威尼斯雙年展：給未卜的明天設(shè)立的開放實驗室

盧卡·莫利納里/Luca Molinari

龐凌波 譯/Translated by PANG Lingbo

“我們需要一個新的空間契約?！?/p>

這是第17屆威尼斯建筑雙年展策展人哈希姆·薩基斯在第一次新聞發(fā)布會上的開場白，幾個月之后，我們就被新冠疫情的洪流淹沒。而這次展覽不知不覺成為這一劇變世界中一個必要的實驗場。

出于這樣的原因，此次精心籌備的公共事件，在國際層面上，承擔(dān)著第一次公開活動的重要責(zé)任，在經(jīng)歷了近兩年戲劇性的桎梏之后，對其進(jìn)行批判并不容易。

薩基斯確定的主題一經(jīng)提出便帶上了預(yù)言色彩，在不斷崛起的反城市思想的壓力下，幾個月的封鎖期內(nèi)，許多專家和評論員的文章為我們城市的未來命運敲響了喪鐘。

到現(xiàn)在，第三波疫情已經(jīng)過去，歷史上最大規(guī)模的疫苗運動已然開啟，對大都市命運的悲觀反思似乎迅速退卻，而“我們?nèi)绾喂餐睿俊边@個主題對于我們要如何想象未來幾十年的居所仍具有緊迫性。

另一方面，由策展人發(fā)起的問題和對新一代參展人的大規(guī)模號召，動搖了雙年展令人信服的傳統(tǒng)模式。多年來，雙年展一直非常注重策展人與其詮釋者之間的關(guān)系，以及對當(dāng)代建筑藝術(shù)現(xiàn)狀令人欣慰的描述。

5個主題組成的展覽結(jié)構(gòu)，以一種從宏觀到微觀的方式進(jìn)行組織。大多數(shù)作品和裝置因其脆弱性和問題性而吸引人，并且與前幾屆雙年展許多更嚴(yán)謹(jǐn)?shù)倪x擇相比似乎截然不同。

2021年的雙年展代表了兩個漸行漸遠(yuǎn)的世界之間真實的結(jié)構(gòu)性裂縫，這兩個世界在新冠疫情之前與之后存在著顯著的分離峰值，也在由策展人陳述的展覽理念和作為一個開放實驗室的展覽愿景之間存在巨大鴻溝。

薩基斯策劃的展覽并不具備保羅·波托格西的“新大道”或是?？怂_斯的“少一些美學(xué)，多一些倫理”那樣標(biāo)志性的力量，但是，它巧妙地引入了對重大事件所必須具有的新方向的懷疑和不確定——成為一個問題導(dǎo)向的、集體的、開放的實驗室，在其中，建筑需要為之提供可能的答案，來對經(jīng)歷著劃時代意義蛻變的世界做出反應(yīng)。

在這樣的條件下，與形式及其在形成我們居所的過程中所扮演的角色的對峙不可避免，也許在這方面，今年的雙年展尤其薄弱，就好像各展覽已經(jīng)集體放棄了令人心安卻無力回應(yīng)總策展人提出的問題的標(biāo)志性元素。

在這些反映這個不確定時代的方案中，不完美和不確定性普遍存在，它們在被動收集可閱讀的數(shù)據(jù)（仿佛這是一種神奇的會導(dǎo)向結(jié)果的占卜活動）和笨拙追求藝術(shù)實踐來回答這些共性問題之間不安地交替著。

在展出的許多作品中存在著對形式的不信任，幾乎是對所謂“明星建筑師”的短暫歷史時期的一種代際反應(yīng)，在那個時期，個人研究造成了短期內(nèi)全球范圍孤芳自賞的形式主義的普遍狀況，非但沒有推動當(dāng)代建筑文化的進(jìn)步，反而將其禁錮在一個到處都是消費主義的快餐式作品的無限集合中。

2016年由亞歷杭德羅·阿拉維納策劃的雙年展已經(jīng)提出了這一問題，以一種專注而激進(jìn)的方式看待“南半球”，在那里，建筑在空間干預(yù)中承擔(dān)著政治責(zé)任，并通過自身與當(dāng)今世界中苦難和待解決矛盾之間的關(guān)系來評價自己。

但我們有必要更進(jìn)一步，而且新冠疫情近乎悖論地提供了一個塑造威尼斯雙年展的機(jī)會，這是一個回應(yīng)這個不穩(wěn)定時代的不完美嘗試。在這個對我們的生活如此重要的問題——最終重新制定一個既是社會也是空間的契約的必要性背后，隱藏著一個戲劇性的問題：在急劇變化的世界里，建筑可以發(fā)揮什么作用？

