Welcome everyone. I'm incredibly happy to welcome Ila Beca and Louis Lemois here to the, well again back because you've been here with us before. And to Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation. In 2006, Ila and Louis founded the artistic and filmmaking firm Beca-Lemois. And two years later, at the peak of OMA's global impact, they set the Maison Abordeaux in circulation through the cinematographic account of the daily experience of Guadalupe Azebo. Azebo is housekeeper with their 58 minute film, Colja's House Life. I think that it's impossible not to have this image in our heads. Actually, when we think of the Maison Abordeaux, probably that's the first image that comes to mind to all of us, right? At least to myself. And that's actually, that means a lot at the time that OMA's architecture was seen as something that could not be explained without the voice of Rem behind. Basically, there was then suddenly another voice that could speak of that architecture in a very different way. Colja's House Life was followed in 2010 by, inside Piano, Geras Vertigo, Christmas Mayor, in 2011 by Pomerol Herzogander Miron, in 2014 by 24-Earth Surplaze, La Madalena, L'Experience du Vid, and 25 Bays in 2015, A Journey Around the Moon, The Infinite Happiness, Barbicanian Spirit. I mean, all these to see how prolific their work is, and when I say these things, probably they all resound in our heads as essays, as films that somehow occupy a very important space in our imagination, in our culture, in the way we live together. I mean, I will pass the list because it's endless, and all of them quite relevant. In their work, it is impossible to see architectural devices as neutral. Building cities and landscapes become actors that complicate the life of others, that evolve in unexpected ways, that have trajectories that have nothing to do with the intentions of those who design them. Actually, it's so hilarious, the interview with the brand that is totally surprised with these and improvises new theories to explain the house that already incorporates your film. Actually, in films like Colja's House Life, where Barbican buildings do their own things, for good and for bad, they have their own agency, neither the autonomy of Russia, nor the good will that the designers deal with, but problematic things that both complicate and enable the life of others. Buildings, technologies and infrastructures are not something that supports daily life from the enacting of sound as an ultimate notion of inhabitants in the case of Moriyama-san, one of my favorites, I would say, to the love story of a sweet celebrity architect with his car, a car designed for a world that no longer exists. In their film Tokyo Ride, of course, that I'm sure you have in mind, the way technology unfolds in time becomes in itself a form of life. Ultimately, it is my impression that their films are not explaining or documenting architecture. They respond to the capacity of films to enact life, societal complexity, political representation as both media and medium. But that's precisely what architecture is or can be. The work is part of the, I mean, we could now go to all the impressive list of distinctions. Their work is a part of the collection of the Frac in Orleans, which means a lot for all of us who love architectural experimentation. The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Fundazione Prada in Milan, the Centre National Des arts Plastics in Paris. We could go on with all these distinctions. They have the words being exhibited and screened and awarded broadly. But overall, I could say that what makes the work so impressive is that if we had to imagine or explain or somehow present what architecture is now, we could probably not do that without referring to the work of Illa Becca and Louis Lemoine. And that's probably much more than what all these distinctions can speak of. And that's why I'm so happy that we can have this discussion with you today and that after yesterday's screenings that allowed us to see a big part of your work. I'm also very happy that Marwa Suta is today responding and moderating the debate after your lecture. And I want to also, well, of course, those that are part of the G-SAP community know that Marwa Suta, but know Marwa Suta well. But I want to say for those that are not part of our community how important the work of Mark is reflect on how architecture operates as media and medium. And I think that's something that for us architects, or people that are part of our field, it's very well known. But the reflections of Marwa Suta on the work and the research on back Mr. Fuehler, Environmental Communications, or Rifat Sathir, the architect and photographer, it's really helped us to understand that architecture operates as media and in doing that engages the enacting of environmental, of the environment. And I think that this is something so unique to have at this point the possibility of having your work and having this in conversation with Mark that we have to make the best of. So please join me in welcoming Ilavec and Willemua. Thank you so much, Andres, for having us tonight and for this beautiful introduction. Do you hear us well like this? Yeah? So, yeah, first of all, we're very pleased to be here. I'm back actually a few years after the first lecture. I don't remember it was 2018 maybe or 19 before COVID, let's say. So tonight we'll try to give you a sort of overview of what we've been doing. Ilavec and myself for many years now. And as a sort of introduction, we try to, in a few words, to explain what we do. But it's always difficult to give precise words because we keep voluntary a sort of blurry zone. We like to remain outsiders of many disciplines. But let's say that the work we've been doing for all those years are mostly at the crossroads of many, of various disciplines such as a non-fiction film, but also video art. And we also, of course, engage with architecture and social sciences. But probably the simplest way to explain shortly what we do is to say that we are two observers using a video camera just to question the relation we collectively develop with our surrounding space. And these are many scales from the one of the domestic up to the one of the cities. But let's say that the main effort we've been doing all these years is the one of replacing people at the forefront of architectural representation. And this, in order to question architecture in its role, but also in its impact from a more anthropological point of view. And giving, that explains also the title of this lecture, giving also a central place or role to the one of the experience, of the human experience on many levels being physical, psychological, emotional, and obviously social. So this to start is sort of a global overview of the films we've been doing. We've made, I didn't count yesterday, but probably a little bit more than 30 films. But what's interesting, what I did the least is that I noticed that they've been shot in more than 20 countries. And that's a very important aspect for us because we are constantly amazed to understand how culture is a factor that shape and transform our understanding of space. So that's why we keep looking to make films in many different countries, let's say. But from the start what animated our research was the idea to put into question the way architecture was represented, considering how fundamental the role of image is in our visual culture, but in particular way in the field of architecture. Because certainly and more and more we have to acknowledge that the image is probably the very first vector of diffusion, communication, but also of how we build knowledge in architecture. And so because obviously we know mostly architecture through its reproduction, architecture not traveling around, we hardly go to see the buildings we study or we are interested by. And so that's why the vector of the image is so fundamental. And so it really carries a responsibility in the way architecture is not only thought but taught and also built. So that's why I wanted to quote this very long text. Actually it was largely cut, some cuts by Enrique Walker. It was actually a call for paper in the Revista di Archettura. He said, we know the bunkers of the Atlantic coast from a series of photographs by Paul Virilio. We know the Tour Saint-Jacques in Paris from a night photograph by Brassail. We know the Reichstag in Berlin from the photographs of the fire that destroyed its dome in 1933 and from those of its wrapping by Christot and Jean-Claude in 1994. We know the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank building in Hong Kong by Norman Foster from a night photograph by Andres Gurski. We know the Economist building in London by Alison and Peter Smithson from the sequence of MIMA Artists at the start of the film blow-up by Michelangelo Antonioni. We know the Malaparte House in Capri by Adalberto Libera from the shooting of Le Mepri by Jean-Luc Godard and the staging of the Odyssey by Fritz Lang in the same film. We know the House in Bordeaux by Erem Colas from the recording of its cleaning in the documentary by Ilabek and Luiz Le Mouane. Obviously, we have to thank very much Erika Wolke for adding us in this amazing list. But what's really interesting here is that in these texts he really reduces a building or let's say a monument to only one or almost one single image. So the role of the image here plays such a role in also building the mythology around those monuments, let's say. And something I wanted to maybe arrive to is that you obviously know these famous quote from Winston Churchill, we shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us. But what really interests us here is to understand that more than this first phase of influence we get from the surrounding environment in which we live, we also have to acknowledge in this idea was following how much the way we represent our buildings could also influence the way we potentially build because we've been noticing how much in our experiences in teaching in architecture schools how much the mass of images that a student also carries within him as a mass of references but very much visual references also will be the matter with which he will then build his imagination and potentially his future work. So that's why we are very interested in understanding how we could potentially changing also this imaginary through changing the image with which we represent architecture. So coming back to the films, tonight we'll try to give you some keys of reading and let's say to reveal a little bit of conceptual key points or conceptual aspects that we've been working on for many years now and tonight we'll go through these five points which we will connect some films with. So Illa, we'll start with the first one. I don't have to speak Yama. Can you hear me? No, it's okay. I'm free to move. Yes, I will tell you a little story. It's the story of our beginning, how we started to make films and why we are keeping going now. It's a story of our very, very first film. It's a very small film. We like to talk about this little film. It's a microfilm made by Free Picture, Free Photograph and that is the story of really how we started to make films. And it was in a airport in Paris, our leave, and we were talking, it was the beginning of our story, not only professional, but also sentimental because I have a love story because this is the thing that you have seen is a filmography of love also, not only films. And so this was at the beginning, really at the beginning we were going to, in Switzerland, to present a film that we made before and we were just waiting for the flight and we had this window in front and so I saw this reflection and I just took a picture and at that moment we were talking and we tried also to make things better to seduce Louise. And so we were talking about architecture because I studied architecture but Louise did a study about it. She was really interested in architecture so Louise asked me a very, as you say, very strange, a little bit naive