September 2, 2017

PARTY HARDY—ALL HANDS ON DECK!

BAM’s party for “10 Years of Dumb” was a collaboration between dART Festival and BAM, hosted by one of Beijing’s most popular night clubs, Migas. BAM and dART Festival have a long history. Wong Miao is the founder of dART and co-founder of China’s first (no-longer-existing) electronic music record label, Acupuncture. During a dART debut event in 2015, Miao collaborated with BAM to create a projection stage and DJ booth for guest performer Aril Brikha. Collaborating again with BAM, Miao was able to capture a special guest DJ from Berlin, DJ Doubting Thomas, and use 3d mapping visuals by local VJ, NOIZOME. Needless to say, the party was a BLAST!

THE LANDSCAPE ROOM

The Landscape Room showcases a selection of BAM’s landscape and urban design projects. BAM does not follow one style or specific method of working. BAM’s process constantly changes and refines. Seen panoramically together, BAM’s landscape projects appear very active and random. A holistic evolutionary process becomes evident: projects side by side grow in size, complexity, completeness. Delving deeper into individual projects, narratives emerge through text, sketches, drawings, photos, video, physical models… Projects seem to contain an implausible universe of ideas and possibilities, of which the constructed result seems to represent only a fraction.

THE INSTALLATION ROOM

The Installation Room at BAM’s “10 Years of Dumb” retrospective exhibition is a cacophony of models, physical tests, videos, images, and drawings. The process by which BAM creates so called ‘art’ is highly iterative and non-linear. BAM’s Installation Room is a maze of objects and images, a cacophony of physical tests, videos, drawings, photography. Models of all shapes and sizes hang from shelves suspended from the ceiling; more models sit on AstroTurf floor displays. BAM has always had a hard time calling these works ‘art’ and prefers the term ‘installation’ for the work is more a realm for design exploration than the creation of art, although they are marketed as such.

THE LIBRARY ROOM—AND BAM’S FIRST BOOK!!

The Library at BAM’s “10-Years of Dumb” Retrospective contains printed matter. Featured prominently is Tabula Casa, a publication about underground collegiate design and art culture created by the founders of BAM while in architecture school at Cornell University. In addition to original prints of the incendiary Tabula Casa publications, BAM’s marketing booklets are displayed. These marketing materials show BAM’s evolution through the many different ways in which BAM has represented itself over the past ten years. At the center of the Library, a low table presents BAM’s academic endeavors: design studios and classes taught at universities, including a landscape architecture studio at University of Toronto. “Save Chaotianmen” focused on Chongqing’s environmentally-endangered, hyper-cultural site, and how to redesign the dense urban habitat from the point of view of a landscape architect. In the Library, BAM’s first book “Landscape Vision,” debuts to much fanfare—the design manual for a student audience interested in landscape ventures.

’30 YEARS OF DUMB’ LECTURE BY RENOWNED LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT, MARTHA SCHWARTZ

In keeping with the theme, ’10 Years of Dumb’, Martha described projects created in her office during her initial years. No lecture of Martha is complete without mention of the Bagel Garden, Martha’s rocket ship to early fame—a garden that shook the field of Landscape Architecture to its core.

Martha’s talk was reminiscent of her lecture at Cornell University’s Architecture Department in 2004, for which BAM installed a temporary environment that would become a first work—in conjunction with the Tabula Casa publication—by the original founding members of BAM.

Martha’s honest, borderline self-deprecating style, is not only fun but informative. Martha congratulated BAM for having made it to 10 years, then discussed a diagram mapping her life’s work, which she entitled, ’30 Years of Dumb’.