Andrea Branzi Videos

If you were not there for Branzi's lecture you can catch up by watching the videos on his site.

The following are my favorites:
-No-Stop-City
-Concorso Internazionale di idee, bandito dalla New York Art Society, per la sistemazione del Waterfront Ovest di Manhattan a New York (2° premio)
-Agronica
-Vertical Home

I had not seen the videos before Branzi presented them last night. The music, editing and collage gave me new insights into his work. I now see clearly the connections to minimalist music, biological processes, and he even gave hints at these being set within real landscapes.

The hints of real landscapes bring up some questions I have always had for Branzi:

First, what is your site, your landscape. From No-Stop City to, my personal favorite, Agronica the site seems like an abstraction and a real place at the same time. In Agronica the video is edited with images of a real landscape organized in perfect rows. Where is that? Is that 'the site'? Does it matter?

Second, why has the 'language' developed in No-Stop City never been deployed in a mountanous site? The language looks like it wants to be universal, yet as deployed right now it would work in very few places in the world. Does it matter? Would it be a fruitful exercise?

Third, the projects with their extreme horizontality seem very American. More specifically, mid-western. Agronica remind me of the agro-industrial fields from Missouri to Iowa. Is that intentional?

Achizoom - No-Stop City, 1968