Runscape: Map Office

 

From November 4th -19th, MAP OFFICE will be celebrated in the city with a monographic show at 10 Chancery Lane Gallery and by being H-KAGE foundation’s special guest to curate the first edition of CITY-O-RAMA *.

 

Rusnscape is a video (dvd of 22 minutes) and a series of 15 photographs that expose the unconscious zones of the city. 

 

RUNSCAPE is about mapping Hong Kong by filming a young runner racing through the streets in stark contrast to the crowds that are slowly moving counter-current. The topography of the street becomes exacerbated with a multiplication of stairs, walls and in-between terraces by this effect another Hong Kong is revealed without the constrain of a standardized grid-based society. 

 

As Art Critic Melissa Lam describes it:

 

‘In RUNSCAPE the runner dodges past pedestrians, runs diagonally through meticulously urban planned plazas, up flights of stairs and through the shopping malls of Hong Kong in order to appropriate the city on his own terms. 

 

The idea is that a single individual can remap the cartography of the city, to redefine the city on each individual’s terms, to make each city mapping unique to each individual.’

 

RUNSCAPE re-invents a genre by exploring different forms of mapping, data, space and time, dimensions, language and the body. But for Map Office forms and style always support a greater social agenda. The curators play with the concept of psycho-geography when they state:

 

‘Within the unlimited division of urban structures, this oblique translation generates an extremely open-ended and fluid approach where new territories can be explored as we engage the sensorial impact of the performer though the grid.’

 

 

15 photographs excerpted from the RUNSCAPE film will be displayed in variety of sizes across the gallery space. The result will enhance the thin line that lay between the performance and its documentation. This unconventional and creative approach proves once more how Map Office is constantly pushing the limits of our understanding of the art object and its relationship to its audience and space. 

 

The overall installation succeeds in engaging the viewer thanks to the wit, humor and integrity of its curators.

 

 

MAP OFFICE is a multidisciplinary platform devised by Laurent Gutierrez (born 1966, Casablanca, Morroco) and Valérie Portefaix (born 1969, Saint-Etienne, France). This duo of artists/architects has been based in Hong Kong since 1996, working on physical and imaginary territories using varied means of expression including drawing, photographs, video, installations, performance and literary and theoretical texts. Their entire project forms a critique of spatio-temporal anomalies and documents how human beings subvert and appropriate space. Humour, games and fiction are also part of their approach, in the form of small publications providing a further format for disseminating their work. 

 

Laurent Gutierrez is an Associate Professor at the School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University where he leads the Environment and Interior Design discipline and the Master of Strategic Design as well as Innovation Design Management (IDM/MBA). He is also the co-director of SD SPACE LAB.  He is currently doing a PhD on the “Processes of Modernization and Urbanization in China focusing on the Pearl River Delta region”.

 

Valérie Portefaix is the principal of MAP OFFICE. She received her Master of Architecture degree from School of Architecture Paris-Belleville and a PhD in Urbanism from University Pierre Mendes France. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

 

MAP OFFICE projects have participated in major international art and architecture events including; EVENTO 2009 - 1st Bordeaux Biennale (2009); 4th Tirana International Contemporary Art Biannual (2009); 2nd Canary Island Biennale (2009); 7th, 11th and 12th Venice Architecture Biennale (2000, 2008, 2010); Prospect.1 – New Orleans (2008); 7th Gwangju Biennale (2008); 10th Istanbul Biennale (2007); 52nd Venice Art Biennale (2007); 15th Sydney Biennale (2006); 1st Paris Triennial (2006); 2nd Guangzhou Triennial (2005); 1st Rotterdam Architecture Biennale (2003). 

 

Their publications includes: Unreal Estates of China (2007); The Parrot’s Tale (2007); My PRD Stories (2005), HK LAB 2(2005); HK LAB (2002); Mapping HK (2000); among many others publications on the « Made in China » phenomenon and other, related issues.

 

Their film “The City of Production” have been selected for the official competition at: 38th International Film Festival Rotterdam 2009, 33rd Cinema du Réel Paris 2009, 1st Migrating Forms New York 2009.