Marjetica Potrc Decorations, Democracy, Necessity, Modernism and Defense Architecture http://www.potrc.org/home/projects/strategies/index.html http://www.ppotrc.org/obrist/

participants

Marjetica Potrc will present her latest research on the informal Caracas (Caracas case Project). The "Dry Toilet" is a hands-on Projetct which she realized together with architect Liyat Esakov, in the upper areas of the Barrios La Vega, this being a part of the city entirely without access to the public water supply. "Caracas Visual Vocabulary" shows how modernism turns into a dfensive architecture, both referring to a type of decorative visual language. "Invading, Making and Appropriating" deals with strategies focussing on rural landscapes, cities and urban areas. Marjetica Potrc points out, that the two most successful urban forms found in the contemporary city are the gated communities and the shanty towns, both of which prefer the private space to the public space.

Biography

Marjetica Potrc turned from her interest in urban planning when she realized that this point of view would sooner or later become too limiting. To her, a city is not a body that can be controlled, saved and operated, like a surgeon does. Ever since then, she has been examining examples where individuals take care of the city themselves. Individual initiatives can achieve practical results, and are not dependant on planning and control. The two most successful forms of the contemporary city, shantytowns and gated communities, are both individually initiated.

Recognizing these forms of self-organization is one of the aims of Marjetica Potrc's work. Her way of looking at things is mirrored in the photographs she takes on her frequent travels to cities all over the world. Marjetica Potrc tries to process what she sees in the simplest way possible. She looks at people's taste and at what they consider beautiful. This results in sometimes rather odd observations such as a house with an overhang supported by concrete pillars that had been painted to look like tree trunks, seen in Mexico, or a very different sort of tree, a camouflaged cell tower, made of plastic and resembling a pine tree, in upstate New York.
She prefers the idea that her work is not about social criticism or institutional critique, but rather showing what she sees in the cities today. In this way, not being judgmental or categorising, she leaves the judgmental look to the eye of the beholder.