MICHAEL HIRSCHBICHLER

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var­i­ous media and dimen­sions, 2012 — ongoing

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The cycle “The­atrum Orbis Ter­rarum” is designed as a long-term project. Its title alludes to the first mod­ern atlas pub­lished by Abra­ham Ortelius. Clas­si­cal media of archi­tec­tur­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion – plans, per­spec­tives and mod­els – are used to explore planned and built spaces from dif­fer­ent geo­graph­i­cal regions and his­tor­i­cal peri­ods. This is done in a process that is at once ana­lyt­i­cal-crit­i­cal and spec­u­la­tive. Spa­tial sit­u­a­tions – and the social, polit­i­cal, and cul­tur­al con­texts in which they are embed­ded – are exam­ined and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly manip­u­lat­ed and alien­at­ed through oper­a­tions of scal­ing, rep­e­ti­tion, mir­ror­ing, and exag­ger­a­tion. Par­tic­u­lar atten­tion is paid to the moment when func­tion­al plan­ning and utopias turn into their oppo­site – when effi­cien­cy efforts and grand scales lead to inhu­man sit­u­a­tions – and when seem­ing­ly neu­tral struc­tures reveal their ide­o­log­i­cal foun­da­tions. Palaces, mon­u­ments, cathe­drals, pris­ons, camps, fortress­es, bunkers, slaugh­ter­hous­es, shop­ping malls, hous­ing com­plex­es, infra­struc­tur­al build­ings etc. are thus con­densed into an archi­tec­tur­al phan­tas­mago­ria that is sit­u­at­ed between fic­tion and reality.

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