 3
Location:
San Marco Square
Duration: 00:44
Resolution:
HD
Scenario:
Ex tempore
Effects:
None present
Thoughts:
Spaces that change are a theme du jour within contemporary architectural design. They evoke
in us visions of profound engagement with place and time outside the realm of the everyday. It
was illuminating to see, un-choreographed, such a change and people’s response to it, manifest
in the flooding of San Marco.

Spaghetti Nightmare
Day: 4
Location:
Hotel room/Fish market
Duration: 00:25
Resolution: 568 x 320
Scenario:
Ex tempore
Effects:
Layering
Thoughts:
Cabin fever...

Lilliput
Day: 5
Location:
Arsenale/Giardini
Duration: 01:49
Resolution:
HD
Scenario:
Ex tempore
Effects:
None present
Thoiughts:
Architecture whose only expression will be a model is an art object requiring an act of
imagination or a change in scale to be fully experienced. Can gold plating or stuffed rabbits
contribute to the viewer’s understanding?

Peter Eisenman’s homage to Kanye West
Day: 6
Location:
Giardini
Duration:
NA
Resolution:
HD
Scenario:
Extempore
Effects:
None present
Thoughts:
Gold plated model.

Snap
Day: 7
Location:
San Marco/ Grand Canal
Duration: 00:12
Resolution:
HD
Scenario:
Ex tempore
Effects:
None present
Thoughts:
Where do our pictures go? The rampant recording of Venice is common to both the sponsored
Byera Hadley tourists and to the crowd at large. What are the shortcomings of this common
ground? In a time of unprecedented documentation, in a city where street vendors sell tripods
instead of food, the idea of people from around the world coming together to celebrate their
common ground by taking the same photos of a frozen city and by buying the same novelty
masks seems incongruous to me.

Thanks to the 2012 Byera Hadley Travelling
Scholarships, administered by the NSW Architects
Registration Board.