鈥↖mpostor Cities exhibition to represent Canada at the 2020 Venice Biennale in Architecture鈥ㄢ��
Impostor Cities explores how Canadian cities double as other places on screen. 鈥═he exhibition will represent Canada at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia 鈥╥n 2020.
The project is led by Montreal architecture and design practice T B A and David Theodore,聽Canada Research Chair in Architecture, Health, and Computation, at the Peter Guo Hua Fu School of Architecture of 黑料不打烊 鈥║niversity, who aim to present new ways to recognize, organize, and experience the built environment. 鈥↖mpostor Cities celebrates the notion that Canada鈥檚 architecture is infamous.
Citizens of the world know 鈥╝bout Canada鈥檚 architecture not only because they visit our cities and enjoy our buildings, but because 鈥╰hey watch film and television. But unlike Paris, New York, London, or Rio de Janeiro, our cities are rarely 鈥╰he settings for popular shows. Instead, 鈥╢ilmmakers and television producers turn Canadian locations into 鈥╥mpostors. 鈥║sing green-screen technology, video supercuts, and immersive sound, the exhibition raises questions about 鈥–anada鈥檚 architectural transformations in contemporary culture. Why are Canada鈥檚 buildings so good at 鈥╠oubling as elsewhere in 鈥╢ilms?
How is Winnipeg able to stand in for Chicago (Richard Gere in Shall We 鈥―ance?), San Francisco (Ben Kingsley in You Kill Me), or a small slice of mythic Americana (Brad Pitt in The 鈥ˋssassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)? 鈥═he exhibition puts visitors in movie-mode, inducing new perceptions of architecture through 鈥╢ilm. In his book America (1988), French sociologist Jean Baudrillard describes the North American city as 鈥渁 screen of signs 鈥╝nd formulas.鈥� He writes that the North American city 鈥渟eems to have stepped out of the movies. To grasp 鈥╥ts secrets, you should not, then, begin with the city and move towards the screen; you should begin with 鈥╰he screen and move towards the city.鈥�
In response, Impostor Cities imagines architecture in new modes of 鈥╟onsumption and appreciation. 鈥‥ven cinematic experience has to be thought anew. In an era of Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon Prime, the 鈥╭ualitative difference between 鈥╢ilm and television has been blurred: 16:9 format smartphone displays mean 鈥╰hat 鈥渃inematic鈥� no longer denotes a 鈥╢ixed relationship between the screen and the viewer鈥檚 body. Instead, 鈥╠igital audio-visual experience has moved out into the city beyond the multiplex and the living room. 鈥↖mpostor Cities introduces a playful yet pointed counter-proposition to the construction of national identity 鈥╰hrough cinematic storytelling by organs such as the National Film Board and CBC/Radio-Canada. It 鈥╝lso leans on ongoing re-evaluations of cultural production.
Theorists today use the ideas of Canadian 鈥╬hilosopher Marshall McLuhan and others to mix 鈥╢ilm with digital media studies, shifting our understanding 鈥╫f how 鈥╢ictional worlds rely on real cities. Impostor Cities expands and highlights uncanny moments of 鈥╮ecognition: a new recognition of the Canada Pavilion and the shock of recognition of familiar cityscapes 鈥╝nd buildings in a 鈥╢ilm. The impostor city is troublesome rather than specific, interesting rather than 鈥╟omfortable, diverse rather than uniform.
