LAND

the work of WIND AIR LAND SEA

5
fresh breeze
14–23 SEPT. 2018

Observatory for Riparian Repose
[In Reaching, the Sun collapsed into the Sea]

Pejvak (Rouzbeh Akhbari & Felix Kalmenson)

The Observatory for Riparian Repose is a story told in wind and water. Inspired by ancient bâdgir (windcatcher) designs of Iran, this immersive sculpture funnels ambient breeze into a strong directional wind that encounters a pool of liquid beneath the structure. Originally, bâdgirs served as passive cooling systems in hot desert climates, directing atmospheric winds into subterranean cisterns en route to domestic interiors. Observatory for Riparian Repose adapts the form of the bâdgir, detached from its intended function, with the aim of creating an environment for contemplating the enmeshing of elements. Through sculptural and textual additions, a story implicates this bâdgir within a broader narrative that ties together histories of extraction, collective madness, tellurian toxification, and the invention of solar time.

 

Bio

Pejvak (Rouzbeh Akhbari & Felix Kalmenson) is the long-term collaboration between Felix Kalmenson and Rouzbeh Akhbari. Through their multivalent, intuitive approach to research and living, they find themselves in a convergence and entanglement with likeminded collaborators, histories, and various geographies.

Rouzbeh Akhbari is an artist working in video installation and film. His practice is research-driven and usually exists at the intersections of political economy, critical architecture, and planning. Through a delicate examination of the violences and intimacies that occur at the boundaries of lived experience and constructed histories, Akhbari uncovers the minutiae of power that organize and regiment the world around us.

Felix Kalmenson is an artist whose practice navigates installation, video, and performance. Kalmenson’s work variably narrates the liminal space of a researcher’s and artist’s encounter with landscape and archive. By bearing witness to everyday life, and hardening the more fragile vestiges of private and collective histories through their work, Kalmenson gives themselves away to the cadence of a poem, always in flux.