A work by: Andrés Jaque / Office for Political Innovation With Nohnle Mbthuma Forslund, Siyabonga Ndovela, Margie Pretorius, Sinegugu Zukulu, ACC (Amadiba Crisis Comittee) and SWC (Sustaining the Wild Coast), Steve Hoffe
‘XHOLOBENI YARDS. Titanium and the Planetary Making of SHININESS / DUSTINESS’ is a research-based installation presented at the Arsenale of the 18th Venice Architecture Biennale curated by Lesley Lokko. It is a collective effort by a network of activist and community representatives from Xholobeni (South Africa), experts in seismographs and transduction from Poland, researchers, sound editors, prop makers and the New York and Madrid teams of the Office for Political Innovation led by Andrés Jaque; to intervene the very problematic addiction to SHININESS in architecture now. This transnational distributed alliance has been needed to respond to a reality that gains its extractive capacity from its geographical and scalar distribution.
The SHININESS of the Hudson Yards in Manhattan is the result of TITANIUM-made coatings, being applied on self-cleaning glass and facades to enact the immutability of corporate global hegemonies, both aesthetically and through societal, material and ecological extractivism. The SHININESS of the global north is at the expense of Xholobeni, a small area on the East Coast of South Africa, where titanium can be found. By removing the titanium from the sand in locations like Xholobeni, the sand becomes light and volatile, making dusty the sites of extraction.
DUSTINESS affects humans’ and more-than-humans’ health, makes farming impossible and, ultimately, forces communities and ecosystems to migrate and die. But the Xholobeni people resist extraction by singing together songs where they celebrate their entanglement with lands and ecosystems. This installation mobilizes architecture’s capacity to allow human bodies to feel the violence other bodies sense through human extractivism and to provide material and societal settings for mutual care and resistance to extractivism. The dissident temporary, ecological and spatial constructs these songs are part of, are the architectures where the future, a desirable future, resides.
XHOLOBENI YARDS. Titanium and the Planetary Making of SHININESS / DUSTINESS
A work by: Andrés Jaque / Office for Political Innovation
With Nohnle Mbthuma Forslund, Siyabonga Ndovela, Margie Pretorius, Sinegugu Zukulu, ACC (Amadiba Crisis Comittee) and SWC (Sustaining the Wild Coast), Steve Hoffe
José Luis Espejo, sound research and direction
Farah Alkhoury, research and field recordings
Roberto González, coordination and design
Vivian Rotie y Pablo Sáiz del Río, fabrication
Jorge Cañón, AV consultant
Ignacio Farpón, lighting consultant
Wojciech Gajek and Michal Malinowsky, seismic recordings
Walter Ancarrow, text editing
Joseph Hazan, studio recordings
Imagen Subliminal (Miguel de Guzmán + Rocío Romero), photographs in Venice
Farah Alkhoury, photographs in Xholobeni
With the support of: Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation TBA21–Academy
Acción Cultural Española (AC/E)
Andrés Jaque / Office for Political Innovation (OFFPOLINN) is an international architectural practice, based in New York and Madrid, working at the intersection of design, research, and critical body-environmental practices. They have been awarded with the Frederick Kiesler Prize for the Architecture and the Arts, the SILVER LION for Best Research Project at the 14th Venice Biennale, and the Dionisio Hernández Gil Award. OFFPOLINN’s work is part of the collections of MoMA and the Art Institute of Chicago, among many others.
The office has a broad portfolio of awarded projects, that includes the Babyn Yar Museum of Memory and Oblivion in Kiev, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Ocean Space in Venice, Reggio School in El Encinar de los Reyes, the Clergy House at the historic center of Plasencia, COSMO MoMA PS1 in New York, Escaravox at Matadero Madrid, Transvector at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris, Rambla Climate-House in Molina de Segura, House in Never Never Land in Ibiza, Ròmola in Madrid, Hybrid Infrastucture: RUN RUN RUN, TUPPER HOMES, Rolling House for the Rolling Society, among others. All these projects are part of a critical practice that the office has developed as well through the revision of architectural formats in performance projects that include: Being Silica (Performa NY, 2021), IKEA Disobedients (MoMA, 2012), Superpowers of Ten (Lisbon Architecture Triennial 2013; Chicago Architecture Biennial 2015; Jumex Museum, Ciudad de México, 2016; ZKM Karlsruhe, 2016), 12 Actions to Make Peter Eisenman Transparent (Cidade da Cultura, Santiago de Compostela, 2004), 1L Oil Banquet (Madrid, 2007); and research-based installation projects including: Spirits Roaming the Earth (Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2018), Pornified Homes (Oslo Architecture Triennial, 2016), Intimate Strangers (London Design Museum, 2016), Sales Oddity. Milano 2 and the Politics of Direct-To-Home TV Urbanism (14 Venice Biennale, 2014), PHANTOM. Mies as Rendered Society (Arts Institute of Chicago, 2012), Fray Foam Home. When Decoration Becomes Political (12 Venice Biennale, 2010), among others.
OFFPOLINN’s work has been the object of solo exhibitions at MoMA, MoMA PS1, MAK Vienna, Princeton University, RED CAT Cal Arts Contemporary Art Center in Los Angeles, the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine de Paris, and Tabacalera in Madrid; and it also been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, entrum für Kunst und Medien ZKM (Karlsruhe), London Design Museum, Whitechapel Gallery (London), Z33 (Hasselt), the Schweizerisches Architektur Museum (Basel), Lisbon and Oslo architecture triennales, and the Venice, Chicago, Gwanju, São Paulo, Santiago de Chile, and Seoul architecture biennales.
The books of the office include: Superpowers of Scale (Columbia Press, 2020), More-Than-Human (with Marina Otero and Lucia Piestroiusti; Idea Books, 2020), Mies y la gata Niebla. Ensayos sobre arquitectura y cosmopolítica (Puente Editores, 2019), Transmaterial Politics (MCD, 2017), Transmaterial / Calculable (ARQ, 2017), PHANTOM. Mies as Rendered Society (ACTAR, 2013) and Different Kinds of Water Pouring into a Swimming Pool (CalArts, 2013).
OFFPOLINN was founded and is lead by Andrés Jaque. Andrés Jaque is an architect, writer and curator. He is the Dean and Professor of Architecture at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. He has also been Visiting Professor at Princeton University and The Cooper Union. He has been an Alfred Toepfer Stiftung’s Tessenow Stipendiat and Graham Foundation grantee. In 2018 he co-curated Manifesta 12 in Palermo, The Planetary Garden. Cultivating Co-Existence, and he is the Chief Curator of the 13th Shanghai Biennale, Bodies of Water