Rosa Barba and Philip Ursprung

Prof Rosa Barba (Art in Space and Time, D-ARCH) and Prof Philip Ursprung (History and Theory of Architecture, D-ARCH) talk in the context of the exhibition AAA Experiments about their work and research. This evening the pair consider the subject of 'Theory and practice, poetic and analytic investigations in art and architecture'.

The evening will be moderated by Daniel Baumann; the discussion shall take place in German.

These talks are public and free; they take place on Thursdays between the 10 October and 19 December 2024, starting each week at 7 pm.

Rosa Barba's artistic practice navigates between various dichotomies, exploring themes of permanence versus impermanence, reality versus fiction, and the interplay of language and time. Through films, sculptures, installations, publications and performances, she investigates how space is shaped by temporal and linguistic constructs, challenging linear narratives and traditional semiotics. Barba deconstructs cinematic elements to examine the intersections of physical materials like projectors and celluloid with abstract concepts like time, space, and sound. Her work often focuses on natural landscapes and human interventions, blurring the lines between historical record, personal narrative, and artistic representation. Her work is part of numerous international collections and her forthcoming and recent solo exhibitions include: Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon (2026), MoMA, New York, (2024, 2025), MAXXI, Rome, (2025), Boijmans Museum, Rotterdam (2024), Centre Pompidou, Paris (2023), Tate Modern, London (2023), PICA, Perth Australia (2023), Villa Medici, Rome (2022), Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2021-2022), and at Biennials such as the 53rd and 56th Venice Biennale, Sao Paolo (2016), Sydney (2014) and Performa (2013). She was awarded the Calder Prize in 2020, and the International Prize for Contemporary Art, of the Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco (2015).

Philip Ursprung is Professor of Art and Architectural History at ETH Zurich and Head of the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture. He has taught at UdK Berlin, Columbia University New York, the Barcelona Institute of Architecture, Cornell University and the University of Zurich, among others. He is the editor of Herzog & de Meuron: Natural History (2002) and author of various books on contemporary art and architecture, including The Art of the Present (2010) and The Value of the Surface (2017). His most recent publications are Joseph Beuys, Kunst, Kapital Revolution (2021) and the volume he co-edited Gordon Matta-Clark: An Archival Sourcebook (2022). In 2023, he represented Switzerland with Karin Sander at the 18th Venice Architecture Biennale with the exhibition Neighbours. He will be a guest at Kunsthalle Zürich in autumn 2024 with the semester‘Peace Out’ he is leading at the ETH Department of Architecture.