Welcome to our site redesign.  I hope you enjoy looking at our galleries of projects.  Feel free to send your feedback to info@incorporatedny.com!

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In the Matzo Box series of the 90’s, I was busy exploring a hyper-assimilated Jewish subjective viewpoint and the leveling effect of identity registered through consumerism. The sticker “I am out therefore I am” made the year before in the context of aids activism turned the post-modern practice of appropriation, on Barbara Krueger the appropriation-ist herself. In both efforts I sought to “advertise” the act of identification in an aggressive and mono-dimensional manner by pilfering art world strategies that were actively engaging commercial advertising strategies. Here the power of naming or categorizing as defined by Foucault is seized from institutional authority. 

The dead end and the collateral divisiveness of this kind of, singular identity, identity politics has long since been critiqued. Barack Obama’s now historic race speech turns on the phrase: “I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas.”  This statement, in the midst of such an important speech, responds to a shift in the popular dialogue on race in America toward a new hybridity or “post-racial” world. 

The heterotopia described here is similar to that described by Foucault and “is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible.” In Foucault’s heterotopia, each site remains intact and in juxtaposition, defying monolithic culture in that juxtaposition. However, Barak’s multiple identities differ from Foucault’s heterotopia in that Barak is presented as a unifying and unified whole. Barak cannot be named black, nor can he be categorized as white, and thus deflates the authority of the categories.    

In our next exhibit for the Jewish Museum the common aesthetic in the work will be “the hybrid, seamless blending of conflicting or contrasting elements into a new positive unity” similar to a Barakian future, a future in which identity is re-purposed to describe a spectrum of experiences in lieu of a reductive singularity.  

The museum is historically, by definition, a perfect heterotopia in that it allows the juxtaposition in a single real place a multiplicity of objects “that are foreign to one another”.  The museum in this way reinforces the separateness and the power of each archive-able category even in the act of juxtaposing them. Fresh Direct will defy the institutionally suppressive act of categorization by passing over traditional distinctions and drawing out the connections between, verses the differences in, art, design, secular, religious, traditional and popular cultures.

Filed under: Art, Design by Adam Rolston
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Class Trip!

Agenda: leave office at sinfully early time of 3:45 and head to Central Park for luxuriating in our inefficiency taking in art and architecture at Chanel Mobile Art Pavillion.

Our impressions after the jump. (more…)

Filed under: Architecture, Art, Design by Ryan
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Kouki has graciously provided us with new photos from the 21Water Condominium site!

More photos after the jump (more…)

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INCORPORATED UNVEILS DESIGN FOR UPCOMING JEWISH MUSEUM SHOW

Architecture and Performance Fuse to Contextualize Story of Jewish Theater in Soviet Union

New York, New York, October 7, 2008 - Incorporated Architecture and Design today announced their exhibition design for The Jewish Museum’s upcoming show, “Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theater, 1919-1949.” Organized by senior curator Susan Tumarkin Goodman, the exhibition examines how Marc Chagall and other artists joined colleagues in the theater community to create daring stage productions following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.  This collaboration gave rise to extraordinary productions with highly original stage designs that redefined the concept of theater itself.  Over 200 works of art and ephemera, never before exhibited, will be on view.  Incorporated’s gallery design uses theatrical lighting, folded forms that recall the movement of stage curtains and the Cubist influence evident in the exhibition works to establish a synergy between the objects and their display within the gallery spaces.

“The challenge to contextualize Chagall’s magnificent murals presented a unique opportunity to transform a white box gallery into a specifically theatrical space – one that fuses art, architecture, and performance.  The design drew upon my own background as an artist and Susan Goodman’s groundbreaking curatorial tour de force that brings to light a rich and un-mined era of Jewish aesthetic production.” – Adam Rolston, Incorporated Architecture & Design

Incorporated’s design molds interior space to create an art of experience that mimics the unfolding progression of a theatrical display.  The show opens with a darkened room intended to suggest the theatrical “black box.”  As a viewer moves through the gallery, the spaces become progressively lighter, theatrically climaxing in the exhibition’s highlight, Marc Chagall’s murals for the original GOSET Theatre in Moscow.  From this focal point, rooms begin to darken, providing a denouement for the exhibition and its retelling of history.

“Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theater, 1919-1949” opens November 9th and will be on view until March 29, 2009 at The Jewish Museum, located at 1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street in New York.  Incorporated is currently working on an exhibition design for the Museum’s upcoming show of contemporary ritual art which will open in September, 2009.

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Incorporated (the company) is similar to incorporated (the word) in that its constituent parts can be shifted in order to express something new, different, and unexpected.

Did you know that when you shift the letters of ‘incorporated’ around, you can find the ennui-inducing ‘corporate din,’ Simpsons-enthusing ‘cartoon pride,’ T-rex pinup ‘predator icon,’ deliciously molecular ‘a cider proton,’ and historical sounding, ‘acre pond riot.’

It’s fun when you try to make a sentence out of all those words and phrases!  Such as, “Having found myself to be just a cider proton in the corporate din, I decided to take my cartoon pride and join our predator icon in the Acre Pond Riot of 1924.”  Fun!

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There’s a new INCULT moderator in town and his name is Ryan.

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MoMA in New York City has a new exhibit opening this Sunday entitled Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling and it promises to be a really interesting show.  In fact, the New York Times has an early review of the show, Instant Houses, Then and Now and don’t forget to check out their slide show, Prefabricated Houses, at the Modern.

As Nicolai Ouroussoff explains in his review, the history of prefabricated housing is a roller coaster of good intentions and unfulfilled promises, from fantisies to pragmatics, each solution still caries a wiff of a utopian ideal.  Yet today, Architect’s fascination with prefabrication, both in housing and elsewhere is only growing stronger, even if the public’s enthusiasm remains relatively flat.  Regardless of how you feel about the matter, certainly there is something to be learned from this exhibits broad overview of modern prefabrication.

For more information about the exhibit check out MoMA’s website.

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