PLEIN AIR TALKS 3. Mark Wasiuta

Air as Archive

A lecture by Mark Wasiuta organized as part of the 2022 Plein Air Talk series.

2022 Plein Air Talks is organized in conjunction with the advanced studio series “Plein Air” taught by Nahyun Hwang, initiated in the fall of 2020. The series explores the complex material and socio-political performance of air, and the intersectional vulnerabilities and agencies of air as a critical spatial medium.

Mark Wasiuta is co-director of the Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture program at GSAPP. His research exhibition practice focuses on the agency and ontology of documents and archives for architecture through under-examined projects of the postwar period. Current projects include Detox USA—a study of cultures of contamination and purification in America—and Control Syntax—a series of collaborative exhibitions that map the historical and contemporary intersections of computers and cities.

Recent exhibitions include Media Habitat c. 1975 at the Sharjah Architecture Triennial and Control Syntax Songdo at MAXXI in Rome. His work has also been exhibited at the Graham Foundation, LAXART, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Storefront for Art and Architecture, the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Istanbul Design Biennial, the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, the Luma Foundation, and elsewhere. Upcoming exhibitions include New Human Communities: Doxiadis’ Informational Modernism and Frederick Kiesler: Vision Machines.

Wasiuta is coauthor and coeditor of Rifat Chadirj: Building Index, Dan Graham’s New Jersey, and author of numerous articles. His upcoming publications include The Archival Exhibition: A Decade of Research at the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery, and Information Fall-Out: Buckminster Fuller’s World Game. He is co-recipient of the 2020 M+ Museum/Design Trust Research Fellowship, as well as recipient of recent grants from the Onassis Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council, and the Graham Foundation. He is also Guest Curator of Architecture at the Jewish Museum in New York City.