Rem Koolhaas’s Many Questions about the Countryside

Countryside, The Future
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
20.02.20 – 15.02.21

Translated by Bridget Noetzel

The fourth-floor ramp of the spiralling Guggenheim presents an organisation chart for the Chinese government under the heading ‘Statecraft’. It provides viewers with background information on China’s ‘new countryside’, and offers case studies for Dongfeng, Jiangsu province, a Taobao village that shifted to furniture manufacturing; Shouguang, Shandong province, known for its large-scale vegetable farming; and Liuzhuang, Henan province, a typical example of collective economic development.

As one caption explains, ‘While China’s political system is often presented in Western media as a monolithic stronghold, closer examination reveals a more complex interplay of various forms and levels of government at work.’¹ The diagram details the top-to-bottom structure of the government, from the urban residents committees under the neighbourhood committee offices at the bottom, to the Politburo Standing Committee and the three institutions it oversees – the State Council, the National People’s Congress, and the CCP Central Committee – at the top. The vertical hierarchy is clear, but the horizontal integration is relatively ineffective. This was just my intuitive perception of the diagram, and it may be why donations were poorly handled during the pandemic.

To a certain extent, Rem Koolhaas’s Countryside, The Future faces a similar predicament. The exhibition attempts a panoramic discussion of the countryside, divided into five sections: ‘Leisure and Escapism’, ‘Political Redesign’, ‘( Re- )Population’, ‘Nature/Preservation’ and ‘Cartesianism’. However, the concentrated information in the texts and images, presented on a massive scale, is cursory, rarely exploring the subjects in depth. The images, screens and texts tower over viewers, making them feel enveloped in discourses and abstract concepts. You feel as if a PowerPoint presentation has been projected into a physical space, or as if you have lost your way in this spectacular, collaged and fragmented information matrix.

According to the curators, the exhibition is a ‘pointillist portrait’, ‘a global sampling of the current condition of the “countryside”’.² Koolhaas has said that the countryside is ‘a glaringly inadequate term’³ for all of the non-urban areas that occupy 98 per cent of the Earth’s surface and are home to just over 50 per cent of the world’s population. This clearly highlights the narrow reality of urban life, but it is also an introduction to a grand proposal in which the designers ambitiously take you on a journey across fields, forests and oceans.

We learn that otium, the term that the ancient Romans used to describe pastoral life, could correspond to xiaoyao ( a state of free wandering ) in Chinese. We learn that one hundred years ago the German architect Herman Sörgel began planning the massive Atlantropa project: he envisioned lowering the level of the Mediterranean Sea by 100 metres, thereby linking the African and European continents. We learn that an octopus has three hearts, blue blood and eight tentacles covered in suckers, and that it could become a pet, like a puppy from the sea. We learn that the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center ( TRIC ) will host a 540,000-square-metre Tesla battery factory, the largest building on Earth by surface area. We learn that the Kenyan countryside is attempting to foster development models that neither continue the legacy of colonialism nor accept the excessive intervention of Chinese capital. We learn that hippies in the United States built commune-like farms in the 1960s and 1970s, and many still exist, including The Farm in Tennessee and Black Bear Ranch in California. We learn about gorillas interacting with tourists in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; about Stalin attempting to change the course of rivers in the Soviet Union; and about Qatar’s dairy industry arising almost overnight. We also learn about the thawing of permafrost in Siberia and robot manufacturing in Japan…

The countryside is immense, but the exhibition outlines only a few ambiguous features. Cases are distilled down to a few paragraphs of description, phenomena are compressed into a briefing of beautifully paired pictures and texts, and ideas are completely replaced by headlines and slogans. Therefore, viewers feel as if they are salvaging a shipwreck from the bottom of the ocean. Every tiny fragment retrieved seems enchanting at first glance, but it is only a remnant that cannot help us restore the whole.

In his working methods, Koolhaas, a journalist-turned-architect, embraces both an aloof neutrality and a picture-led mode of reflection. This also partially explains the style of the exhibition: the headings and exhibition texts are inspiring and attractive, and the illustrative additions and visual elements are eye-catching and direct. At the same time, the exhibition reveals the two facets most worth denouncing in any research-based creative endeavour.

