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Infrastructure:
Portable
initiatives,
collapsible
forms.
by Craig Buckley

o

ne of the most exciting developments
of the last decade has been the blossoming
and sometimes dysfunctional infatuation
between the worlds of art and architecture.
As artists and art collectives have launched
themselves into this hybrid field, an
increasing number are creating structures
specifically designed to be portable. Some of
the most visible forms have been architecture-vehicle hybrids, afieldthat has produced
a tremendous range of experimentation. Such
structures-on-wheels have become platforms
capable of supporting anything from new systems for living/working to venues for exhibition and social interaction to new forms of
public sculpture.

projects can be situated in terms of contemporary and historical
struggles to redefine the relationships between mobility, technology and place.
One place to begin might be the wheel itself. As one of the most
mythologized inventions of humankind, we remain ever fixated
upon its potentials. A number of artists, however, are exploring
small-scale, collapsible architectures that have forsaken this central device. Accordingly, these works seem to indicate a subtle, but
significant, shift in emphasis. Less focused on travel across space,
they address existing structures and networks, finding new ways to
engage often overlooked features of the world around us. The
infrastructures they address range from the traditional services
providing buildings with water, air, climate control and electricity
to more recent networks for communication and the transfer of
digital information.
The work of Marjetica Potrc (Slovenia), Michael Rakowitz
(United States), BFO Projects (international) and the Arnait Video
Collective (Canada) are four very different initiatives that connect
portable architectures with infrastructure, raising questions about
the way these networks function. Responding to very different situations, their projects create specific and often unpredictable

Given that artists are engaging with portable
architectures in so many different and
opposing ways — running a gamut that
stretches between modest activist interventions to custom-crafted luxury vehicles — it
is important to ask how these different

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results. In some cases these deliberately work against existing
structures to produce new relations, events or environments. In
all cases the structures are inseparable from the processes they put
into motion, illuminating the ways in which questions of architecture and infrastructure are always tied to social relations. These
practices raise questions about the way infrastructure relates
spaces that we assume to be separate. Tubes, pipes, wires and
waves have a way of weaving themselves through walls and floors,
exceeding the separating functions that architecture organizes. It
is an excess that shapes the environment we live in as much as the
buildings we inhabit.

skeleton house with construction materials gathered from home
depot the work raises difficult questions. On one hand it suggests
that despite the surface prevalence of "do it yourself" strategies,
deep inequities persist. On the other, it highlights significant transformations in the ways that shanties and favelas are regarded
within urbanism. As a prefabricated unit based on construction
strategies originating in a shanty environment, the skeleton house
takes something that was one seen as a problem to be "solved" and
transforms it into a potential "solution." As a model for subsidized
housing, the skeleton house provides access to basic services while
allowing inhabitants to design their living space. Complete with a
satellite dish, Potrc's improvised shanty structure raises further
questions about the importance of access to networks of mass
communication, questioning whether this amenity has become as
basic a need as water, heat and shelter.

