Write an imaginary interview with Rotor
Answers
Answer:
An Interview with Rotor
__________________________________________________________
At the end of the press conference with Rem Koolhaas and Rotor (Barbican Art Gallery, London, 6 October 2011), Marcel Mauer meets Marteen Gielen, founder of Rotor, for a quick interview.
Maarten Gielen (MG): The title of the exhibition constitutes a reference to the way the content is displayed. If we had to empty the space and build something new inside it, we would have lost another week of research and work. We had to decide on the basis of what we really wanted, so the display devices, such as tables and walls, provide a really pragmatic way of presenting the documents.
Marcel Mauer (MM): Just by walking through the rooms of the exhibition, I felt that you had to undergo a challenging task reviewing OMA’s archive. The end result is unexpected and intriguing. I came here today with the idea of writing an article about OMA but I think that I will write an article about Rotor instead!
(MG): Oh thanks! I must say that quotes by Rem always work better than quotes by Rotor, so if you have to use a quote, take a Rem’s one (laughter).
MM: I met your work in Venice last year (Use/Usures, Belgian Pavillion, Venice Biennale 2010), which was very inspiring and just one year later here you are again at the Barbican today, curating the first substantial exhibition of OMA in the UK. You must be working really hard! Tell us more about Rotor.
MG: It is also a very pragmatic story: Tristan [Boniver] and I founded Rotor in 2005. At that time we both had to do a project with no budget and we were trying to find a way to combine the solutions of our problems. Looking for an answer, we opened the yellow pages to get in contact with all the companies providing timber moulds for concrete works. We soon realised that all the timber is periodically replaced. So we undertook a study focused on manufacturing cycles. We were interested in the transformation process both in a material and metaphorical (non-material) way. One of the first exhibitions that we did on this subject was in Germany [DEUTSCHLAND IM HERBST, Ursula Blickle Foundation November 9 – December 14, 2008]. The research was based on a series of visits to different manufacturing and production companies. Each of these companies were interesting to us for the metaphorical interpretation of their production process. For example, there was one Belgian company producing white polyurethane boots. The chemical reaction following the polyurethane injection resulted in a material overflow. The overflown polyurethane constantly dripped underneath the machine and once hardened it left irregular conic polyurethane pyramids. The exhibition was simply the collection of observations and notes on 15 different materials and manufacturing processes. The results of this initial work really got us enthusiastic about our research!
__________________________________________________________
20Tnks=Follow.
@ParisQueen.....