question that was this one. So what is architecture for you? And as I studied architecture, for me it was so complicated to answer to this question so I was just thinking about what kind of book can help me to answer to this very complicated question. And the first book that came up was, it doesn't want to come? Yes, maybe, yes, this one. It was a book for me very, very important during my study because it was the first time that I read something that was not related to walls, roof and beautiful facade, but it was related to how people can experience an architecture, can live inside. And in this particular piece, he's talking about children playing on the stairs of a church and saying that that was the moment he understood also that this is the best way to understand what is an architecture. So I started talking about this to Louise and also another book that you know very well, The Spaces of Spaces by Georges Perrec that is a kind of poetic experience of architecture. And there was a quote in this book that for me was very important during my studies to live is to pass from one space to another while doing your very best not to bump yourself. And this is very important for me because it's like the book by Rasmussen is trying to understand that an architecture is also related to space but it's complicated to understand what is a space. But with these two books I try to move from architecture to space so starting to talk a little bit more about space. And that moment something incredible happened in front of us. This man started to clean the window. And so I took this picture without knowing why because I always have a camera with me so I took this picture. And at that moment Louise said because we were interested in the representation we were going to show a film so we made some images and Louise asked me a very complicated, this is not naive at all and what's very complicated is so we are not talking about architecture we are talking about space so how to represent the space. Wow so this was really complicated to answer to this question and I thought about this book that was another book very important that every student in architecture knows very well but is architecture a space but this is not the title in Italian the title in Italian is How to Look at Architecture where Zevi says that it is impossible to represent space you have to experience the space. So I try to say yes maybe it's complicated but we can do it with making films because films more than drawings or photographs you can also represent the time so you can add the time also to the three dimensions of the geometrical dimension of the architecture. And at that moment we started to say wow why she asked me because I was making films before she asked me why you have never thought to make a film about architecture so what's something that I say always they say no no way I don't want to make films about architecture because I'm an architect they want to make films so making films about architecture was a double failure so it's a failure as an architect they also failure as a filmmaker so completely they say no no way never make a film about architecture you see what the world can love do because I'm here now about film so I say no no no way she say well I like to do an exercise if you could make a film about architecture what do you want you would like to see inside so we started to make a list of things that's waiting this plane that doesn't start and so we made really this is the real one the original and this is the transcription and we started to say I want to see in a film people people and people I want to see people because I've never seen people inside architecture during my study no one I've seen only completely empty spaces and my time is going very well so other things but all the forbidden things that you never see in a film about architecture so for example bad weather, rain the humor, spontaneity, disorder, dirtiness and no architecture, no owners, no expert and no public relations it was really very violent the violent list of things it's a kind of we can say a manifesto we wrote a manifesto and we say ok one day we can make a film we want to make a film just on these forbidden things the forbidden topics of the representation of architecture something happened at that moment incredible the guy that was cleaning the window stayed a little bit like this and so I took this picture the guy went away and we stared at this picture and said wow we had an illumination incredible illumination it's like a for us it was a kind of saint the saint of maintenance we have seen this image and we say wow but everything is there so we just finished the list and said but everything is there because this is what we never see in the representation of architecture so it's something that normally the architecture is represented in a way that you never see this you never see the people that maintain the architecture or even the people that are completely invisible and we immediately thought about what happened in the painter for example in the 17th century in Holland for example that when they started in the pension for the first time they started to paint people normal people it was really a big revolution in the paintings in the paintings and we thought that maybe something like this we could do it but we said wow maybe that's something to do also in the representation of the architecture and with images like this in mind we thought that we could maybe have the opportunity to make a little film just stay with someone like this so it was this because we had the opportunity to stay for two weeks with this incredible lady that is Guadalupe Acedo that is very known now this is the kind of star of the... she lives in Hollywood I always say this because it's very famous now and so we made our first film maybe this is the beginning can we turn off the lights? so we made this film in this house this is very famous house but it was a kind of really testing all our list of topics so we put everything inside this film like something that you never seen before the disorder a sort of mess, rain even a burn that it was plastered in the window the aging of the building and the most that's a very beautiful most in this house but something was very important for us was really the people working on behind the scene behind the scene we also thought about this very famous painting by Giuseppe Elisa de Volpedo and after that film we made other films having these images in mind so we made other films of very famous architecture but where we wanted to just to stay with the people that use the space and so this is all other films that are related to this first period of our work where we were really interested in pushing a little bit the limits of representation integrating the position of the human being inside the image the representation but we one time we did it for many films in one film it was very important for us working with with the workers for example like this guy and it was a film that we made for Fondationne Prada and we stayed with the workers and we tried to pay an homage to the workers in the so we continued I'm a little bit stressed by my timer I put the timer so maybe I stop it okay so as Ila said we started with a with a radical and rather muscular kind of approach initially because we needed in a certain way to demolish or to deconstruct roles in representation but afterwards once that step was passed we could be a little bit smoother so that's why now I would like to talk about emotions because we were also very interested by understanding when we were teaching in different places how much the question of the individual its emotions sent the place of his body the feelings all those questions which are enormously personal were considered as so periferic and so secondary in the way architecture was approached so we said why shouldn't we give such direct focus to that once again to a little bit displace the way architecture is approached so that's why we started to make series of films and other of projects that were very much focusing on that question on putting forward how space is able to produce emotion to provoke and to modify not only on an individual scale but also collectively modes, behaviors and quality of life so to start with we just wanted to to recount a little story because we also before proposing workshops or studios in architecture school we make some tests at home with our children and so this is Madalena our daughter she was at the time five or six if I remember and we said okay Madalena we give you a week or a few days to modify what you want in your bedroom and to see in order to a little bit awaken her on how impactful furniture and the way you put things in a space can be a very impactful on your well-being, on your moods et cetera and so this was the initial space as it was before and the first move she did was to place the bed there so that she could have a dive view on the window and then the day after she moved the bed still with the idea of having a view a little bit oblique like this but still in the same kind of direction and then she moved this way also with all the furniture but rather well ordered let's say the day after she said okay let's a little bit play in a little bit less obvious but she liked it quite it was not that comfortable but she liked it like this the day after she said okay let's go in a more chaotic way but this one she loved it because it really gave the idea of the shack you know kids at that age they love to hide and to create more intimate spaces I moved all the furniture and she was she loved the game and then she said okay let's go in a total disorder so I will try this stayed not long and the day after we said okay now you've tried many options what would you keep if you had to keep a place to put the bed and strangely she came back to the initial place we were very surprised why do you keep that where do you want that and she said and that was the moment in which she really became aware of something but this is where you enter you enter my parents enter from the door and that's where I can see when you get in and get out and so I have more connection with you it was a real moment I also understood this ritual of getting in and out in the evening when you read the story etc it was very interesting for us and then she said okay my desk I want to place it here so that I can enjoy the view but she kept the idea of the shack of all these furniture to get this angle to hide so this little exercise and then afterwards she wanted to move around the kitchen and the living room and she keeps moving all the time all things but this was a very little exercise but quite interesting for a kid because I think we could actually start teaching or sensibilizing small kids to architecture at least to the space we have around in very small little games like this to let them become much more let's say sensitive and aware of all those dynamics that are hidden behind and so I'm just mentioning this nice quote from Gaston Bachelard you probably know this French philosopher and this interesting book of the Poetics of Space comparing the house our house is our corner of the world it is our first a real cosmos in every sense of the world it is an instrument with which to confront the cosmos and we've been the question of the house or the world of the home let's say in English in French and Italian we don't have this slip these two words which are very interesting because home is loaded of all these effective sense of it and so that's why we've been always fascinated to make films about houses and the way people develop that attachment to space and one film in particular I want to talk about is Moria Massan so a film I think was shown yesterday for some of you it's a film that for us was really a turning point obviously when you make a film you learn a lot by making a film you learn from all our films are made of encounters intense because we spend a lot of time with these people and in particular way Moria Massan was also an encounter