Ecotone

An installation / exhibition design platform for the Chicago Architecture Biennial 5: This Is A Rehearsal, curated by The Floating Museum

Ecotone hosted the content of diverse areas of the Chicago Architecture Biennial within the Cultural Center, treating the exhibition-making practice as a transition zone where ideas are tested, intertwined and connected to create a larger conversation. Distancing from the canonical understanding of exhibition design as a sole platform for display, Ecotone inserted itself into the architecture of the Cultural Center as its own artistic discourse in dialogue with the rest of the Biennial. The installation’s aesthetic speaks the language of in-progress and unfinished—a staged zone of transition: scaffolding, visible infrastructure, cables and raw construction materials—intervening the building to disrupt the (institutional) space and facilitating a constellation of ideas that merge in a spatiotemporal encounter where the visitor is an active participant.

Rehearsal can be understood as a space for possibility and potentiality that surges during moments where transformation is imminent. Departing from the concept of ecotones in nature as zones of transition where different ecosystems meet, this installation alludes to rehearsal as a moment of mediation and exchange within the process of production, where mechanisms of control, rules and structures are malleable and negotiable.

Photos by José De Sancristó