Slovenian artist and architect Marjetica Potrc has often been
described as an urban anthropologist. Her work involves research
into individually initiated building projects found around the
globe. From Belfast betting offices housed in shipping containers to
shantytowns in Sao Paolo to gated communities in Israel, Potrc
Claiming a "non-judgmental" approach that is equally interested in
examines forms of building that are produced and directed by their
the shanty and the gated community, Potrc explicitly denies that
inhabitants rather than by architects or public planners.
her work is about social critique. Rather, she sees herself as celeDeveloped out of a multitude of private interests, these new spatial
brating the initiatives individuals use to bypass official structures and
arrangements, she argues, are the success stories of today's cities. A
directly shape the environment to their needs. Such politics are furkey aspect in their development has often been tied to ways of
ther complicated by questions of context and institution. Kagiso:
exploiting and extending infrastructures (from services to comSkeleton House, for instance, appeared in the Guggenheim Museum to
munications). In one facet of her practice Potrc uses the gallery as
celebrate Potrc's receipt of the 2000 Hugo Boss award. Potrc's nona staging site, transplanting effective forms of self-initiated strucjudgmental ethos can certainly be accused of failing to address the
ture into the space of the museum. With Kagiso: Skeleton house (2000),larger political and economic relationships at work in the sites she
for example, Potrc presented a core unit, a basic infrastructure
researches. It also fails to address the project's relationship to the
system provided by the South African government, consisting of a
interests of art institutions and corporate prize structures that
platform, roof, skeleton structure and plumbing system. Using
would seek to become a home for these initiatives. While concluthis structure as a platform, dwellers are able to construct homes
sions might be easily arrived at (perhaps too easily), dismissing the
that meet their needs and means. Next to the transplanted
work on this account risks overlooking the complex implications of
skeleton house, Potrc constructed a ramshackle structure out of
such individual initiatives in the world's cities. Exhibition is one facet
materials from a local home depot. Juxtaposing the prefabricated
of a practice anchored in a larger field of research. Potrc's current

Skeleton House, Marjetica Potrc, 2001, building material. Photo: Ellen Labenski. Courtesy: Max Protetch Gallery.

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web project, Urban Independent, for example, brings together five initia- contests widespread programs designed to push homeless individtives from around the world and asks their creators to elaborate on
uals and communities out of supposedly public spaces and into
locations where they are invisible. Such visibility garnered media
the diverse nature of their catalysts, contexts and communities
attention in New York City, attracting new users to the project. This
(http://www.creativetime.org/consumingplaces/potrc/index.html).
visibility also meant that the project came under greater scrutiny
As part of her collaboration with Creative Time (who host the
for violating the city's anti-tent laws, laws that were more strinUrban Independent web site), Potrc recently organized a workshop
gently enforced by Mayor Guiliani's campaign to "clean up" New
that brought together a number of groups to strategize about indiYork. In response, Michael McGee collaborated with Rakowitz to
vidual initiatives within New York City. Fraught as it undoubtedly is,
produce a structure that measured less than thirty-two feet and
assessing the politics of Potrc's gestures requires an analysis of her
consequently fell within a loophole in the city's anti-tent law.
larger practice and the relationships produced by her appropriation,
Ticketed by New York police for violation of the law, McGee fought
displacement, research and representation of the initiatives that she
the case in court and, on the basis of his design, won. In this sense,
examines.
paraSITE is symbolic of a strategy as much as it is a shelter. While not
architecture in a legal or technical sense, the structure's parasitic
The work of New York-based artist Michael Rakowitz also addresses
connection to existing buildings magnifies the dynamics surinfrastructure, often exploiting a building's HVAC (heating, ventilarounding homelessness. Drawing attention to relationships of
tion, air conditioning) system. Begun in 1997, the paraSITE project is
exclusion and dependence traced by architecture, paraSITE did not
a series of portable structures made from lightweight plastics
just comment on such a social divide, it extruded a new space
designed to provide temporary shelter in an urban context
within these relationships, both the legal space of the loophole and
(http://www.possibleutopia.com/mike/). Constructed with a
the physical space of dwelling. ParaSITE doesn't fall comfortably
budget of around five dollars, each shelter attaches to a building's
within the art world's institutions of exhibition (though it has been
outtake duct and captures a flow of air that inflates its doubleexhibited), nor is it comfortably situated within state or municipal
membrane walls, a feature that retains heat while keeping the
attempts to "solve" the homeless crisis. Recognizing that there is
exhaust air separate from the user. The impetus for paraSITE partly
no prototypical homeless person but a multiplicity of homeless sitcame from Rakowitz' study of portable Bedouin structures while
uations, there can be no unitary "solution" to the problem. To date,
completing a residency program in Jordan and partly from converRakowitz has been involved in the production of over thirty strucsations initiated with a homeless person upon return to the United
tures. Unlike Potrc's case studies, Rakowitz' shelters are not prefabStates. After these initial conversations, a prototype was conricated but are made in collaboration with users who contact the
structed and presented to a group of homeless men. This developartist and want to participate in the project. Thus in design and
ment process began to generate and direct the project's form. Issues
materials, the paraSITE is less a proprietary object whose condition
of visibility and security came to the fore. The group rejected an iniof display and use are controlled by the artist than an idea to be cotial structure made from black trash bags and opted to use white
opted, taken up, modified, passed on and even discarded according
and translucent plastics, materials that provide high visibility and
to the needs and situations of different users.
do not carry such negative connotations. As a form of visibility it

