A “throwing forth” in its origin, the word projection can connote an image on a surface, a forecast, or a psychological tactic. To have a “project” is to work with a plan, to think in the future tense, or to conjure an image—all things that have direct bearing on architecture. Projected Architectures operates in that expanse of mental and physical space that spans from an optical device to an unconscious defense mechanism.
In its first iteration, Projected Architectures takes the format of consecutive week-long installations of video works by three artists: Mircea Nicolae, Benjamin Tiven and Ahmed Mater, starting in Bucharest, moving on to New York, and ending up in Mecca. Nicolae’s Romanian Kiosk Company [2010] is simultaneously a family story and a brief history of kiosk design throughout Romania’s political transitions. Tiven’s Distant Objects Becoming Near [2012] is the materialization of a building for the blind through the intertwined voices of a tenant, an architect and a philosopher. Mater’s Leaves Fall in All Seasons [2013] is an incisive and uncanny portrait of labor in one of the holiest construction sites in the world, presented through cell-phone footage sourced from migrant workers.
Projected Architectures is an irregular and peripatetic program of moving images that engage with the built environment, curated by Duygu Demir.