First, through design, any complex subject can become a simple, clean visual. Koolhaas’s version of the countryside is bright and clean, like the tomato grow module he placed at the entrance to the Guggenheim. Pink light shines out of the white box through the glass and the natural growing conditions can be artificially optimised by remotely adjusting certain parameters, thereby transforming the module into an unmanned, antiseptic and efficient demonstration and a background against which passers-by can take selfies. The countryside, with its new circumstances that so urgently need to be explored, is still understood and digested according to the aesthetics and logic of the city.

The second is the flood of questions. The exhibition catalogue entitled Countryside, A Report ends with hundreds of questions: ‘Could there ever be a new anarchy?’ ‘Is the preservation of culture and of nature having similar effects on both?’ ‘How to think about Africa?’ ‘Did TED kill innovation?’ ‘Does nature now live in universities?’ ‘Does anyone still like cities?’ ‘Was Chernobyl a prototype?’⁴ Consistent with Koolhaas’s list of topics, case studies and phenomena in the exhibition, these questions cover the exhibition space and even permeate the show’s merchandise.

Many of these questions, born of curiosity and doubt, are valuable, but more and more exhibitions get bogged down in them, and more and more works of art frankly declare that they don’t offer solutions. Koolhaas’s questions show his insights and reflections, but he vaguely, entirely and strangely uses a series of questions to replace thinking about and answering just one of these questions.

The material is interesting, and the questions are valuable, but the exhibition is like a pile of tangled threads. In the course of five years of research, Koolhaas and AMO worked with several universities, including the Harvard Graduate School of Design in the United States, the Central Academy of Fine Arts in China, the Wageningen University in the Netherlands, and the University of Nairobi in Kenya. The name of every participant is listed in the acknowledgements. This massive exhibition team is divided by institution, with a clear vertical hierarchy, but there does not seem to have been much horizontal integration.

1. Countryside, The Future, press kit <guggenheim.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Countryside-The-Future_PressKit_021920.pdf>.
2. Michael Kimmelman, ‘Why Rem Koolhaas Brought a Tractor to the Guggenheim’, The New York Times, 27 February 2020 <nytimes.com/2020/02/20/arts/design/rem-koolhaas-guggenheim.html>.
3. Countryside, The Future, press kit.
4. Ibid.

库哈斯的乡村问题重重

乡村,未来,古根海姆博物馆,纽约
2020年2月20日-2020年8月14日

在古根海姆螺旋大厅的四层坡道上,一幅解释中国政府组织运作的图表以《治国之道》( State Craft )为题立于展墙,为观众理解中国新农村建设提供背景,与转型制造家具的江苏东风淘宝村、以大规模蔬菜产业闻名的山东寿光、集体经济发展典型的河南刘庄等个案并置在一起。

“尽管中国的政治体系常被西方媒体视为一股整体统一的强大势力( a monolithic stronghold ),但细看之下就会发现,它其实是各种形式和级别的政府之间一种更为复杂的相互作用”,图说这样写道。图表详细罗列了自上而下的机构单位,小到街道办事处下设的城市居民委员会,上至中央政治局常委会及其统管的三大板块:国务院、全国人大、中共中央委员会。
垂直结构层级明晰,但横向联动相对低效—这是图表带来的直观感受,也让人想到疫情期间捐助物资不到位等现象背后的成因。

从某种程度来说,库哈斯的《乡村,未来》所营造的正是一种类似的困境:

展览试图全景式地讨论乡村,在总体上划分出休闲与逃避主义、政治之再设计、(重塑)人口、自然/保护、笛卡尔主义等五部分,不过,密集的图文信息只是广泛涉猎而鲜少深入探究,并且展呈形式的尺幅巨大,图像、屏幕、文字说明都大于人的身高尺寸,使观看者被话语和抽象的概念所包围,犹如身处投影到物理空间的ppt讲演稿,甚至迷失于这片景观性、拼贴式、碎片化的信息矩阵中。

