Argos Center for Art & Media

Dear Adviser, Argos Center for Art & Media, Blackbox, Brussel (B) 5-16 may 2009

Can Chandigarh, the paragon of the modernist city, escape from its faith as a living museum? Can this city survive the preservation of the universal modernist fable? In the only city designed by Le Corbusier, the political complex of the Capitol is much more than scenery. The Capitol itself is the "camera". The buildings that represent the different powers keep a constant eye on each other. They channel the visitor’s movements and constantly observe him from above. The Capitol as phantasm of political power, is here nothing more than a place where the black deathsuit of modernism haunts. In this unfinished city, a few shadowy characters –a spectral silhouette, voices, sounds- rewrite a fable loved by the architect about the Raven that Wants to Imitate the Eagle. Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, also known as Le Corbusier, is invited to confront his double personality. He is less alone then he used to be while he was alive. Now he is called upon by his haunted images and by the contradictions of modernism. "Dear Adviser" is  a poetic “address” to the architect and the in Chandigarh superstitiously as “adviser” disguised legislator.