Amie Siegel

The Architects

Mar 31 – May 30, 2015

Storefront for Art/Architecture97 Kenmare St, Nolita

The stories of architects have historically been portrayed and understood through singular figures and monographic narratives. However, the human and logistical edifices behind each of these individual figures is oftentimes less singular and more homogenous than usually depicted. What is the portrait of the collective body of architects building globally today?

Storefront for Art and Architecture will host an exhibition featuring The Architects, a film by artist Amie Siegel originally commissioned by Storefront as part of OfficeUS, the United States Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Biennale of Architecture. The Architects examines and analyzes the drivers, protocols, and implications of architectural production in an era marked by globalizing forces. The film embodies the efforts made by OfficeUS towards the understanding of practice and accountability within architecture.

The Architects cuts transversally through the city of New York, producing a continuous image of the global architecture office today. Moving through several architecture studios—from Fifth Avenue to Downtown to Brooklyn—the film depicts the operational territories and landscapes of worldwide architectural production from New York. As a singular unfolding visual, the film deploys silent conversations among the architectures, locations, objects and characters that inhabit its frames, raising questions of scale, agency, and power.

Parallel tracking shots through the working offices chart their typologies of sameness and difference, revealing reappearing elements of the spaces of architectural production: long horizontal desks, screens, renderings, and models. The film frames a wide spectrum of practices, from large firms to smaller studios in a collective new whole. It positions itself from a vantage point that places the lens of the camera between the spaces of production and the world, which is always, and only, just outside the window.

This film was made possible by Storefront for Art and Architecture, with the generous support of Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown.

The artist’s films have been shown widely including at the Cannes Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Museum of Modern Art, New York and The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.. Siegel has been a fellow of the DAAD Berliner-Künstlerprogramm, the Guggenheim Foundation, a recipient of the 2010 ICA Boston's Foster Prize, a 2012 Sundance Institute award and 2014 Berlin Film Festival award.

Amie Siegel, The Architects, 2014, HD Video, color/sound

Producer: Andrew Fierberg

Co-Producer: Martina Klich

Production Manager: Tina Piccari

Cinematographer: Christine A. Maeir

1st Assistant Camera: Bayley Sweitzer

Digital I Tech: Henry Prince

Sound Recordist: Timothy Wong

Key Grip: Mark Solomon

Grip: Dan Stenzel and Wil Hamlin

PA: Nir Bitton and Matthew Town

Color Correct and Conform: Gabriele Turchi