库哈斯本人将展览描述为一张“点彩画派的肖像”,一份事关“‘乡村’现状的全球样本合集”。“乡村”,如他所述,是一个“刺眼的、语焉不详的术语”,被用以指代占据了地球表面98%的所有非城市地区,它的广阔所对应的却是不足全球人口总数一半的居住率。这种悬殊凸显出城市生活的逼仄现实,但也像极了一份宏伟方案的开篇辞令,设计者要野心勃勃地带你遍历田地、山林、海洋。

展览让我们知道了古罗马人对田园生活的描述“otium”可以对应到中文的“逍遥”;知道了德国建筑师Herman Sörgel在一百年前提出的Atlantropa巨型工程,他幻想将地中海降低100米,从而连接非洲和欧洲大陆;知道了有三颗心脏、蓝色血液、八条触手布满吸盘的章鱼,也许能像小狗一样,成为人类海洋中的宠物;知道了内华达州的沙漠里的工业中心TRIC,将建成占地约54万平方米的特斯拉电池工厂,成为世界上占地面积最大的建筑;知道了肯尼亚的农村,如何试图寻找不受殖民遗风也不受中国投资过多干预的发展方式;知道了六七十年代美国嬉皮士兴建的类公社性质的农场,有许多仍然存在,包括田纳西的The Farm和加州的黑熊牧场。我们知道了大猩猩在刚果与游客的互动;斯大林曾试图改变苏维埃河流的走向;卡塔尔的乳制品产业几乎完成于一夜之间。还有西伯利亚的冻土融化、日本的机器人生产等等等等。

“乡村”是一具庞然大物,但展览只勾勒出它模棱两可的面貌。案例被精简到两三个段落的描述,现象被压缩成图文搭配美观的简报,思考则完全由标题和标语替代。于是,观看就像汪洋中的沉船打捞,收获的碎屑每一片在乍看之下都极其迷人,但仅仅是无法复原全景的残骸。

记者出身的建筑师库哈斯,在工作方法上兼顾了一种置身事外的中立和一种以图像为主导的思考。这也部分解释了展览的风格:大标题和导语振奋诱人,图示注解和视觉元素醒目直观。与此同时,展览暴露出以研究型项目为主体的创意生产最值得诟病的两个问题:一,经过设计,任何繁杂议题都变得简易、洁净的假象。库哈斯的“乡村”十分洁净,和他设立在古根海姆门口的西红柿种植棚室一样,粉红色灯光透过玻璃从白盒子里散出,远程调控的参数可以模拟最优化的自然种植条件,使之成为无人、无菌、高效的示范,也成为路人自拍的景点。亟待探索其崭新境况的“乡村”,仍旧是按照“城市”的逻辑与审美被理解和消化。

二,提问的泛滥。(与展览标题不同),以《乡村?一份报告》为书名的画册在篇末列出了几百个问题:“能否产生新的无政府主义?”“对文化和自然的保护是否对两者产生了相似的影响?”“如何思考非洲?”“TED演讲扼杀了创新吗?”“今天的自然是否生存于大学之中?”“还有人喜欢城市吗?”“切尔诺贝利是一种原型吗?”和库哈斯在展览中对议题、案例、现象的罗列一致,这些问题遍布展厅并且蔓延到衍生品上。

出于好奇或质疑的提问大多可贵,但越来越多的展览停滞于此,越来越多的艺术在阐释中坦言创作“不提供答案”,像是某种免责声明。库哈斯的提问虽可见其洞察与思考,但含糊、囫囵,诡谲地用一连串的提问代替思考去回答上一个问题。

素材迷人、提问可贵,但展览像一堆散乱的线头。库哈斯在五年的调研中,与AMO及数所大学合作,包括哈佛大学设计研究生院、中央美院、荷兰瓦赫宁根大学、肯尼亚内罗毕大学。每位参与者的名字都在致谢名单中。这个庞大的展览团队,按所在机构区分,垂直层级明晰,但也许没有太多的横向联动。