由薩基斯提出的主題，不僅對世界提出了一個開放性問題，而且，對他所代表的人群，也就是建筑文化和職業(yè)世界所發(fā)起了挑釁。在發(fā)達(dá)國家明確收緊新建筑建設(shè)以減少土地和資源消耗的情況下，設(shè)計師將扮演什么角色？另一方面，建筑師可以為快速發(fā)展的國家提供什么模式？

在全球氣候與環(huán)境危機(jī)日益嚴(yán)重的情況下，鑒于建筑是產(chǎn)生溫室氣體排放的重要部分，它能夠做出怎樣的貢獻(xiàn)？面對生物章程修訂中恢復(fù)人類中心地位、使其與其他生物處于同一開放循環(huán)體系的趨勢，我們居住環(huán)境的設(shè)計可以產(chǎn)生怎樣的影響？

面對新生代壓力下正在迅速轉(zhuǎn)型的社會、種族、性別狀況，為更加動蕩不安的社會主體做空間想象意味著什么？

除了所有這些問題，還有政治思想和行動的愈發(fā)軟弱模糊，使得近年來不斷出現(xiàn)孱弱的政府，憤怒和無知的民粹主義，以及慷慨愿景的匱乏，這些都無法為建筑思想提供養(yǎng)分和機(jī)遇。

我們生活在一個普遍短視的時代里，在由咄咄逼人的超資本主義驅(qū)動的永恒當(dāng)下，長期的愿景和個人的批判性思維已不再是追求。

這個無盡的當(dāng)下建立在對歷史的遺忘上，同時也建立在對烏托邦幻想的放棄上——它是西方文化自文藝復(fù)興至今唯一正確的概念和感覺引擎。因此，能夠產(chǎn)生遠(yuǎn)見卓識并帶來行動的烏托邦理念的匱乏，與本次雙年展所激發(fā)的問題形成了一種強(qiáng)烈的概念對比，而本次雙年展則試圖在認(rèn)識論和期望的勇敢轉(zhuǎn)變的基礎(chǔ)上嚴(yán)肅發(fā)問。

也許這就是為什么年輕且有意愿的參展人們的回應(yīng)無法真正滿足我們的期待。但這也是為什么本屆威尼斯雙年展正在成為國際建筑展史上參觀人數(shù)最多的活動，年輕觀眾的比重尤其出乎意料。

這可以被簡單視為一種后疫情效應(yīng)嗎？還是說，這是一次在大危機(jī)時代中提出了正確問題的展覽？

我相信，由哈希姆·薩基斯策劃的威尼斯雙年展最終鼓起了勇氣來面對我們正在經(jīng)歷的矛盾的現(xiàn)實，以及由新一代的年輕公民們堅持提出的新的意義問題。

換句話說，我們在未來的幾十年想要居住和建造一個怎樣的世界？為了應(yīng)對歷史上絕無僅有的環(huán)境和意義危機(jī)，我們必須設(shè)想怎樣的新的、空間和生活之間的契約？

在選擇主題展參展設(shè)計師的過程中，薩基斯已經(jīng)正式申明，我們讓在1990年代末和21世紀(jì)前20年從業(yè)和有所成就的建筑師提供他們的作品所不能提供的答案。

這并非勢利的選擇，也不是對智力的挑釁，而是考慮到現(xiàn)狀需要一種觀念上的轉(zhuǎn)變，唯有新一代年輕人才能用他們可能擁有的不完美的直率的工具來提出構(gòu)想。

也許這一選擇真正的局限性在于出發(fā)點，即尋找的參展人僅限于那些來自發(fā)達(dá)國家杰出學(xué)校的年輕人，事實上他們是經(jīng)由設(shè)計和文化工具訓(xùn)練出來的青年精英，而這些工具尚未針對新世界重新制定。盡管有一系列參展人呼吁，非洲仍然被排除在選擇之外，東歐艱難地博得一席之地，南美則止步于已經(jīng)成熟且趨于穩(wěn)定的公民建筑，東南亞成為有待調(diào)查的多樣性實驗室，而意大利在享有幾十年的文化中心地位之后，成為了最重要的缺席者之一。

除了對地理的反思，在本世紀(jì)，景觀的項目概念已經(jīng)獲得了社會和意義上的優(yōu)先地位——即使這方面尚未得到深入研究。這樣做的目的在于將注意力從以人類中心主義的項目概念轉(zhuǎn)移到與景觀更相關(guān)的概念，它可能成為生態(tài)再循環(huán)的愿景的關(guān)鍵。

由于新冠疫情和有限的工作周期，雙年展未能成為它未來幾年應(yīng)當(dāng)成為的當(dāng)代性實驗室，或是對一部分新概念的制定進(jìn)行再思考，這些都屬于大型展覽的作用，但應(yīng)當(dāng)補(bǔ)充實驗和研究的維度，對展覽本身進(jìn)行預(yù)期，成為批判意識的發(fā)動機(jī)。