paraSITE, Michael Rakowitz, 1998, various materials. Courtesy: the artist.

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IMI/OSIII.

Michael RakowiU, 1998, various malenals. Courtesy: the artist.

Room + Board, an ongoing venture of the BFO collective, uses
similarly low-cost, compact materials and deploys them to complicate the social and structural relationships surrounding exhibitions. BFO takes its name from a military term for the runway
debris found during aircraft inspections (bits fallen off) and refers
to the shifting nature of the collective, whose make up include
artist Mitch Robertson, an anonymous member of the KIT curatorial collective and a changing roster of invited guests. Room +
Board is a travelling project that invites host galleries to create a
hostile environment within which BFO participants must construct
ephemeral protective structures using only the components contained in a standard carry-on bag. The group encourages hostile
environments composed from immaterial and often overlooked
environmental factors ranging from temperature, light, smell or
sound to less tangible elements such as the psychology and
involvement of the audience. Arriving at the host space unaware
of what they will be walking into, the BFO artists are called upon to

realize structures that respond directly to conditions and events
beyond their control.
At the inaugural event, staged at STATIC in Liverpool, the home
gallery recognized this dynamic and deftly manipulated the situation. Prior to the exhibition the directors circulated offensive
emails that they claimed were written by the BFO artists. Exploiting
the infrastructures of communication with misinformation,
STATIC created conflicting expectations within the institution's
audience. The matter was further complicated as the artists were
deliberately invited an hour before the audience. Not being aware
of this gambit, the artists were under the impression that no one
was showing up to their event. A single cameraperson appeared to
be the sole attendee, capturing video footage of the artists. In
response a small, opaque enclosure made from packing tape and
flexible poles was constructed while an elaborate map of
Antarctica was traced out in white flour across the gallery's floor,

A.
IMiiaSITL, Michael Rakowitz, 1998,

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materials. Courtesy: the artist.

complete with small standing flags marking off significant locations. As the misinformed visitors began to arrive, STATIC projected
the cameraperson's footage of construction process on the gallery
wall. As the evening progressed, BFO attached hostile messages to
the flags, which became relay stations also used by visitors to send
responses. As messages can only be read by one or two people at a
time, the play of rumour and misinformation again became crucial
in constructing the audience. While this offensive was occurring,
audience members were invited into the temporary structure for
drinks and socializing on a more intimate scale. This second gesture complicates the first, exploiting the mixture of curiosity and
apprehension that the show had generated. Here, portable architecture inverted the relationship, guest-host, allowing the visitor
to extend hospitality from his temporary domain.
In the end, the project seems less about finding new ways to create
enemies than about seeing what happens when circuits are deliberately reversed. BFO's projects prevent the host gallery from doing
what we expect it to: neutrally offer space to visiting artists.
Displaced from their default position, the gallery must occupy its
own territory, a shift that tests the relations that make up a gallery.
As a web of artists, cultural workers, board members, critics, sponsors, audience and community members, BFO uses intrusion and
spontaneity to confuse the oppositions — between guest and visitor, performer and audience, collaborator and rival — that organize these relations. As such, the power vested in the gallery
threshold, a space traced both by its architecture and its infrastructures, can no longer appear as neutral and becomes a staging
ground where amorphous social entities coalesce, shift and redefine themselves.
An innovative adaptation of electronic infrastructure lies at the
core of the Nunatinnit Nomadic Media Lab organized by the
Arnait Video Collective (AVC), an Igloolik-based group of videomakers committed to adding Inuit women's voices to the debates
shaping contemporary life in Arctic Canada. The media lab is a collapsible dome tent that can be transported and pitched at hunting
camps and other sites located at significant remove from the community. Powered by a generator and containing digital video
equipment, computer editing facilities and satellite phones, the
media lab allows participants to create, edit and upload materials
directly from the tundra to a media-streaming website. In August

