Historically, we have
valued property depending
on 'usability', which
Matta-Ciark exposed in
Fake Estates - his analysis
of unusable and almost
valueless plots of land
(below). But property
markets today are driven
by constructed images of
happiness, disseminated
online. Architects are
practised at selling happy,
aspirationallifestyles, as
Bovenbouw and Maria
Malgorzata Olschowska's
City Scenes (right) attest
lifestyles. The same images architects make
are used by developer s to sell apartments,
and are hungrily consumed by 'tast emaking'
social media feeds. 'Architects n eed
a shake', Garutti insist s.
The eight collages are displayed in a room
fitted with an inviting sh ag-pile carpet and
bathed in the golden light of an eternal
sunset spilling from an Olafur Eliasson-
inspired sun-like light fitting, designed,
like the rest of the exhibition, by Bernard
Dubois Architect s. The room imitates the
increasingly Instagram -able installations
and exhibitions that are taking t he world's
art institutions by storm, apparently more
interested in 'likes' and 'retweets' than
meaningful and present reflection. Although
that won't stop visitors from taking their
own snap for t heir social media feed - a
tension and contradiction that goes unsaid.
The highly constructed nature of the
images we con sume is brought into sharp
relief by the photographs of the Novartis
Campus Park in Easel by Swiss landscape
architects Vogt. The architects placed
taxidermy animals in the landscape 'as if
it were a stage upon which nature is
performed'. By enacting in
camera a process routinely
taken in digital post-
production - a kind of quasi-
analogue Photoshop - Vogt
draw into question t he
authenticity of the images
that cir culate on media
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p latforms, a s well as
challenging the artificial
nature of landscap e and our
p erception of what we think
natural spaces should be.
Presenting the image of
happiness is now as, if not
more, important than
exp eriencing the genuine
feeling. A moment of self-r eflection will
expose many of us as complicit in the
propagation of the images of the happiness
agenda - t he blissful holiday snap s
on Facebook, a healt hy breakfast on
Instagram, wholesome educational self-
b etterment on Twitter. Who car es if you
are happy if it is not broadcast on your
personal social media channels~ 'I t is
as if the actual project of sp ace today -
previously a polit ical act for conveying
a future, and ideally collective vision -
has necessarily become an individual and
emotional one', Garutti speculates,
'atomized int o data points that r eveal
the feelings of individuals right now, which
must be retroactively analysed to extr act
an image of a shared exper ience.'
'
Matta-Clark was a
prolific image-maker,
documenting his life and
work in film, phot ographs
and photographic collages:
very often the only record
of short-lived artworks
destined for the wrecking
~ a:
~
~ b all. 'Human beings often
~ ~ create images, begin to
G WO ~ worship them and t hen
~ ~ forget t he images were
~ ;:~ 5 initially invented by them',
g cc a: ~ the artist Marc Quinn
~ § claims. 'They ar e left with
g ~ an abstract image that is
impossible to measure
up to.' In 2008, Quinn created the largest
solid-gold object since the Ancient
Egyptians: a life-size sculpture of Kate
Moss in an improbable yoga position and
cast in 18-carat gold, which 'cr eates an
image of all the impossible dreams that lure
p eople to wreck their lives on the rocky
shore of r eality'. One month after the work
was unveiled at t h e British Museum,
Lehman Brothers collapsed.
As our financial system burns around us,
capitalism and insatiable economic growth
succumbing to the flaming p yre of what
r emains of our planetary health,
our fingers desperately grasp through
t h e smoke for meaning. We snatch blindly
at the maelstrom of images whirling
around us, gripping tightly any soothing
impression of happiness and well-b eing.
Perhaps today, it would be t his new era
of image-making and consuming, rather
t han buildings, t hat would suffer at
Matta-Clark's chainsaw - images of
financialised happiness that we have
collectively decided are of t he highest
value, worth more even t han gold itself.