“Agnosian Fields” by Didier Fiuza Faustino
Press Conference at Maison Hermès 8F Le Forum in August 25, 2010
Hermès (H): First, could you talk about your concept behind this exhibition, “Agnosian Fields”?
Didier Fiuza Faustino (DFF): Hello everyone. First of all, I would like to say that I am truly happy to be having my first solo exhibition here in Japan.
The term “Agnosian” in the title means “the inability to recognize objects”, which is a kind of neurological disorder. I am very interested in this term for its implication of obscurity, incertitude, and ambiguity. The state of inability to perceive what is going on in our surroundings is, in my view, very relevant to today’s society.
Couldn’t we say that today’s society is, so to speak, an “agnostic” environment for the human beings? It is saturated with information and goods almost to the point of chaos. As an architect, I believe that the architecture could, in reverse, make people perceive their societies, their politics and their habits. My subject is, therefore, the society itself, which is the extension of this exhibition. In that sense, the theme “agnosian” reaches much further beyond the exhibition.
This time, I also had a chance to work in partner with two other artists.
One of my favorite bands is a German group named “Einsturzende Neubauten”, and they have a song called “Silence is Sexy”. I thought that it could be interesting to name the exhibition after this song, since the title echoes both the sound landscape created by Russell Haswell and the drawing by Hiroya Oku.
The name of the band can be translated in English as “Collapsing new buildings”. I love the paradox of this name. I love the paradox to set up a new building only to bring it down. I think that the architecture should always be in close relation with the city and the world that surround it.
H: You have collaborated with two artists from different fields for this exhibition. Where did this idea come from?
DDF: The architecture is a difficult medium to display in an exhibition. When you don’t have an actual building to show, you can only explain it with photos and models.
I worked with two artists, Hiroya Oku and Russell Haswell because I saw the possibility to show the ideas about the city and the architecture from two different points of view. And more than anything, I have always wanted to collaborate with these two artists. They are also around my age, so I have felt close to them.
Firstly, in my collaboration work with Haswell, people listen to the sounds emitted from a device called “Erase Your Head”. My aim is to help people flee the chaos of contemporary society and to give them an entirely new experience. It is the escape from chaos by hitchhike, if you will.
Secondly, an architect is both a skillful communicator with a good command of language and a deceiver about what is actually happening in the world. This fact made me begin thinking: what if the world of language by an architect meets the world of manga by Hiroya Oku? How would the two influence each other? The drawing by Oku depicts in minute detail a cluster of buildings, which appear to be Ginza, being destroyed and collapsed. Some of the people around look horrified, others seem to be unable to take their eyes off the scene as if entranced, and still others are taking photos by their mobile phones, simply amused by the sight. Both « the horror » and « the astonishment », two sentiments and two situations, are represented in the same scene.
H:You are a big fan of « GANTZ » by Hiroshi Okuya, and you often talk about your love of Japanese manga.
DDF: For one thing, we also have a culture of bande dessinée in France. In addition, I watched a lot of animations on TV when I was little.
Actually, my childhood dream was to be a manga artist. When I started my study at an architecture school, my idea was that I would give it a try for a year and then think about what I really wanted to do later. It turned out that the study was more interesting than I had imagined, so I continued on this path (laugh). « GANTZ » by Hiroya Oku is very famous in France as well. His remarkable style of graphics influenced me deeply. Also, his stories treat various contemporary social phenomena, such as love, friendship, violence, life and death. His subject matter is very philosophic.
H: In addition to the principal works for this exhibition, « Hand Architecture » and « Erase Your Head », we decided to show some of your other works that would serve as a key to the theme of « Agnosia ». For example, a chair that does not look like a chair and a performance video.
DDF: I hope that these pieces help the visitors to better understand my past activities and works.
One of the exhibited works consists of alphabets scattered on the floor. The message behind it is literally « Estate of real/State of unreal », as you can see. This reflects my interest in the word « reality », but it is also a play on word with « estate », a notion closely related to the architecture.
The video work that recorded the performance where I apply chewing gum on my face until I transform into a weird monster covered with chewing gum is a tribute to Chaplin and Bruce Nauman.
I also put quite discretely a small model of an architectural project behind the column in front of the elevator. This is a project of a small house to be built on Ishigaki Island for a Japanese client. It is to be a house for vacation, so I created this model imagining the holiday situation. The house can be, in my view, compared to a couple: it is a mixture of « desire », « charm », « hatred » and so on. That was my thought behind this work.
H: Now Didier, you are active both in art and architecture. What do you think is the difference between the two?
DDF: I do create works in the field of art, but I see myself as an architect in a fundamental sense. Even when I create a work of art, I am always conscious of how I could present my ideas through the architecture.
Generally speaking, I feel that an art exhibition is open for the general public, whereas an architectural exhibition targets only the architects and the people in the industry. That is the difference, perhaps. I, for myself, seek to communicate my ideas in such a way that also appeals to the general public who do not possess particular knowledge in architecture.
That said, I think these two have things in common: the act « to create » and « to think ». All the people who inspired me when I was an architecture student worked also as artists. For example, one of the great influences came from Gordon Matta-Clark. He is an artist, but had studied architecture. In that sense, I could say that the border between art and architecture does not exist in the eye of those who create.
H: In terms of your career as an architect, what kind of plan did you have? You once said that until your thirties you would concentrate on building your concepts and start building real architectural works in your forties.
DDF: Actually, I have never really planned ahead anything for my life. But yes, it turned out as you have described. So far, there weren’t many people who wished to commission me for construction projects. Thankfully, however, the demand is increasing (laugh). I haven’t yet realized many architectural projects, and in that sense, I have been a bit of an outsider to the « system ». So I didn’t have clients before, which I have now. For example, I have some future projects in Monaco, in Lyon among others. I cannot talk about them in detail now, but I look forward to them very much.
During the past ten years, I have done a lot of research on concepts, ideas, words and meanings and tried various ways to express them. Research is a crucial step for an architect. As a consequence, now that I am in my forties, I feel ready to look back on and think about what I have built up during that period.