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2001, the AVC mounted "Live from the Tundra," an inaugural project that allowed participants to create diaries of their experiences,
tell oral histories and communicate in an online forum with
internet users connected to the website (www.nunatinnit.net).
Seizing the potential latent in de-territorialized communication
infrastructures, the AVC uses these technologies to facilitate a territorialized, mobile architecture that supports the collective's own
needs and practices. Most communities in the Arctic were created
through a state-directed process of settlement, a historical event
that decisively changed people's relationship to the land and the
practices of subsistence related to it. One of the collective's stated
goals is to maintain a presence upon the land, a place where many
of the traditional skills and knowledge of Inuit life are put directly
to use. The backdrop of the Eastern Arctic is one of intense change,
where services, infrastructures and architectures are increasingly
centralized, both in existing settlements and in the new territorial
capital of Iqaluit. By allowing the video process to be engaged with
camp-based activities rather than those of the settlement, the
AVC's media lab contests this trend. By using the internet, AVC
retains control over the distribution of their work, bypassing institutions like the IBC (Inuit Broadcasting Corporation) and the CBC,
institutions centred in Iqualuit and Toronto respectively. Like earlier projects, the Nunatinnit Mobile Media Lab is equal part structure and social experiment; a space designed to facilitate a range of
social functions from fishing to video-editing, storytelling to web
casting. Located at the intersection of a number of worlds, the
AVC's media lab asserts older forms of mapping within newer ones,
using the infrastructure of communication to counter some of the
forces of centralization so often tied to it. It also breaks down the
perceived incompatibility between technological change and traditional culture, proving that traditional patterns of activity are not
necessarily antithetical to technological change.
The use of portable architectures exhibited in these four practices
is not new. The late nineteen-sixties witnessed a similar frenzy of
activity hopscotching the boundaries between architecture, design,
public art and urban planning. One such affiliation of architects,
theorists and writers was London's Archigram group. Their 1969-70
Instant City proposal (largely the work of Ron Herron and Peter
Cook) is interesting for it marks a similar shift in emphasis away
from portable structures and toward infrastructure. A bid to subvert the cultural centrality of London, the project sought to bring

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•v

Instant City, Archigram.

the city to the country, allowing people to enjoy metropolitan
events without having to enter urban space. Small towns and villages were to be enveloped by a travelling metropolis composed of
trailers, lightweight structures,'audio-visual display systems, entertainment facilities, electric lights and even an airship. Events were
coordinated by the local community in collaboration with the
Instant City ^agency, an open-ended hybrid of education and entertainment. The overarching goal of the project was to establish a

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network that these different localities could take over and use:
each centre feeding parts of the Instant City program to be experienced by communities down the line.
On the one hand, Archigram's structures cut against the grain of
massive centralization. Engaged with the buildings, markets, clubs
and festivals specific to smaller towns, Instant City tried to imagine
how new forms of architecture might help transform these

