See Us Seesaw Together
2021-22 Fay Chandler Creativity Grant
Kinetic connection at a physical distance
About
Ana Miljački’s See Us Seesaw Together is a network of inflatable seesaws that allow for an embodied comprehension of another’s presence and cooperation, all at a six-foot distance. As one player sits, the others bob up and down as the structure responds to their movement.
The seesaws are an extension of Critical Broadcasting Lab’s Sharing Trainers, first developed for the 12th São Paulo architecture biennale. Sharing Trainers include a place setting (double and triple plates and cups, as well as very long forks, knives and spoons) and a set of seating devices that instigate and ensure bodily cooperation. The seesaws, the newest Sharing Trainer, require collaboration through distribution and negotiation of weight, holding players in a reciprocal game of feeling each other’s presence and enabling both a physical and a visual confirmation of togetherness.
Schedule
Past Events
Collective Seesaws Installation
Friday, April 1, 2022 / 5-7pm
Eastman Court, MIT Campus
Cambridge, MA 02139
Collaborators
Ana Miljački is a critic, curator, and Associate Professor of Architecture at MIT, where she teaches history, theory, and design and directs the MArch Program. Her research interests range from the role of architecture and architects in the Cold War era Eastern Europe, through the theories of postmodernism in late socialism to politics of contemporary architectural production.
Biography: MIT Architecture Department
Website: www.anamiljacki.com
Critical Broadcasting Lab is a space and a platform for the production of discursive interventions in architecture culture. Its key medium is the architectural exhibition, broadened to include experiments with the entire contemporary ecology of broadcasting media. Its aim is to critique the contemporary, expose its deep histories, and mount a form of a strategic preparation for the possibility of seeing and thinking a better and more just future for, and through, architecture.
Website: criticalbroadcast.net
Social: Instagram
Pneuhaus is an art and design studio that specializes in exuberant transformations of public space. Their immersive sculptures and environments guide visitors into the universe of their senses and the joys of shared experience. Inspired by physics, biology, and craft, the studio’s work incorporates the lessons of nature in both form and function.
Credits
See Us Seesaw Together is presented by the MIT Architecture Department, MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology and Critical Broadcasting Lab.