Publication: Mounir Fatmi: Fuck the Architect

Fuck the Architect was published on the occasion of the inaugural Brussels Biennial, with the support of B.P.S.22, alongside contributions from the General Directorate of Cultural Affairs of Hainaut, the French Community of Belgium, the Moroccan Company of Works and Objects of Art (Casablanca), the Association Les Lieux (Lille), the city of Sélestat, and the Office of Culture, FRAC Alsace.

The publication features texts by Paul Ardenne, Frédéric Bouglé, Pierre Olivier Rollin, Mounir Fatmi, Jean de Loisy, Naomi Beckwith, Ariel Kyrou, Martina Corgnati, Jérôme Sans, Evelyne Toussaint, Nicole Brenez, and Marc Mercier.

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« Fuck the Architect » is a photographic work in progress initiated in 2009 whose subject is architecture. It questions our relation to architecture and constitutes both a critique and an attempt to renew that relation. The « Fuck the Architect » project is an unfinished assemblage, a terrain for deconstruction and construction without a blueprint, and above all without any input from the « Great Architect » (mounir fatmi, The Ghetto is in the Mind, 2008), a « Great Architect » evocative of the theological concept of a superior intelligence that would organize the universe.

The photographs produce a critique aimed at architecture in the primal sense, as the art of building constructions. mounir fatmi observed the evolution of urban projects from the 1960s such as the construction of « radiant cities », « (…) these neighborhoods that look like large airport boarding halls where everyone is waiting for the next departure. Where the violence of concrete is far greater than the violence reported in the media during the riots in the suburbs of Paris. » (mounir fatmi, ibid.). He examines the relation of architecture to power, as he believes it is too often complicit with political and financial powers, and denounces a form of domination and violence exercised throughout history by architecture on human beings. His criticism is also aimed at architecture in a metaphorical sense: as a structuring element around us and within us – in a way, the first degree of our perception of the world, imposing a point of view, from which we can’t break free easily. The work constitutes an attempt to renew our relation to architecture through a post-minimalistic and punk artistic project heralded by a cry of rebellion: « Fuck the Architect », a both angry and careless gesture that echoes the rebellion of certain rock and hip hop singers of the 1970s and 80s; a gesture that wants to kick everything down and abolish established hierarchies and categories.

The 2010 photograph in the series « Fuck the Architect » features the tragedy at play between humans and architecture in a black & white composition. It shows the domination of architecture over man, with the image of an African street vendor kneeling in the dust of the Champ de Mars in Paris, whose survival depends on his selling of miniature reproductions of the Eiffel Tower, a giant and universal symbol of French culture and its influence. « Fuck the Architect » is a call to place the human element back at the center of architectural projects, as it’s too often forgotten, while, by reversing the proportions between the man and the towers at his feet, it addresses a disrespectful « fuck » to architecture and its creator.

Studio Fatmi, January 2018.

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Mounir Fatmi: Fuck the Architect

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