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familiar sites into a platform for new and spontaneous environments. On the other hand, Instant City's form of community risks
reinforcing escapist and isolationist fantasies. Against their own
best intentions, the project also risks levelling out both the complexity of urban situations (by assuming they could be transportable as spectacle) and, in smaller locales, reinforcing the
feeling of never having, nor perhaps wanting, to leave the safety of
home. Yet the concept of a network community, at once local and
dispersed, lucidly anticipates our present condition, where different localities are increasingly defined by their links to (or isolation from) global networks. From our own vantage point it is clear
that a network has been established, not through a community
focused architectural intervention as imagined by Archigram, but
by the infrastructures provided by the internet (originally developed in the context of the cold-war military defence), global
finance and mass media. Despite claims that this network might
finally enable the "global village" touted by Marshall McLuhan, it
has largely served to re-map centralization, entwining smaller centres (such as those Archigram sought to address) within a network
dominated, today more than ever, by a handful of the world's
megacities. From today's vantage point, Archigram's Instant City
needs to be productively inverted. It is no longer a question of
bringing the metropolis to marginal centres (this kind of hegemony operates well enough by itself, an outcome Archigram failed
to take into account), but rather of how temporary architectures
and infrastructural networks might create linkages between alternative practices in an increasingly homogenous global network.
As a travelling architecture Instant City was on such a grandiose scale
that it became impractical, even alienating in the face of the com-

Instant City, Archigrai

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munity it sought to engage. This may be why Instant City was never
realized as a built proposition. But this failure was not without
promise. The dissolution of Instant City was the basis for Archigram's
later projects. The focus shifted away from travel toward a subtler
infrastructure composed not of airships and gantries but of leech
trucks (covertly servicing off buildings) and log-plugs (for wiring
televisions by the banks of quiet rivers). Whether in the form of a
network, a temporary environment or a log-plug, social function
remains the key issue. For many groups in the late sixties, the
appeal of portable architectures was that they couldn't exist
without a group of people to construct, transport, use and dismantle them. Such portable structures (often pneumatic and collapsible in form) were more intimately linked to forms of social
practice than were traditional architectural constructions. Reengaging a link between architecture and social practice became a
strategy for engaging the shape and texture of public space against
the forces of municipal and state planning. In this their work anticipates more recent projects that have sought to address infrastructure in direct, localized and experimental ways.
In the end, one cannot easily separate the creation of new social
practices and relationships from new approaches to architectural
form. If it is through social practices that the meanings and uses of'
architecture are rearticulated, shifted or unmade, then it is not
surprising that temporary architectures are playing a greater role
in the work of artists that seek to contest existing structures.
Nonetheless, it is far from clear how such a shift will be articulated.
These projects do, however, provide models where design, construction and use become part of an inseparable practice. The
small scale of these temporary and portable projects allows them

•v

to remain focussed on process as opposed to production. Within
these processes failure is not a flaw to be avoided at all costs, but a
key event that allows a project to develop and assume new formations. The dissolution of initial ideas, whether it be in the case of
Archigram's Instant City project, the work of Michael Rakowitz or
the Nunatinnit Nomadic Media Lab, remains indispensable: a point
at which social practices come to shape architectural form. It
remains to be seen how the interest in portable architectures will
be played out in the art world and beyond; certainly artists can't
afford to be unaware of the ways that hegemonic systems foster
alternative spaces in order to incorporate them into a dominant
framework. As such, the most important part of these projects is
not only the final form of the structures, but the way these initiatives provide space, both conceptual and actual, for bringing
together usually isolated initiatives into uniquely collaborative,
critical and evolving conversations.

References:
Peter Cook et al. Archigram (Basel: Birkhauser Verlag, 1991).
Marc Dessauce. The Inflatable Moment: Pneumatics and Protest in '68 (New York: Architectural League
of New York, 1999).
Robert Kronenburg. Portable Architecture (Oxford: Architectural Press, 2000). "Ephemeral/Portable
Architecture," themed issue. Architectural Design 68:9-10 (Sept-Oct 1998).

Craig Buckley is an independent critic and curator living in New York. He has worked with artist-run centres in London and Toronto and is currently

a curatorial

fellow

at the Whitney Museum of Art

Independent Study Program.

IH8TANT CITY
RON HEBRON -ARCHI8BAM
lAPRii ifiBfi
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Instant City, Archigram.

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