OMA/Progress

An exhibition curated by Rotor at the Barbican Art Gallery in London presents an extraordinary cross-section of OMA's work.

Hanging on the wall in the kitchen of any OMA office (Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong or Beijing) is a piece of paper signed by Rem Koolhaas. For about the last 15 years, it has carried more or less the same message. In 1998, Koolhaas decided to inform his collaborators that, even if that the ingenuity of those who focus on their work—more than on the paper they were drawing on—leads to underestimating the genesis of the idea, it was time to start collecting and cataloging—responsibly—everything that was being produced in the office without throwing anything away. Who, but Rotor, could understand and manage the quantities and meanings of "not throwing anything away?"

The magical encounter took place at the 2010 Venice Biennale when Koolhaas saw Rotor at work and decided to open the doors to OMA's subconscious. Rotor, experts in the demolition of false superstructures, worked for months like a hound: everything was annotated, classified and stored (the index of the archive is 17,000 pages long). Rotor lived in and observed the OMA environments. And this was the origin of a database that counts over 3.5 million images (not including models, documents, and scattered pieces of other things that go beyond the specific project) from the four OMA offices throughout the world, as declared in the video installation in which the unsuspecting viewer is warned that it is impossible to view the material in one day. It takes 48 hours of continuous viewing to scroll through the images at a rate of several frames per second.

Top: the video installation. Photo Emilia De Vivo. Above: Installation view. Photo Lyndon Douglas

Two important scenes serve as counterpoint and prelude to the profound meaning of the OMA/Progress exhibit at the Barbican. In a corner on a podium illuminated by a beam of wise white light, like an antique jewelry gallery, the viewer is faced only with two hard-to-identify "white stones." In another is an almost all-consuming mega-screen with slides dissolving one into another as if they were in a rush to show the enormity of OMA's production in terms of meaning, content and form. On the one hand, (apparent) nothing—two stones that were 'saved' thanks to that note in the kitchen, but the cataloger cannot say if they are models or clay leftovers. On the other, quantity that overwhelms; a volume of information that no human being can absorb at that speed. In the first scene of static twilight, the viewer feels questioned. The essence of detail, the respect for the incomprehensible (that sense of responsibility which Koolhaas summoned by cataloging "waste" during weekly cleaning) are intriguing. In the other, one is suddenly overwhelmed, almost hypnotized, by a world that passes by so rapidly. One is reminded of the world that's out there, knowing that to participate in it to improve it is a duty, rejecting, however, infallibility.

Maggie's footprint. Photo Lyndon Douglas

The room in shadow is followed by a half-empty area with pads of prints hanging on the walls representing work in progress; they are real-time updates from construction sites as if to say "let's start from the end. Here are the construction projects." After that, thought in formation, the current concerns of AMO, OMA's research counterpart. An invitation to tear the pages off the pads organized thematically according to topic and photographs to take them home where it is easier to reflect upon them. Next comes the room of secrets where the ceiling and walls are covered with sheets of paper collected from OMA waste bins /database throughout the world. Then on the top floor, a place to think; and finally the exhibit begins. Twelve rooms for twelve topics, a kind of "art fair" as Koolhaas himself calls it. For each room an independent theme: Eppur si muove and yet it moves (like those absurd but fabulous chairs on pistons concealed in the floor, designed for Milstein Hall at Cornell University); Sight lines and how they shape buildings; Revisiting; Public Loop; Italic living inside the truss; Places and what to do with them; White or shiny; On display so much to look at; Ornament setting the stage; Adaptation instead of quitting.

Everything is offered in an ambiguous form of disorder in which the visitor feels strangely at ease because it is disorder that accompanies the truth of the research process.

From utopian thinking in extreme places, like the research center in Skolkovo in Russia, or the master plan for tourism in the Libyan desert, to the obsession for closed circuit TV cameras in the (super extra large) CCTV building in Beijing, to collections of travertine, experiments with materials in the "Materials" section, upholstery, ornaments, the Series of series several rooms in one. The show ends and it seems that it hasn't even started.

One shouldn't say anything beyond this. It's useless to try to convey the work of a collective like OMA—philosophical, political, economic, ecological thought expressed in buildings, films, masterplans, interior design, studies, research, ethics and design practice. It's useless to even attempt to store (and digest) everything on display. It's humanly impossible; there is too much information. What can be absorbed from the OMA/Progress show is the centrality of criticism and auto-criticism; the recognition of reality as a given upon which to base the imaginary. What is startling is how Rotor revolutionizes the idea of the architecture exhibition. An architect's works are expected to be presented as objects, put there to be understood; and viewers are ready to understand them as they always have—through drawings, plans, models and details.

But here no. First comes the Project Machine—a curved booth from which very detailed project sheets hang as if they were in a laundry room; printed on paper/fabric, they can be browsed chronologically to offer a first (blinding) idea of OMA's complete work all in one place. Next, the visitor crosses the study area with free access to Koolhaas' complete theoretical works, notes and unpublished writings and workstations for searching the OMA archives. After the shopping area—usually located at the end of an exhibit—visitors enter the show from an unlikely "back door" and move between seven unfinished plasterboard partitions, just like a visit to a construction site. It is there that visitors realize that the only area that they under control was only the shop that they just passed through. What comes next challenges visitors—with their every step along the way—to put into play every tool available to evaluate their own, individual, unique position in relation to what they are seeing. The only captions/explanations are glued to the floor, and one realizes only too late that they are there to suggest something. Amused, Koolhaas himself comments that perhaps Rotor did not take OMA seriously enough, as is customary for OMA themselves.

Rotor's introduction, handwritten (with a trembling hand) on a white panel (plasterboard), read at the end, gives voice to the OMA/Progress experience. It finally responds to the prickling fibrillations of the whole exhibition. Images and thoughts that seemed to congeal during the visit break down even before moving from one area to tackle another. Doubts and questions—between inebriation and an almost physical effort. The Rotor project for OMA includes the viewer as part of its unfolding.

Rotor states, "The real problem of architectural exhibits is that they can't show what they promise—meaning Architecture." Everything is offered in an ambiguous form of disorder in which the visitor feels strangely at ease because it is disorder that accompanies the truth of the research process. Nothing is hidden or concealed by coatings of representation. Everything is exhibited like pieces of work-in-progress in a large factory. Notably absent from the OMA/Progress exhibition: rhetoric.
Emilia De Vivo

OMA/Progress
Until 19 February 2012
Barbican Centre
Silk Street
London

OMA/Progress

An exhibition curated by Rotor at the Barbican Art Gallery in London presents an extraordinary cross-section of OMA's work.

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