It was on earth that once supported Gestapo headquarters, beside the Berlin Wall, that John Hejduk conceptualized the birth of a series of architectural figures titled Victims for a memorial park in 1984. These characters embodied narratives and operated within relationships that defined their roles, which became ever-changing as their population multiplied. Isolated, they were discrete objects but together acted as if in a theatre when distributed across that abandoned site of collective memory in Berlin. It would seem possible that there is an infinite realm of these monsters, constructed from the depths of Memory and the recesses of Hejduk's mind. It was one of these creatures that he named Security.
The interpretation of Security exhibited here was built without the assistance of any formal construction documents. It consists of a 3x3 lumber substructure that holds up the plywood cladding bolted into the frame. The structural frame consists of fasteners and a small set of lap joints which sustain the longest horizontal members that hold the cantilevered wall and head. At the top of the frame are a series of notched horizontal members with steel plates which allow for the light cannons to slide in to place and sustain one another. The plywood cladding is finished with an ebonizing process and a polish coated over it. The construction sits on 10 cast-iron wheels that rotate on roller bearings around steel axles. The axles are welded to steel plates which bolt into the bottom of the wooden legs.
Now Security rests here, within the space of the Cooper Union Foundation Building which became a materially, architecturally embodied lesson by Hejduk and that he referred to as a teaching device. What results is a dynamic interaction between one of his Berlin monsters within the City on the Hill (a caption he gave to certain sketches of the Foundation Building renovation project). This character, born from the subconscious, from memory and from abandon, sits re-erected here in the Cooper Union library, a typology based on knowledge brought into being. Seen from inside the double height space of the library or past the layered series of spaces from the street, through the colonnade and into the library, stands Security--possibly staring right back at you.
An Exhibition By: Amira J Walcott, Geovanna Septimio Landivar, Abraham Coriat, Leo Abelson, Abraham Marx, Belinda Lin.
January 27, 2025 -- February 14, 2025
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