with this man who was very special in many ways but also with the Japanese culture so on both levels we were facing a totally new understanding of relation to space but also to sensoriality to an incredible delicate understanding of let's say the idea of atmosphere which is made out of a combination of so many things time being the climate the space the furniture the combination of all this and so Mr. Moria Massan lives in this incredible house built by Riyunishi Zawa from the duo Sana and this house is in the middle of Tokyo it's splitted in 10 little cubes autonomous cubes Mr. Moria Massan lives in five of them four or five and the others are rented and you have a view from the upper one we followed Mr. Moria Massan during more or less one week and we were really amazed how Mr. Moria Massan develops he completely changed life thanks to this building he spent his days he's a real amateur in the full sense and beautiful sense of the word this house has became his real cosmos and every day he chooses a book on the topic and the author etc related to a specific space of the house he writes for one wind for one moment so he keeps moving around the house so he reads poetry in one angle he reads philosophy in another he reads history of cinema somewhere he listens to noise music in the basement so every corner every aspect of the house has a specific atmosphere and so this matches with a certain topic of culture a certain genre etc and that was really amazing for us so I will show you a small extract if we can know where they're light this leads me to a little bit come to the definition of what is an experience because as we said many times this is really a central question in the way we make films but also in what we are trying to put forward in the film itself and there is this very interesting quote of Juani Palasma that you probably know of the work of so he's experiencing a space is a dialogue an exchange as I enter a space the space enters me and changes me and so what's really interesting here is that the notion of experience of a space is really an alchemy in the sense of a dynamic relation to an environment you are not there is no passivity there is almost a chemical alchemy which happens and it's a process of metamorphosis in some ways and another very interesting sentence which one should think about is by Borges the taste of the apple lies in the contact of the fruit with the palette and not in the fruit itself and it's really marvelous and extremely said in such an efficient way to understand once again this idea of where happens this idea of an experience which is in the middle of once again it's the idea of a dialogue among two entities and let's say that this problematic of this topic of the emotion a space is able to provoke is a topic of a book we are currently working on it's a book of conversations with these various people you have here it's not ended yet as it looks today and let's say that the book tries to gather stories and intimate memories of some architects on the way there is sense and experience space on a very personal way and how their experiences even from their childhood is at play in their own architectural research so the book we intend we intend it to be a sort of invitation to sharpen our sensorial perception let's say to space and also our awareness towards our sense of presence in relation to space and to time as well let's talk a little bit about methodology of making films it's a structure of memory why structure of memory because from the beginning as we didn't study cinema we say okay we are going to make some films about the representation of space but let's try to do it as we really want not like you normally make a film so normally making a film is a it's a way that started from a script and when you can imagine you write everything about the film after that you find you try to find the money and you film the film after that and the film will be the same as the script so even if it's a fiction or not fiction it's a little bit like architecture you make a project and at the end your building will be like the project or you hope so so we say no what we want to do is not a film it's a sharing experience and so we started from the beginning thinking about how memory works and how we can use the same the same structure of the memory so not organizing everything like in a rational way but that's inspiring like is the memory so when you go inside a place for example for the special memory you go out when you make a tour in a building when you go out you don't have everything or everything perfect in mind but you have some little moment very important for you there are fragments like this so it's a kind of big chaos like this the drawing that we made at the same moment and so we have everything inside our mind and the we can say that the language create this kind of order so we wanted to keep this chaos so working like this beautiful drawing but so time bearing and we said from the beginning okay let's make film like this and not like this line that came out from the mouth so how to keep this beautiful chaos that we have in mind and it's a chaos that is really constructed by our our brain because our brain works like this it's a kind of relationship that we have between our neurons that are made through the something that is called synapsis and this relationship like the beautiful centers by Borges is the memory is created by the relation between the neurons there is not inside the neurons but is created by only the continuous connection that they have between them so we said okay let's try to to make a sort of script graphic script that is inspired by this kind of system so we took our list of topics and we put it this list of topics like this and we try to have this in mind when we made our film first film but now starting from the film first film we made all the films like this so that's the reason why we are talking about this because still today we make films like this so we work much more on our self preparing our self and not writing what has to happen in front of the camera so we prepare our self we prepare much as we can so having everything inside and at the end we went to the place so in this case it was the first film and we started to film without knowing why and how but just filming having in mind this kind of unconscious that we create this graphic script at the end we the film is for example the first film we made that I talked before is made by I don't know 20 24 little fragments and for us it was incredible at the beginning because we said now we have all this kind of little memories that these fragments we call the fragments that is like little memories now we show the film and so we started to make to create an order because there is a chronological order in the film but we can also watch this film like choosing the little fragment like this and every time we showed the film at the end we said now we have to change the order so we made I don't know how many different versions of this film this is just the last one because okay now move on let's make another film but we have I think we have a 100 version of different order of this kind of fragments and it started from that moment we improved for every film we improved the same graphic script and so we improved also the topics so we have now many topics and everything we make now we change we change this kind of script this is Barbicania for example and this is a film we made in London and if you have seen some of our films everything is constructed with a structure like this so this is because we like to say that the film at the end is the relation between all the little fragments that you have it's not you can watch a fragment it's interesting or not but at the end when you watch all the fragments there's a kind of order that it creates in what we would like to happen is that this kind of order is different in your mind in the mind of everyone because it's a kind of it's maybe the only way for us to share this kind of experience and also to be very very open to what is happening with film this is the methodology let's say for the form of the film or the structure for what is concerned about the time we like to to call it Iket nook let's say here and now and it's something for us very important because from the beginning we said ok we make film but we don't make films about about knowledge we don't want to share not share knowledge but we don't want to talk about something we want to stay in a place in that moment in that precise moment and just observing and watching what is happening and in a very personal way so it's us in that moment and it's a very important that we stay in that moment this is very interesting in architecture because for example we try to draw what is a timeline for an architecture and as you see that's the part of the architects is related is that there's an idea project and the construction and there's a moment the birth when there is the opening of the building and this curve that you see is the projection that the architect does for his building in the future so the architect is thinking about the future normally we call the architect to know what will happen in the future the architect is the genius of the future so if you don't know what is going to happen in the city for example you call an architect he will tell you what is going to happen in the future because the architect is working from the future but there's a moment that is the opening of the building and that this curve that is falling down because it's finished the future for the architect is finished and this is the moment where the 99% of the representation of the architecture is in that moment is the moment of the I would say even one day before the opening because everything is perfect fantastic and everything is beautiful and all the pictures that you we see everywhere in all the instagram or website everywhere are 99% taken in that moment so when the architecture is fantastic it's beautiful and the architect is the genius after that day we don't know anything about the architecture we don't know anything about the life the real life of the building because the architect stopped his work and he stopped again and a new circle so he goes back to make a new projection in the future so we lose the architects and we have what we call the post occupancy so what Rem called post occupancy and we don't know anything about this so we wanted to this is the future oriented of the architecture and we say go very fast so we when we think about this we thought also about another very important book for us that is Pestac de la Corbusier the Philippe Boudin where there was also some incredible images when you see that on the left side is the work of the architect so this is the moment of the opening and after the post occupancy this is the same house some years after the city process in Pestac in France so this is what is happening to architecture after the day of the opening so we decided that our position will be in that moment so what we call field experience will be in that precise moment that one or that one for everything we made it's a really focused on the moment and this is the moment where we stay for every film so it can be to 25 minutes to 15 hours like this one the last one the last thing that we just finished it's we are presenting now a little bit and it's a film about this fantastic architect that is called Bumsem Prem Tadda and we decided we knew his story, his personal story is an architect that is death, completely death you know very well he is completely death and he was born in Islam in Banco and it's incredible because he is making an architecture very strongly related to the senses it's really working on how to perceive the spaces with the sound or even with the vibration it's a kind of architecture of the vibration this film was as Tokyo Ride was shown yesterday it's a film which also is linked to this idea of an encounter we met on Zoom for this book project we are doing about the emotion of space and then