RAEL SAN FRATELLO ARCHITECTS

Teddy Cruz (left) and Ronald Rael (right) with moderator Michael Moore (center)

Parallel to the border, 800 miles of border wall has been constructed, and many more miles are planed—bisecting private and public lands, cities, farms, wildlife preserves and a university. The construction and maintenance costs of this security infrastructure are estimated to exceed $49 billion over the next twenty five years. A 60 linear-mile cross section, tangential to the border wall, between the two border cities of San Diego and Tijuana comprises the most dramatic issues currently challenging our normative notions of architecture and urbanism. We can find along this section’s trajectory a series of collisions, critical junctures, or conflicts between natural and artificial ecologies, top down development and bottom-up organization. Architects Teddy Cruz and Ronald Rael presented and discussed research that engages the metropolitan and territorial sites of conflict that encompass the border at the first Biennial of the Americas, July 6, 2010.

Hyperculture will be on display as part of the Consume exhibit at Exit Art in New York City. Consume, a project of SEA (Social Environmental Aesthetics), investigates the world’s systems of food production, distribution, consumption and waste. Consume will be exhibited concurrently with ECOAESTHETIC: The Tragedy of Beauty.

With fuel prices fluctuating and climate change causing monumental shifts in weather patterns, we have been forced to rethink our methods of food production and distribution. Natural disasters have wiped out entire crop cycles (the rice supply in Burma and the wheat harvest in Australia) and experts are saying that a global food shortage is imminent. The prices for wheat, corn, rice and other grains have steadily increased since 2005, causing food riots and hoarding from Morocco to Yemen to Hong Kong. The New York Times recently reported an estimate that Americans waste 27% of the food available for consumption. What are some possible solutions to these mammoth problems?

As more people change their habits, and as the government ratifies new regulations, we can make significant progress in the fight for food. The American public has shown awareness that the industrial-food system is deeply flawed. Expanded recycling and composting programs – as well as the growing local, organic and free-range movements – are indicative of a profound shift in the way we think about food. Consume will also include a series of public talks, screenings and workshops that confront and take up diverse food-related issues. Consume is curated by Papo Colo, Jeanette Ingberman, Lauren Rosati and Herb Tam.