Gordon Matta-Clark haunts contemporary discourse, inspiring generations of artists and architects--now more than ever. His surgical interventions into buildings relentlessly disturb assumptions about space and social life. Yet the mythology of architect-turned-artist Matta-Clark veils the full radicality of the work. The mystique of anarchitecture gets in its own way. The so-called “Anarchitecture” exhibition with a group of his closest colleagues in early 1973 looms ever larger in the discourse, yet there is no evidence that it ever happened and everyone involved disagrees on what was in it, how it was shown and why. The phantom of anarchitecture needs to be undone to get deeper into Matta-Clark’s building cuts and return the amazing word “anarchitecture” to the wild.
Mark Wigley is a Professor of Architecture and Dean Emeritus of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. He is a historian and theorist who explores the intersection of architecture, art, philosophy, culture, and technology. His books include: Derrida’s Haunt: The Architecture of Deconstruction; White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture; Constant's New Babylon: The Hyper-Architecture of Desire; and Buckminster Fuller Inc. - Architecture in the Age of Radio. He has curated exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, The Drawing Center, the Witte de With in Rotterdam, and the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal. In 2016 he co-curated the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial with Beatriz Colomina on the theme Are We Human? - The Design of the Species - 2 seconds, 2 days, 2 years, 200 Years, 200,000 years. His most recent book, written with Beatriz Colomina, is Are We Human? - Notes on an Archaeology of Design (Zurich: Lars Müller, 2016).