we were amazed by meeting Bumsem and so we went to Bangkok to meet him and said ok let's do a film right now and so it's a film made in one day which is an endless day actually it's starting very very early the first hours of the day and ending very late at night and so it's the film is made and that's a process of testing in many films with what happens so it can be a total disaster or it can become something interesting but the idea is that through the energies and pleasure of meeting of being together of this idea of of this alchemy of the experience to understand what could happen in that encounter the last topic we wanted to to evoke is the question of vulnerability and it's a question we've been working on in many different ways to different aspects from the first film and on and on and it contributes to this idea of let's say this wheel we had from the start to deconstruct an ideal of perfection that design and architecture cherish so much so we tend to believe that perfection in some ways is a sort of fiction that we all suffer from but yet we keep adoring figures of superheroes and invincible persons so that's why from the start of our collaboration we not only made the choice of grounding ourselves in this idea of the Iket Nuk, the here and now in this temporality of the real present but also looking at the fragilities of life in all its forms and let's say that's what moves us the most so the project I want to talk about is this one it's a very large project Homo Urbanus it's still an ongoing project actually we've been working on for five years I think and it's composed of 11 films each film being of approximately one hour and it's been shot in 11 different cities from Saint Petersburg to Seoul to Naples Tokyo, Bogota Dora, Shanghai, Rabba, Venice, Bangkok so cities are very very different scales but also historical cultural backgrounds very different conditions each time but I would say that more than depicting the urban environment in a sort of frontal straightforward way these films very much look at how the built environment affects our lives how it shapes our behaviors but also our conditions and attitudes it impacts our relation with space but also with the others let's say how the city frames order and direct the way we live collectively in the space of the city so the project at large tries to understand who this sort of strange species we call the Homo Urbanus is and also its miraculous capacity of adaptation to the environment in which he lives which can sometimes be rather complex or even hostile so it's a sort of huge cinematographic fresco which dives into the depths of the urban daily life and let's say that we tend to put the Homo Urbanus the urban man under the microscope also to look at all the forces and silent rules we can which are at play on the stage of the street so the films are built around a constellation of topics there are many many topics but one central one is the question of the urban body or how we physically engage with the space of the city how we cope with the fact of living in sometimes very densely populated cities so all these dynamics between inhabitants but also we are as an extension we are very interested to understand this relationship with the body of the city itself which produces this sort of daily struggle this state of constant physical effort another obviously talking about vulnerability another point we've been looking at closely is how we grow old in city and how the position of aging bodies and this difficulty also to follow the rhythm of the city where usually I mean strength, efficiency and competitiveness are obviously leading values and energies so we are also another topic we've been looking at we like to finish on this is the question of looking at how this blurry zone of private and public space how it's how in various culture we relate to that and obviously we see an image of Venice so we've been extremely interested in understanding also how climate and in certain cases climate disasters can also largely affect the way we live so it's a as the project is so huge we tend to present it more as a big video installation because it has more this sort of experiential aspect to it so we tend to present it we call it a sort of city matigraphic odyssey kind of film because it's not one film or eleven film but it's a sort of it's a composition which is almost musical let's say so yeah some views of various exhibitions where we tried many different settings and let's say that this project has obviously tentacular has been fed by many many influences and references but we've been extremely interested by in the 1920s you had this trend of urban symphonies which was where the pure expression of this moment of encounter between the newborn cinema and the newborn metropolis let's say pure boom of industrialization and this frame is from obviously the most famous one of Digavertof man with a movie camera but let's say mostly in each of the big cities of that time you had one film of that genre so this is another shot from Digavertof and at that moment it was a pure apology of the modern machines and the technical progress of the films virtuoso virtuoso in the editing as well but the editing was the form of silent language and I'm just evoking this because our film as opposed to many other films made are a certain way a sort of variation on silent movies because there are no more dialogues no more verbal exchanges let's say but we try to use the language of the body as a form of expression or the homo urbanus expresses himself by the way the body struggles in his relation to the city another film I just wanted to quickly evoke because it's quite meaningful here it's the short film in the street by street photographers Ellen Levitt and James Agee because it was shot in 1948 in the Spanish area of Harlem and it's really a gem you can find it on YouTube it's a marvelous film which is an extraordinary document of those areas of that area and kids play obviously a great role in the film and at the beginning of the film you have this marvelous presentation of four quarters of great cities are above all a theater and a battleground there unaware and unnoticed every human being is a poet a masqueror, a warrior a dancer and in his innocent artistry he projects against the turmoil of the street an image of human existence and let's say that it said beautifully we are trying to achieve a little bit the same goal with the project the Morebanos I have to close very soon just another figure which was extremely influential for our practice in the way we understand cinema in this idea of making a film as an experience which is unscripted and totally in the idea that a film is made in the here and now with what you find and with this dynamic of exchange rather than imposing something you've been thinking of and ordering before Jean Rouge was a key figure he transformed totally the understanding of documentary cinema in the sixties he is in a certain way the person who embodies the new vague on the documentary side and he was also famous for his ethnographic films and he says ethnography has to be filmed before being theorized and not the other way around so it was really this idea and we really learned thanks to him that cinema can be an exploratory medium and not just and that a film is not just a form given to a project that would be accurately scripted beforehand let's say but filmmaking really can be an active form of thinking while doing let's say and just to end we wanted to show you the state of the of our graphic script for the Omar Obama's project which took a different shape that time of also another level of complexity and so this idea of unscripted cinema which nevertheless can also it's not in contradiction with the idea of mapping as Ila said initially we are interested in finding a way of of keeping of avoiding the chronological order that is scripted in a traditional sense impose and more to keep the dynamic of connections and a relation in between topics in order to find a more mobile a more fluid way of understanding cinema let's say and that's how it also changes but just to finish I want to show you an extract of Omar Obama's it's as I said 11 hours so to make a little except it's difficult but we took a few short extracts from I think three or four films can we turn off the light I think we'll stop here thank you so much thank you for a talk incredibly brilliant and comprehensive and thank you for showing and sharing the work with us catching my my voice I'm going to say a few things give you guys a moment to relax after having been talking so epically about your work and your thinking and the all of the sources that go into not only your films but the diagrams of your brains that you've been showing us repeatedly all of that which is amazing but I also want to pick up a little bit about something that Andres was talking about earlier which is the relationship between your work and ideas of thinking about architecture and media because it seems to me that just as a way of getting us going that much of what your work does is make an argument about observation and I know observation is a key term for you both I know you've taught around it but it's an observation that helps us understand something which is that seeing in architecture has to be understood as a kind of observational system in and of itself but seeing also has to be understood mediaically and representationally so the kind of seeing that you're constantly arguing for and enacting is a seeing that is mediaic experiential but also representational and these are all tied together but in your work I feel like it's also seen that is spatialized it's a kind of spatial and visual chronicling and that I think is an extraordinary way of approaching our understanding of systems of representation but also architecture and our cities but here's what I want to talk about it's a segment in one of your films it's the Barbican film and I don't know if any of you know this film but I'm going to describe it briefly and I feel like it should become known as the Barbican step sequence that's how important this moment is in the film and this is what happens Ina and Louise are filming an empty step and the Barbican and a character comes into view and asks what they're doing because admittedly a little strange they're filming an empty step and then he volunteers to occupy the steps because he claims he's an actor and a model so he does this incredible thing he performs as an actor and a model on these steps he climbs up and down he acts as somebody climbing up and down these steps and then he performs like he's on a runway as a model and so the incredible thing that happens is and this is where maybe I want to start is that something happens in that moment which I think happens often in your films which is that the character who occupies those steps comes into view and then suddenly the architecture recedes and there's this incredibly complex oscillation between the people who are on screen versus the architecture and it's not just to say that architecture suddenly becomes unimportant it's that in that moment the person the person you are observing now intercedes between the architecture as protagonist and becomes a protagonist himself or herself and I feel like that oscillation is pretty constant in the films that I've seen at least which is that they claim or you claim, maybe you don't claim the film is somehow about architecture as building happens at that moment when the character suddenly comes into view suddenly building disappears and instead we have labor we have forms of maintenance we have the complex administration of boundaries privacy and personal territory and so we suddenly realize that for a moment what you duped us into believing which was that architecture was a building suddenly we see as a much more complex set of relations labor we see maintenance and that's why I feel like your films are a theory of architecture in that sense they're ostensibly about buildings but what they're really about is the