Christo, “The Floating Piers, Lake Iseo, Italy, 2014-16, and Two Works In Progress”

Christo and Jeanne-Claude met in Paris in 1958, not long after their education at the National Academy of Art in Bulgaria and the University of Tunis, respectively. Their first project was Stacked Oil Barrels and Dockside Packages (1961) in Cologne Harbor, but perhaps their most renowned project was Wrapped Reichstag (1995) in Berlin, which swathed the iconic capital building in fabric for fourteen days. Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s overt, site-specific landscape interventions have evolved from Christo’s early works. Smaller sculptural pieces that are key to his portfolio, such as wrapped cans, bottles, crates, suggestive forms, and indoor installations reveal an interest in concealment, but also in the dimensional qualities of shapes in an environment and in the process itself. It is no surprise that in a caption to a chronological list of projects on their website, the artists refer to “software” and “hardware” periods: preparation and imagination on the one hand, physical execution on the other. The Floating Piers, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s most recent finished work, was conceived in 1970 yet came to fruition only in the summer of 2016. The 16-meter-wide shimmering walkways of this project, constructed on Lake Iseo, Italy, were open and free for the public to traverse. Christo will discuss this work in his lecture, along with two upcoming projects: Over the River, for the Arkansas River in Colorado, and The Mastaba, for the United Arab Emirates. Both were planned with his wife and partner Jeanne-Claude. Notwithstanding her death in 2009, Christo continues to fundamentally credit Jeanne-Claude in his projects.

Cosponsored by the Harvard University Committee on the Arts.

On Ethiopian Jazz: Teshome Mitiku with the Either/Orchestra

The Either/Orchestra, a ten-piece group that was founded in 1987 and has recorded ten albums, is regarded as one of Massachusetts’s major contributions to the international music scene. The E/O has recently become deeply involved in Ethiopian music; the group collaborated with Teshome Mitiku for the first time in 2010, in a performance that headlined the Chicago Jazz Festival.

Mitiku, an Ethiopian musician born in 1949, was part of Ethiopia’s first and most popular modern music combo, the Soul Ekos, in the 1960s. Forced to leave his country in 1970 after leading a protest song at a concert at Addis Ababa University, he moved to Sweden and later to the United States, where he now performs regularly in the Washington, D.C. area and elsewhere. This event will bring the ensemble and solo performer to the GSD for a discussion of Ethiopian jazz and a demonstration, featuring vocalist Teshome Mitiku and musicians from the Either/Orchestra: saxophonist/founder Russ Gershon, bassist Rick McLaughlin, and pianist Gilson Schachnik.

Didier Faustino, “Building Intimacy”

For Didier Faustino, the process of the architect, artist, or designer must preserve an engagement with political, social, and cultural issues. Since founding his Bureau des Mésarchitectures in 2002, Faustino has developed an expressive multidisciplinary practice in art and architecture that highlights the complex relationship between the body and the spaces it inhabits. By challenging the boundaries of these spaces, his work explores the precarious equilibrium between public and private space, publicity and intimacy. His lecture will feature ten projects chosen to make explicit the issues on which he focuses in his practice; these projects include his “under construction” building in Mexico and the project Alumnos 47, with which he will explain his method of “building intimacy.” Faustino’s work has been shown in group and solo exhibitions and has received several prizes, including the Académie d’Architecture’s Dejean prize for lifetime achievement in 2010. He currently divides his time among architecture (in Spain, Mexico City, Portugal), art (with exhibitions in Grenoble, London, and Rome), and teaching (AA School, Diploma Unit 2); and he is also editor-in-chief of the French architecture and design magazine CREE.

Sponsor
Supported by the Rouse Visiting Artist Program and Copresented by Harvard Graduate School of Design and the French Cultural Center

Contact
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