我們不再需要展覽去展示那些可以在網(wǎng)上立刻找到的作品和項目，今天，我們比以往任何時候都更需要開放的公共實驗室來生產(chǎn)創(chuàng)新和勇敢的批判性內(nèi)容，它能夠轉(zhuǎn)移一個學(xué)科疲軟的重心，使其必定隨著它們被要求改造的世界而變化。

然而，這不應(yīng)當(dāng)在通常令人熟悉的具有誘人顏色和形狀的數(shù)據(jù)、表格和圖表中解決，而應(yīng)當(dāng)在產(chǎn)品中解決，其中，革命性設(shè)計理念必然帶著再生和公認(rèn)的政治與社會責(zé)任回歸中心。我們并不認(rèn)為這一宏偉問題僅是針對建筑提出的。神化建筑師的時代——憑借其項目的破壞性和救世主的力量將世界扛在肩上的“阿特拉斯”的時代——已經(jīng)過去了，而我們將越來越需要慷慨而有遠(yuǎn)見之人，需要能夠與其他學(xué)科在同一系統(tǒng)中工作之人，需要能夠意識到建筑思想將產(chǎn)生必要形式，并且有能力協(xié)調(diào)并結(jié)合不同知識共同對話之人。

“我們?nèi)绾喂餐?？”將在很長一段時間內(nèi)成為一個必須給出答案的緊迫問題，這使得2021年的威尼斯雙年展成為持續(xù)反思的有益時機(jī)。

"We need a new space contract." This was the phrase that opened the first press conference of Hashim Sarkis, curator of the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, a few months before we were overwhelmed by the pandemic and this exhibition unwittingly became a necessary laboratory in a rapidly changing world.

For this reason, it is not easy to comment critically on an event that has had such an exceptional gestation and that has taken on the responsibility of being the first major public and open moment at international level, after almost two years of dramatic confinement.

The title chosen by Sarkis was immediately charged with a prophetic sense, under the pressure of a rising anti-urban thinking that in the months of the lockdown seemed to run through the texts of many experts and commentators ringing death knell for the future fate of our cities.

Now that the third wave is over and the most massive vaccination campaign in history has begun, it seems that the most pessimistic reflections on the fate of our metropolises have immediately receded, while the title "How will we live together?" remains in its urgency with respect to how we want to imagine the places we will inhabit in the coming decades.

The question launched by its curator and the massive call for a new generation of authors to propose visions, on the other hand, has had a destabilising effect on the traditional, reassuring formula of the Biennale, which for some years had focused heavily on the relationship between the curator-demostrator and an often reassuring account of the state of the art in contemporary architecture.

The structure in five thematic sections, organised in a scalar fashion from the infinitely large to the microscopic, produced works and installations that proved interesting in most cases because of their fragility and problematic nature, and seemed to clash violently with many of the more disciplined choices of previous Biennales.

The 17th Biennale represents a real structural fissure between two worlds that could be increasingly distant from each other and that have had in the pandemic a violent peak of separation between a before and an after, between the idea of the exhibition as an authorial statement and the vision of the exhibition as an open laboratory.

The exhibition curated by Sarkis does not have the iconic power of Paolo Portoghesi's Strada Novissima or Fuksas's "Less Aesthetics More Ethics", but, if anything, subtly introduces the doubt and instability of a new and necessary direction to which major events are called, namely that of being a problematic, collective and open laboratory for responding to a world experiencing an epochal metamorphosis of meaning to which architecture is called upon to provide some possible answers.

This condition must not be exempt from a confrontation with form and its role in giving substance to the places we inhabit, and perhaps in this, this year's Biennale exhibition is particularly weak, as if it had collectively given up on identifying reassuring iconic elements that are incapable of looking at the problems posed by the curator.

There is a sense of imperfection and instability in the proposals that reflect this uncertain time, in a restless alternation between the compulsive collection of data to read, as if it were a haruspex activity that will then magically lead to the project, and the clumsy attempt to pursue artistic practice to answer such broad questions.

In many of the works on show there is a sort of distrust of form, almost a generational reaction to the brief historical period of the socalled "archistars", in which individual research has produced, in a compressed period of time, a widespread condition of narcissistic formalism on the scale of the global market, which has not advanced contemporary architectural culture but frozen it in an infinite collection of ready-to-wear works easy to consume in every corner of the world.

The 2016 Biennale curated by Alejandro Aravena had already posed the question, looking in an attentive and militant manner at all those "souths" of the planet in which architecture had taken on the political responsibility of intervening, measuring itself against the painful and unresolved contradictions of the present world.

But there was a need to move forward, and the pandemic has paradoxically provided an opportunity to shape an edition of the Venice Biennale that is an imperfect attempt to respond to this unstable time. Behind this question that is so central to our lives and the need to finally reformulate a pact that is both social and spatial, lies the dramatic question of what role architecture can play in a world that is changing so rapidly.