complex ways in which people help us understand the complex representational occupational financial economies out of which buildings emerge and so my question was going to be that since the building is staging that relationship for us to understand what it means to occupy those spaces what you would do if the buildings disappeared from your films how much do we need the buildings to anchor your argument about architecture how much do we need building as the subject at all and so then you end with you in which the building has now become something else it's become more environmental it's become broader but so maybe I can just start there and prompt you to talk a little bit about what you think shifts what that evolution is when it's no longer the building the city and if your films about buildings help us understand architecture as that complex interplay between forces, materials occupants and systems of labor and representation what does Homo Urbanus help us understand about the city media theory of the city is it why don't we start there yes sure thank you so much let's say that as we said initially and probably that's why we are always in the difficulty of entering in that definition of architecture films there are many festivals about films dealing with architecture and each time we take part we understand how different our films there are always even if we take part in many many festivals but we feel very very strange in the sense that we we do not share probably the same aim in the sense that from the start we thought that or at least our role because it's useful to represent architecture and architect needs portfolio needs images needs probably very good shots and that's not that's not what we look for because it exists and people do much better than we do that aspect but what we try to do is to as you said to probably give view of that complexity that stratification of complexity that architecture enclose or embody that is to say it's it's a space that is thought to welcome life our human activities and so it's a place that is completely made out of all the complexities of our social political, economical psychological compositions that say so that's why we're very much more interested in revealing all those complexities and what's behind let's say only a nice looking building or let's say an aesthetical or technical aspect of space let's say and as you said and probably it gives us a good idea but next film we could make we could talk about a building probably without seeing it at all and that's actually it's what we do with the book now making film is also recounting stories and we need the human brain memory, the emotions the matter with which we make films and not only static compositions so that's why we it's that that we look for and we yeah and let's say that we felt that the reason why we changed also scale from the let's say the closed world of an architecture to the scale of the city is also that we felt a little bit too limited or we constantly were in in relation to the question of the signature or the authorship of the architecture and this dialogue sometimes was a little bit we wanted to free ourselves from the weight of that authorship in a certain way and we wanted to enlarge the number of questions that that the city at large could could open up for us so that's why it's endless word that's why we we couldn't finish this project or more than us it's an ongoing film because it's so wide and actually it's an open question of how we live all together and what the kind of environment we've been building so it's more of an anthropological quest than just looking at how we build structurally let's say I think this beautiful quote by Palasma that he says I enter a space and the space enters in me I think it's interesting because I don't think we need the architecture to talk about architecture because we are architecture in a sense so we are a we can understand better if we talk about space more than architecture because when we talk about architecture we talk about something that is concrete that you can touch but if you talk about space that is the essence of the architecture you can understand better that we are the space so we are the space in the sense that we exist in the relation that we have with the space so we in the sense we can film the architecture we can film people in the architecture is the same because the relation is there but the problem is when you film an architecture without without a body because I think a space doesn't exist if you don't have a body inside if you are not inside there is nothing inside the space itself doesn't exist there is no there is no taste of the peach but it's I'm just going to keep pushing on this because I think it's so the whole practice is so brilliantly organized around what it means to put a body in that space and the last time I was here talking to somebody who made films about spaces it was the artist Andrea Fraser and she also filmed the Guggenheim Build Back when I'm sure you know her piece and she also did incredible projects around museums and what it meant to perform as a museum guide and you probably know those pieces she takes our attention away from the art to the building itself and she blurs that boundary between what is it we are looking at and what is the apparatus that holds this within that space what organizes our perception and the building comes into play surprisingly and I feel like often your work does the opposite the ruse is you're bringing us here to look at a building but suddenly somebody is talking about affection and then suddenly somebody is talking about the Barbican as a celebrity building and what that means and suddenly there is a conversation about celebrity and in your films there is always this drifting away the focus comes back to the building but then it drifts away to something else into an entirely different conversation and it's just something really captivating about that perpetual drifting away that I think is a remarkable structure of your films I don't really have a question there just to say that it's so clear as you watch more and more films that that's what's happening and that body that's in that space is the device that helps us drift away it's a body that has a reaction and affection because and it's clear also we did a series of films before Omorbanus we made a series of films on public squares and one was on the Plaza de la République in Paris it's a very famous big square in Paris and the idea was to talk about this space which is highly symbolical also in the political history of the city because it's the place, the public space from which every demonstration starts etc and so considering but during the entire film which is the title is 24 Hours on site or I don't know how we translated it the idea was never to evoke the square in itself as a topic but we considered that if we met it's a film shot during 24 hours on a row and obviously the kind of people you meet at 6 in the morning, at 11 at 2 at 9 or at 4 in the morning they evolve constantly it's not so it's a sort of panorama of public life what happens there dynamics of the city it's a sort of social portrait of Paris on that day and we thought that we didn't even need to evoke the square as a forefront as a topic because it's constantly there we would not meet that person with this kind of openness or availability etc if she was not sitting in the very center where it's more it's calmer etc so we consider that the let's say the condition that a space establish in terms of if we use a common word like atmosphere a space has created a certain kind of mood if you want which could be negative, positive any kind in the wide range of words that exist and meeting that person there and we'll definitely talk about what he feels how he is receiving and transformed by the space where he stands so we thought that indirectly we very much talk about the place and how it shapes the quality of our relationships I'm just going to ask one last question then open it up to people here because you helped us understand quite a lot tonight that your thinking around your work is about experience the experience of the city, the experience of architecture and you have theorists of experience so my question is like what does it mean to experience behind the camera because that would not be the same experience as somebody in the space you come in with a camera and so you have a certain kind of clearly media-tized experience and so how do you think of your own experience behind the camera and what that means and I guess I might even push that a little further the spaces that you gain access to you gain access via the camera or with the camera so the first question is do you gain access because of the camera does the camera give you access to spaces that you wouldn't have otherwise and so suddenly the camera is helping us not only see but it's also helping us get into these spaces because so much of your work is around is helping us see into spaces that we wouldn't see otherwise and seeing things that we wouldn't see otherwise and so it's not experience as someone might have it on the street it's a very complexly orchestrated and organized experience that the camera makes possible and mediate simultaneously so I'm sure you think about that all the time but maybe both of us understand a little bit of how you do that maybe I will then he holds the camera so he should answer but maybe just to give a right answer like this rather than giving access to space I think it allows us to give access to mental space rather than physical space because it's not that we are not a TV crew and we don't have the big producer calling saying okay my TV crew is coming please open the doors doesn't work like this and we don't have this kind of magic keys so it's more how the camera can also be an element of transformation in the relationship you have with someone this is the magic key yeah maybe yeah I agree the camera is just a tool for us it's not very important we make films but we can have another tool it's the same because the aim is not to make a film the aim is to be ourselves first even if we are able to share this experience for the others and civilize to the experience of space in the sense that we are not educated for this I think that's why we show this little experiment we made with our daughter because we think that we need an education from when we are really very young child kids we need an education on what is a relation to a space and this is a good example because we really try with her and we understood that we we know what is we listen to music we know what is what in a painting we know we know the power of the music to change your behavior or your state of mind but we don't know that the space has an incredible power and even for the students in architecture I think because we teach also architecture I think they don't know that they have an incredible tool in the hand that is creating a space that the space can create and change the behavior of the people and also the emotion you can create the emotion stronger than music can do and for us it's normal when you are a little bit sad or you put the music that you like and immediately your change your behavior your emotion and but we can do it with the space but we need to be educated to this because we even for the music for example we need to be educated to to understand what is the power of I don't know the contemporary music that is very old noise music like this if you don't know anything about the noise music you say ah it's the noise shall I cut it but if you know every kind of music you need to you need an education why we don't have an education to architecture for example because we we live as I said we are architecture because we all our life in architecture so we don't need to talk about architecture because everyone is not something only for the architecture it's for everyone because everyone knows what is architecture because you were born in architecture you will die in architecture so you will spend