Очередной конкурс из серии «Дом для...» от ICARCH ставит перед участниками задачу поразмышлять о том, каким мог бы быть дом недавно умершего выдающегося канадского поэта Леонарда Коэна. Конкурсантам предстоит переосмыслить его творчество и представить свои идеи на тему архитектурного воплощения образа поэта. Никаких ограничений нет – можно дать волю воображению.
пресс-релиз:
What did the sixties mean, for the consciousness of the 20th century…?
It was a time when a powerful need for renewal was felt. When the students rebelled. When people read Jack Kerouac's “On The Road”. When war and Capitalism were questioned. When people read Sartre and Camus and Roland Barthes. When feminism broke free in its second wave of existence. When music began its experiments that even today seem very courageous and fresh.
Why…?
Because there was a social consciousness that today, often, is missing.
Just a few days ago the United States chose, as its future president, a man who found “glory” building and managing casinos and “beauty contests” for what became “Miss whatever…”
We don’t know how Mr. Donald Trump will be as a future President, but we only hope his presidency will not be as shallow as Trump Tower in New York and his equally shallow, although glittering incessantly, casinos.
Yes, Leonard Cohen was ill… and he died one day before Donald Trump won the election… but this coincidence somehow makes us reflect…
Roger Waters protested vehemently against Donald Trump.
Leonard Cohen, a more discreet artist, “chose to die" just one day before the improbable election… of course, our hypothesis could be very wrong, and almost surely it is. Leonard Cohen died of “natural causes.”
But what exactly are these mysterious “natural causes…?!?” Let us not forget: when he was younger, Leonard Cohen wrote “Flowers for Hitler.” What an intriguing title…!! And when he left his graduate studies at Columbia University, he explained himself by saying that his graduate school experience was “passion without flesh, love without climax.” Indeed, aren’t there so very many schools, universities and so on exactly this…? Passion without flesh, love without climax.
This, in the best of cases… when words like passion and love can still be used.
This “unusual” musician / singer wrote the famous song “Suzanne,” for which he was “duped into giving up the rights for the song, but was glad it happened, as it would be wrong to write a song that was so well-loved and to get rich for it also.”
This very fact, that he realized that “it would be wrong to write a song that was so well-loved and to get rich for it also” would be enough to receive our respect and attention.
How many of us, today, would think in these terms…?
In 1996, Cohen was ordained as a Rinzai Zen Buddhist monk and took the Dharma name Jikan, meaning "silence".
Yes, here it was / is a musician who chose his name SILENCE.
So we invite you to pay your tribute to this quintessential figure of the 20th century culture (and we can add the years that passed of the 21st century as well) with A HOUSE FOR JIKAN. A HOUSE FOR LEONARD COHEN. A HOUSE for an artist “second to Bob Dylan,” as he was described, as if the word “second” means anything in arts, or culture, or…
If for Louis Kahn ORDER IS, then, paraphrasing, we could say: LEONARD COHEN IS. We intentionally didn’t use the word “was.”
We accept ANY work, ANY size, ANY format. Please send your work to works@icarch.us by February 1st, 2017. Please be kind and register before this date to receive a registration number with which to anonymously identify your work. We will publish all the works received on our website and we will also organize a travelling exhibition.
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