The theme posed by Sarkis is not only an open question to the world, but above all a provocation launched at the category he represents, i.e. architectural culture and the world of the profession. In a perspective of clear contraction of new construction in advanced countries to reduce consumption of land and resources, what role will the designer play? On the other hand, what models can architecture offer in rapidly expanding countries?

In the midst of a mounting global climate and environmental crisis, what contribution can architecture make, given that it is responsible for a significant part of greenhouse gas emissions? In the face of a revision of biological statutes that will tend to restore the centrality of the human being to an open and circular dimension with all other living beings, what impact can the design of the environments we inhabit have?

In the face of a social, racial and gender condition that is undergoing a rapid transformation under the pressure of new generations, what does it mean to imagine spaces for an increasingly fluid and restless social body?

To all these questions we add an increasingly weak and ambiguous role of political thought and action that in recent years is producing weak leadership, angry and ignorant populism, and an absence of generous vision that cannot be nourishment and opportunity for architectural thought.

We are living in a time of widespread myopia crushed on an eternal present driven by an aggressive hyper-capitalism that does not ask for long-term visions and individual critical thinking.

An infinite present that works on the amnesia of our histories and, at the same time, on the cancellation of utopian thought, the only true conceptual and sense engine of Western culture from the Renaissance to today. The lack of a utopian tension capable of producing visionary thoughts and actions thus enters into a radical conceptual contrast with the questions generated by this Biennale, which instead seeks to pose serious questions that presuppose a courageous epistemological and prospective shift.

Perhaps this is also why the responses offered by such young and willing authors could not formally live up to our expectations? But is it also for this reason that this Venetian edition is becoming the most visited event in the history of International Architecture Exhibitions with an unexpected percentage of young people?

A simple post-pandemic effect or, instead, an exhibition that asks the right questions at a time of widespread crisis?

I believe that the Biennale curated by Hashim Sarkis has taken the courage to finally face up to the contradictory realities we are experiencing and the emerging questions of meaning that a new generation of young citizens is insistently asking.

In other words, what kind of world do we want to inhabit and build in the coming decades? What new social, spatial and inter-living pact must we imagine in order to respond to an environmental and symbolic crisis that has no parallel in our history?

In selecting the invited designers, it is as if Sarkis has made it official that we cannot ask the generation of architects who established themselves between the end of the 1990s and the first two decades of the new century to provide answers that their work has not been able to provide.

This is not a snobbish choice or an intellectual provocation, but the consideration that the current situation requires a conceptual shift that only a different generation can begin to formulate with the imperfect and blunt tools that these authors may have.

Perhaps the real limitation of this selection is the starting point, namely the fact that the search for authors has been limited to young people from the great universities of the advanced world, in fact a young elite that has been trained with design and cultural tools that have not yet been reformulated with respect to a new world. Africa is still missing from this selection, despite the call of a series of quality authors, Eastern Europe emerges with difficulty, South America stops at the architecture of civic action that is now a mature and consolidated practice, the countries of South-East Asia that are now a laboratory of diversity to be investigated and, in its own small way, Italy, one of the great absentees after decades of cultural centrality.

In addition to these geographical reflections, due attention has not yet been paid to the landscape project and the social and symbolic centrality it is acquiring in the overall revision of the concept of the project in this new century, perhaps because the very idea of landscape could be an important basis in the reinterpretation of a circular and less anthropocentric vision of the very notion of the project.

Due to the pandemic and the usual compressed timeframe, the Biennale has not been able to be that laboratory of contemporaneity that it should be in the coming years, rethinking even part of the formula, which clearly cannot do without the large exhibition, but should expand an experimental and research dimension that anticipates the exhibition itself, becoming a motor of critical sense.

What we no longer need are exhibitions that tell us about works and projects that we immediately find on the web, while today, more than ever, we need open public laboratories that produce innovative and courageous critical content, capable of shifting the tired centre of gravity of a discipline that must change with the world it is called upon to transform.

This, however, should not be resolved in the usual reassuring collection of data, tables and infographics in seductive colours and shapes, but in products in which the reformed idea of design must return to the centre with a regenerated and recognised sense of political and social responsibility. Together, we cannot think that questions of this magnitude are posed only to architecture. The time of the demiurge architect, of the Atlas who holds the world on his shoulders thanks to the disruptive and messianic force of his projects, is over, while we will increasingly need new generous visionaries capable of working in a system with other disciplines, aware that architectural thought produces necessary forms and, at the same time, has the capacity to coordinate and bind different knowledge that can dialogue together.

"How will we live together?" will remain for a long time an urgent question to which different answers must be given, and this makes the 17th Biennale a useful occasion to continue reflecting on.□