all your life in architecture so you know how it is but we don't know how to recognize a good space or a bad space we know that I'm not so good here but I don't know I'm not educated so I think coming back to the camera the camera is just a tool it could be a mirror or a microphone it's not important it's just to try our self to be much more sensitive to the space and also talking with the others to be aware that you are in this moment here and now you are in the space and you are completely is completely influenced by the space that you are there by the space and also by what you share with the other bodies otherwise when we finish now we go out to this space it doesn't exist because there's no here now so we make films here now because we are interested in what is happening in that moment so when you ask about our thing we don't need to talk we don't need to ask what is the architecture now because we are in that moment in that moment so what is everything is happening it's happening thanks to this architecture and so yes because we like films but we can also now make books I want to see the books I also I have to disagree just for this reason that only very talented filmmakers would disavow how important the camera is and what they do with it because as you said it's like a kind of focusing mechanism that allows you to understand what's happening in that relationship it's a kind of chronicler like I said earlier it makes visual records not just and the visual is so important all of the ways in which you translate characters into visual how sound is picked up in relationship with the visual and this is not to disagree with you but just to see that those mediatic translations also seem to be really important elements of what you're doing when you're composing these films those fragments that you rearrange a hundred times are not found fragments are fragments that you guys have produced by looking at something so it's that relationship in looking and the record that comes from it and what you do with it that I think is part of the complex territory that you understand and that we learn from to come back to the pedagogical angle that you're imposing that we learn from when we look at your films any questions from people here yes there's a microphone coming hi first of all thank you beautiful presentation and your movies are really beautiful really touching the way you give relevance to humanity fundamental probably makes me think of team 10 the Smith sons the same shift they made you are making it in the way you narrate movies so my question is how do you choose the architectures you represent do you ever receive request from architects people like to have our building shown in a more human way thank you for the question let's say that we very rarely collaborate with architects it's very very rare initially we started with let's say the topic of research which was this idea of this wish list of unrepresented topics in architecture and so we initially intentionally chose a series of buildings very well known of these very iconic buildings of Pritzker prize winner architects because we needed to work with buildings that already existed in your imaginary because we needed to have before and after this comparison between let's say what is the basis of representation and what actually what field we could open in order to put in question in a critical way so we needed to start working on these gigantic let's say icons of a certain periods and then slowly we we followed much more emotional choices which were based on encounters essentially even by total chance we made a film for instance on a man we wanted to show an extract tonight but it was too much in Tokyo this is a man who builds his own house the film is entitled Buto House because the man his name is Mr. Oka Keisuke Oka and he was a former dancer of Buto dance which is based on improvisation avant-garde dance in Japan and this man we met totally by chance we were making photographs of of the kowaita embassy which is just in the same street and we came across this very strange building and we saw the door was open etc and we entered and the film was made like this actually so we we just had the camera and this man said we couldn't exchange he was not speaking English we couldn't say two words in Japanese so we ended up making a film with it with almost no dialogue but at the end of the day his wife arrived she spoke a bit of English so we could exchange a few words afterwards but so this example explains that the film can be made by total chance because we were amazed by someone or for instance the very last film we shot in September and still working on it is a film that we it actually results from an art commission for an exhibition on Herzog and de Berron it will happen this next summer and this film was shot in the rehab center in Basel they made 20 years ago but we made this film because the topic is of great interest for us of the question of disability and how someone facing major crisis physical crisis in his life not only physical but also psychological is regaining or trying to regain autonomy in his relation to space and mobility so this film was made on purpose because we were on that moment very much into question of sensorality and physical relation to space so this proposal was completely in the panorama of our topics of research at the moment so that's why sometimes we agree for collaborations because they connect and make echoes with what we're trying to look for I just wanted to say something because yes we made a lot of film by accident we like this but there's something interesting in this film that is called Bouto House which was mentioning about it's very interesting in the School of Architecture because this man is building his house alone that's okay but in concrete so it's very complicated but he's a Bouto dancer and so we spend the day with him and just watching him without talking say any words because he doesn't talk speak any words in English so we were very silent in the whole day but at the end we were lucky that his wife went to the house and so she could speak a little bit of English so we started speaking with him and he was incredibly gentle say let's have a dinner together so we went at the end of the day it's very interesting for student architecture so we went to the dinner we could finally talk with him and so at the moment we talk with him and say we ask him if we could explain us the project of the house so we were expecting that he take a pen and explain my project is this but at that moment he say okay wait and he went on the restaurant in a place and he started to dance and this is in the film and at the end of the film he danced for three or four minutes but it's a beautiful dance butto house it's a totally improvised dance the butto dance the butto is a traditional dance Japanese dance but you improvised completely so he improvised a dance wonderful dance and at the end he say this is my house and that I think it's something wonderful for student architecture because in architecture we during the five years I don't know how long you stay here there's architecture students here you just learn about rules rules how to do things but you lose all your spontaneity so I dream about our students no maybe not here I study architecture and during my five years of architecture I just learn about the rules and the things that you have to know what you don't what you cannot do and so this is beautiful I thought it's a beautiful exercise for student architecture to make a building like a dance and this is something we do in our workshop because we give a lot of workshops in some university schools of architecture and the last one was we asked the students to make a project a film in that way but related to the experience they have with space and creating like a recipe and a building starting from a recipe starting from dance so something that is really related from your sensation or your feelings what you feel I don't know why I'm talking about this but I think it's beautiful to say this in the school of architecture someone that is building his house like a dance what the dean thinks about this hi thank you guys so much for me personally I think your work has been really important in allowing me to decompress the seriousness of architecture and really find a bit of human agency in all of our spaces that we inhabit and I think for me a moment that really embodies this idea that maybe architecture is anything but a set of material medias that kind of allow interaction between ourselves and between us in the environment is this moment in Tokyo ride where you insist that the car windows stay open so that the windows don't fog up and in a way it's really interesting the car becomes a home where he's protecting you from your own breath and he's protecting you from the material conditions that we are in through this engagement with nature and that moment has stuck with me personally and I think going back to what you ended with talking about school maybe how video can change the way that we see architecture and understand our own agency how do you see the future of video in that first half of architecture before occupancy kind of changing the way that people are empowered to design and I guess what roles that video can have in becoming more active in our design process thank you for the comment and for the question but as you probably understood we have a very intense commitment in the present time so talking about this period of imagining a future is not so much our cup of tea but my cup of tea I'm an expert of future exactly I think we don't have any magical recipe there are many ways of using video we yeah we talk a little bit about this in the lecture I'm absolutely sure that the architecture that a student will make in the future of also thinking about the architecture he can make even the city the world that we are creating in the future is related on what we know what we have in mind on the references that we have in mind we talked about this and for us it is extremely important because we started with this because I studied architecture but when I was studying architecture in Venice and during my study I always had in mind this incredible separation between what was architecture in the school of architecture and what I found outside the school of architecture and I never found a relationship between them so I studied architecture I had many references in my mind but I went out and say where are they what is this city why I'm living in this kind of city if the architecture I'm studying about is not there so I think what we are doing we're trying to do from the beginning is try to create a balance because it's impossible but try to give a different references not only to the students of architecture but we are very interested in student architecture because I think we can do a lot with the student architecture and with an architect because you still have the time to dream about something different and when you will finish your school you will not have time to dream you are just to work and create your own architecture you will have a lot of things in mind but during study architecture we can bring some different example to try to put a little virus in this beautiful that all the media creates about architecture if you see everywhere we see everywhere this kind of beautiful buildings empty buildings everything is beautiful the light is beautiful it's a completely fake world so can you imagine living in that world the world that is representing what the media represent about architecture is creating a total fake world no one is living in that place no one is living when you go out even here you see completely another world so why you student of architecture you have in mind this world that doesn't exist and you are the expert of creating the world of tomorrow of the future you are the expert of the future the fake world that doesn't exist this is completely absurd I don't say that we need to see the reality but we need to see something else and something else for us from the beginning was more humanity you have to you will create spaces for human beings to improve their life and what you have in mind is the references of about something design some an object with a beautiful light no everything is perfect there is no perfection outside so open your eyes maybe we always say we try to create a little bridge bridge behind two worlds that are not related so maybe we can do a lot with this we can do we can show that people like in Omurbanus outside are struggling with the city it's not so beautiful like you think that's why maybe just to answer the initial question we at the AA in London we've been running this unit that we entitled laboratory for sensitive observers and this was the idea not to make them make films about their building their projects etc but to bring them through and to start through filming through exercises of observation in very close and connected way to our project Omurbanus to develop a little more maybe awareness and human sensitivity so the idea was really to let's say it was a pre-work not using in a straightforward way the video to document the project but maybe to use the video and the process of filmmaking of observation of taking time of meeting person of the difficulty also it implies to become a little bit more sensitive to to how people from other totally other worlds than yours confront with the issues of of any kind of issues in the city so we had students one student for instance made an extraordinary project with a homeless in London he spent months living with him almost on a daily basis to understand how he made use of the city to create a sort of new form of to invent a survival system using many places in the city could use for free etc. so it opened the world for the student there's a very beautiful moment in the film that the student made with the homeless is the homeless himself that is walking in London and at the moment he just stops in front of a big rendering by a new building that they are building this beautiful rendering of where everybody is so very happy very wealthy and this homeless says at the camera the guy, the student he says where are the homeless what is this world about this is not the real world there's no homeless in this rendering have you seen homeless in the rendering? never because this is the world without homeless so what you have in mind is creating a world without homeless but when you see he spent five months with the homeless he says that's the problem that might be a good moment for us to end the day just to do that I think all of your comments about what you're observing in the city and in architecture as a kind of provocation to think design and to think what we do and to think our future is incredibly legible in your work and just to tie two projects together in the Bordeaux film the hilarious encounter with where the rain is leaching into the building and dripping and they're discovering that it's coming through some kind of ventilation duct to the incredibly potent images you showed us toward the end of cities being inundated clearly there's an idea of vulnerability not just of architecture being improperly detailed in what that means but also of our environments being improperly managed and so I think there is an incredibly rich spatial, political environmental agenda within those forms of documentation and observation that your work represents so brilliantly so thank you again for the talk and for talking to us Thank you


Let's go! I'm in the groove! This is my third take! Hello everybody, my name is Nerdiversal. Welcome back to another video. Um, it is with great remorse and great sadness that I announce that I'm back.  For today's video, I'm actually going to be talking about cryptids and monsters from Urban Legends and from stories around here. So the first one we have is the Fresno Nightcrawlers and they're basically just like walking pants. I'll play the clip for you right here. So like I said, they look like pants. They're actually pretty short creatures. They're theorized to be 4'9". They've actually been cited in Fresno and Yosemite National Park. But the crazy thing about this is that they say that it resembles the Caramel Area monster.  So what I'm thinking is that the Caramel Area monster and the Fresno cryptid, but if it's the same monster, then that means that the Fresno cryptid actually looks like the Caramel Area monster and not like pants. And the only reason that we don't, the only reason that we think that it looks like pants is because of the bad footage that we got. Because if you look at the footage, it's not very good. You know, surveillance footage is just like, you know, it does the bare minimum. So what we could actually be seeing is that creature with the legs and the head, but it's just not detailed enough to see that. And that's what spooks me because when I was younger and I used to hear about the Fresno Nightcrawlers, it's like, okay, well, these aren't that spooky because they look like pants. But they could actually be terrifying silent hill creatures. And we just don't know it. And God, do I never want to know that. It's actually theorized that it's an alien rather than a monster because I mean, look at it. It looks like an alien. Like I've never seen a creature on here that looks like that, like at least bigfoot, you know, kind of a million.  And that's why I think that it could possibly be an alien. And that's why I think a lot of other people think it could possibly be an alien. So the next one I have for you guys is Hajishakusama. Hopefully I pronounced that right. I'm very sorry if I didn't. Basically what she is is she's an eight foot tall woman in white.   It's said that she has a deep masculine voice and that she repeats the phrase pull, pull, pull over and over and over again. Let me actually play you guys a sound clip from that. So that's what she sounds like. I could never mimic that, but honestly that clip by itself is a lot creepier just because it doesn't really sound like a noise a person would typically make. Another part of the legend is that if you hear her you might die kind of like fancy, fancy.  Basically she was just another urban legend of all these creatures that like to steal kids. You know, Mexican culture has La Llorona. She steals and she steals and kills kids, but I think this one does too. So all right, the next one I have for you guys is Indrid Cold, otherwise known as the Smiling Man. And if that name doesn't terrify you already, I don't know what else to say, but basically he's kind of a humanoid. You know, he's got that kind of, well okay, from the descriptions is definitely a lot more than an uncanny valley.  He's actually really tall too. He's six foot tall with a green suit. He's actually theorized to be part of the Men in Black. The only thing that kind of detracts him from the Men in Black is the fact that he has a green suit and not a black suit. The Men in Black, I don't know if you've seen all the other conspiracy theories, but basically the Men in Black are supposed to be almost alien-like. They don't look like humans, they just wear black suits and they go conduct their official business, which is crazy because the thing with Men in Black is always supposed to be that they're against these conspiracies and against aliens and stuff like that, but what a lot of the theories say is that they are aliens or they're not human, which is insane. He also has small black BDIs that are set really far apart, so all of this combined with the giant smile just creates nightmare fuel. All right, so the first sighting was in actually, I got my little notes right here. He was first sighted in October of 1966 in New Jersey, where a couple was chased by this thing. They were chased by him until eventually they lost him, which honestly is good. You don't want to be abducted by an alien that has a giant smile. The second sighting was a guy he was driving along a road and he saw a crashed vehicle, except this crashed vehicle from the way he describes it doesn't look like a vehicle at all. He describes it as looking like, I believe it was an old-fashioned fire lamp, which basically just kind of looks like a vase and I don't know if you've ever seen cars before, but they don't look like vases.  But that's where he gets the name Indrid Kold as opposed to just the smiling man, which is what he looks like. And also the third sighting was this family, they were actually having kind of like supernatural happenings to them and what they thought is they thought it was impulture guys. But one day this girl, she's sleeping and she's part of the family of course. She's sleeping and then she sees it looming above her.  It's worth noting that these were all generally in the same area. The first one was in New Jersey and the last two were in West Virginia. I don't know what the time period was between the second and the third sighting but between the first two it was only about a month. So the second one I have is Lydia's Ghost. This one's actually kind of a little bit sad. This girl, it's not really known whether she was in high school or whether she was in college. She was coming home from a school dance and on her way home from the school dance she got in a really horrific car accident and she died and a couple years later is when people started to see sightings of her so they would see this girl and she's walking along the bridge and as you do in the 1920s you pick her up you take her home. Different times you never know so they would take her home and according to the story she would they would actually get to her house and they would knock on the door and they'd be like hey is Lydia there and she basically had to explain to them. Here's Lydia. She died three or however many years ago and you just brought her home, the ghost. But I think that's the really terrifying part about this is that she's kind of stuck wherever she was at. They say that the main place to sight her is what they call Lydia's Bridge which is basically where her car accident happened and so my thinking is that she's stuck at that same bridge and she just wants to go home. Like she's just coming home from a night of dancing and just wanted to get home after a great night and she had to go and die and now she's stuck on this bridge they named after her death for who knows how long.  If you know anything about this and all this is completely wrong let me know that too. But anyways I hope you guys enjoyed this video. I love making Halloween content. It is what drives me and if you guys have any suggestions on stories you'd like to hear things you'd like to see or art related content anything in general it doesn't have to just be Halloween go ahead and leave it down in the comment section below. And if you like videos like this go ahead and hit subscribe wherever that is I don't know I don't pay attention to video layouts as much as I should but yeah go ahead and subscribe go ahead and send me a like. Anyway thank you guys for watching. Hope you guys liked this video. Love you guys. Bye!


Hey you guys, my name is Brittany and welcome back to my YouTube channel. You guys in today's video, I'm going to be showing you all the things that I get up to while I'm prepping for our upcoming home school year. So first and foremost, I just want to show you guys where I'm starting off with. I am starting off with trying to organize my two daughters' carts. I have a preschooler and a fourth grader this upcoming home school year. And I'm so excited to get things prepared for them. This is just how my office right now is looking with all of our home school supplies. I really have to get things in order, but first I need to make a quick library trip so I can go ahead and drop off all of my books so I won't get any late fees. So I'm just dropping off our library books. I really been happy that our local library has been open for me again and I'm so excited to check out books. Every time you guys, I do go to a library, they always have some type of arts and craft. Therefore, the parents to pick up and my daughters have been enjoying doing the crafts. The librarian's been putting together. I just want to show you guys like a quick library haul of the books I picked up that I've reserved for us. I'm so excited to be able to just try out new books and different titles and things I see. I love just reading them and seeing if I want them in our own home library. So you guys, I'm actually starting off organizing my three year olds cart Leia.  She's a busy body, but she loves when I play with her with all of these interactive preschool games that I picked up just from various places. I did make a video on my channel showing you guys all of my preschool resources that I do have to play with with Leia and right now I found these really cute ziplock I guess mesh bags that you're able to store things more flat. So I'm just taking out these puzzle pieces that I got from all these. They were only $4.99 you guys and I'm just using these ziplock bags to organize them so I can put it on her cart. Now in order for me to remember what puzzle pieces is in each one, I went ahead and I just cut out a portion of the label and I slid it in the front part of this little ziplock bag that I found. You guys, I'm going to try my best to link as many things as I can down below because I know it's so useful to be able to go back and click those links just to see the different items that a lot of people show and I know I'm very appreciative when people have links in the bottom of their description box. So yeah, I'm really excited for Leia to start off our school year and for me to be more intentional doing activities and games and things like that with her. Leia, my three-year-old, she does have a speech delay. However, I do not want that to stop her from learning and having fun and doing other things just because she's not speaking at the level that most three-year-olds are speaking. I feel like I shouldn't stop doing things like showing her numbers and counting and ABCs. We are in speech therapy. Her speech therapy will start back up in August. However, I just want to make sure that we can still have fun and I still want her to be incorporated in some other learning other than just her speech and language development. So if any of you guys are new here to my channel, again, my name is Brittany.  I have a nine, three and a one-year-old and you guys, I am actually going into my second year of homeschooling. So I am very excited. I'm hopeful. I'm nervous and yeah, I just have so many mixed emotions. You guys just interned into my second year of homeschooling. I think what it is is that I know the things that I did wrong and I'm going to try my best not to do the things that I did wrong last year. But I really need to focus on everything that went well. So yeah, if any of you guys are in my shoes with this upcoming homeschool year, you guys, we got it. We can make it. Yeah. So right now, you guys, I'm actually working on my oldest daughter, Brielle, who is going into the fourth grade. I'm working on her homeschool card. So Brielle was in a third grade last year. And you guys, she did an awesome job last year. She really pushed through and she really made her mama bear proud. And this year, I really want to just focus on, I guess, just our bond together as a family unit. I really want to focus on things that Brielle loves and enjoys. And I really want to take this opportunity that I have to homeschool her and just to make memorable and enjoyable moments with Brielle.  However, you guys, like I don't really see myself turning back, especially at this point. And yeah, so I really I'm really just looking forward to our upcoming year and I just really hope that it will just be awesome. OK, now that I'm finished rambling to you guys, I'm just going to tell you what's going on. I went ahead and I organized all of Brielle's markers and her color pencils and things like that in this little basket. I actually just took out the supplies that we use regularly, which is her color pencils and crayons, and I put them inside of a pencil box and I put the rest of our art supplies that we use less frequently. More so when we're doing like our particular art in this little art basket. I wanted to do something different this year, you guys. I wanted to put Brielle's regular things she's going to be using in a latch made bin just because I know Brielle wants a sense of independence. She does have like a desk in an area that she works in upstairs. We work on our dining room table. We work on our couch. Sometimes she comes into this room right here, which is my office floor and she works on my office floor. So I really just wanted her to have something where she could just keep all of her school supplies and things in and just, you know, it'd be portable for us to go in the various places around our house. Now, I know I do have this big office, you guys, that I could make into a homeschool room. However, I tried it twice. I actually was going to make a video, you guys, showing me setting up my office into a homeschool room, but it just really didn't work out for me and for my family and for our dynamic. And, yeah, so I do have this extra room upstairs that it could potentially turn into a homeschool room. It could turn into a playroom or it can turn into another kid's room just because I have my two youngest daughters who are my one and three year old Sharon in a room and of course, Brielle has her own. OK, you guys, I wanted to show you a package that just recently came in the mail from September and Co. These are their character matters flashcards where you're going to be going over one characteristic and it has a Bible verse with it and it has some positive affirmations. You're going to be saying with your kids and I seen this originally from Ashley from Grace and Grit. And you guys, I just had to get them for my daughter and for my family. I think this is going to be a great addition to our morning and to our Bible time. So here I am showing Brielle her latchmate and she is very excited to see all of her things in her latchmate. She's asking me right now, like, where's all of her items at? And I think she is really going to enjoy this latchmate system that I put together for her. And I'm so excited that she is getting excited about school just as I am. As you guys are watching this video, we have about three more days into our official start of our second year of homeschooling. And I cannot be any more excited. Like I said before, I am nervous, but more so, I'm excited for our journey to continue. OK, you guys, it's another day and I had to go back to Michael's to get another latchmate for my youngest daughter, Leia. She doesn't have much curriculum, but I do have a lot of wipe and clean erasers. My mom actually found these at Burlington and bought them for Leia. And you guys, she loves these wipe, clean handwriting and just different activities with the dry erase markers. So I do have her learning folder that I did show you guys from my preschool resources video. I'm just going to flip and show you guys a few more pages of just her learning folder that we do go through. And also to you guys, something new and a new addition that I have added into Leia's homeschool is purely preschool. So I'm really excited for her to do her purely preschool, just because, again, it is a literature based preschool. And I love just all the hands on activities that it does include. I have Leia's crayons going in here. And you guys, I went to the store and I found Leia her own first pencils that I'm going to be putting at the top along with her safety scissors and her latchmate. So I'm so excited for my baby girl to have her own bin. And I think she's really going to enjoy having one like her big sister and really feel a part of our homeschool. OK, you guys, the last thing that I'm doing in today's video is putting together my first science unit that we're going to be doing our school year, which is the mammals science unit from the good and the beautiful. As I'm putting this unit together, I'm actually following along with Ashley from Grace and Grit putting together her first science unit from the good and the beautiful as well. You guys, I really have been enjoying doing these good and the beautiful science units just because it's just everything there for me. I don't have to think about it. It's open and go. And I really feel like I can take away add to these science units and my daughters, they love them. Even Leia, who is my three year old, you guys, she definitely has been coming in and listening and wanted to be a part of the activities, especially when we did our botany unit from the good and the beautiful.  We will be doing it. And I just want to have everything ready for our first semester.  So here you guys is a look of how the unit looks on the inside. I just used a three ring finder to separate all of my or to house my unit. And I used the sheet protectors to put the little stories and whatever activities that I need to cut out within each lesson. So I'm going to give you guys a quick like little flip through of the mammals unit study and just show you how it's laid out in the lessons and things like that. Now, one thing about the good and the beautiful that I do love and I do enjoy is that this unit study is for grades K through eight. They do have an extension for the seventh and the eighth graders. So what I do is I just put the extension all the way in the back of the three ring binder just because, honestly, you guys, my plan is really to reuse this curriculum, especially as my younger girls get older and they want to do the mammals or the different units that we did over again. Yeah, so I really want to just keep my sciences and things in good condition because I really can see myself using at least the mammals and the botany and the marine biology. The ones that we've done so far was excellent and I can see me doing them again. OK, you guys, I just want to give you an overview of how both of my daughter's carts are looking. I showed you guys this part at the top of Brielle's that has like all of her art supplies, especially like all of her pastels and things she's going to be using with her good and beautiful language arts. Here goes Leia's car at the top. I have all of her little curriculum. I have her numbers puzzles. I have a little bin that we do sensory things in and I have all of the ziploc bags that I put together in today's video with all of her puzzles and her games and everything that we need to do our taught schooling, free schooling. And I love how organized it is. And it's easy for us to just grab all the things we like and everything can stay contained. It has its own home. Now, at the bottom of her cart, I do have her counting bears and I have another little ziploc bag that has all of her printables that I laminated from taught schooling that net that we can play different interactive games with all of her counting bears and things like that. Now on Brielle's second shelf right here, I do have the books from the good and the beautiful that goes with her language arts that couldn't fit. I have her place value chart with our math. And at the bottom is my baby section. I do have my teacher's guides for our amazing Africa. We're going to be doing our fixed grammar and our dimensions math. So, you guys, I am so excited. I feel prepared. I feel ready to start this next homeschooling year. And you guys, I am ready to go. I'm excited and I'm pumped for now. Now, I want to give you guys a little sneak peek into what's going to happen in our next video. If you guys do notice on my side of my office, I no longer have the other bookshelf that house all of my books because I made my downstairs area into a homeschool space and I cannot wait to share it with you guys in my next video. So you guys, thank you so much for watching today's video. I really hope you enjoyed it. Please don't forget to comment, like and subscribe. And I want to thank everybody for joining me here on my journey on YouTube. I will see everybody in my next one. Bye.