FJORD & Tiger Strikes Asteroid: “A City(ies) That Walked” — The Form Review
In 2013, Philadelphia's independent art scene brought together FJORD Gallery and Tiger Strikes Asteroid for A City(ies) That Walked, The Archigram Space Program, an exhibition curated by Rubens Ghenov and Cooper Holoweski.
Rather than approaching the exhibition through a conventional Philadelphia contemporary art review, The St.Claire presented the exhibition through its experimental Form Review format. The approach placed the responses of an exhibition representative alongside an independent response from a St.Claire editor.
The result is more than a record of an exhibition. It is a snapshot of how Philadelphia's independent art community was thinking about architecture, cities, technology, artistic lineage, and the relationship between contemporary art and the ideas that came before it.
Originally published October 6, 2013. This archival edition preserves the original review while providing additional context for contemporary readers.
The Form Review: A Different Way to Review Art
The Form Review was created by The St.Claire as a simple experiment in art journalism. Instead of treating an exhibition review as a one-directional judgment, the format invited artists, curators, or other responsible parties connected to an exhibition to respond to a series of questions.
A representative of The St.Claire then visited the exhibition and independently answered the same questions. Both sets of responses were published together, allowing readers to compare the intentions surrounding an exhibition with the experience of encountering it.
For A City(ies) That Walked, the five questions were:
- What is hidden in this exhibition? What is in plain sight?
- Who would be this exhibition's parents? What might its children look like?
- Describe one moment in this exhibition.
- This exhibition answers the following question:
- You should message this exhibition if…
The unusual structure allowed the review to move between criticism, conversation, interpretation, and personal response. It also reflected The St.Claire's broader interest in Philadelphia contemporary art criticism and experimental forms of art writing.
A City(ies) That Walked and the Archigram Legacy
A City(ies) That Walked, The Archigram Space Program took inspiration from Archigram, the influential British architectural collective known for speculative, futuristic, and often deliberately unrealized approaches to architecture and urban space.
In his response to The Form Review, curator Rubens Ghenov identifies Peter Cook, David Greene, Warren Chalk, Dennis Crompton, Ron Herron, Michael Webb, and Theo Crosby as the exhibition's "parents."
This idea of artistic parentage became central to the exhibition. Rather than simply reproducing the ideas of an earlier architectural movement, the exhibition considered what those ideas might produce in the work of a younger generation of artists.
The Artists and the “Children” of Archigram
Ghenov described the artists in the exhibition as descendants, students, or possible "children" of the ideas represented by Archigram. The exhibition included:
- Ricky Allman
- Elizabeth Blau
- Jacob Feige
- Cooper Holoweski
- Greg Kalliche
- Todd Keyser
- Justin Michelll
- Letha Wilson
- Kevin Zucker
- Artist as Tourist Collective
- Sarah Oppenheimer, noted in the exhibition response
The resulting relationship between generations was less about literal influence than about artistic inheritance: how an idea travels through time, changes shape, and reappears in a different cultural and technological environment.
Stephanie Bursese's Reading of the Exhibition
Stephanie Bursese, editor of The St.Claire, approached the exhibition from a different position than the curator. Her response begins with what is immediately visible: paint, lines, colored landscapes, fragments of landscapes, prints, and sculptures.
But the physical objects were only part of her experience. Bursese describes an atmosphere of intimidation surrounding the exhibition, created by the density of its references and the sense that the work had been carefully selected around a larger intellectual idea.
Her response connects the exhibition to the history of Archigram, noting the group's fascination with theoretical architectural designs and their willingness to embrace ideas that could be beautifully irrational.
In this reading, the exhibition becomes a meeting point between architecture, contemporary art, technology, landscape, and a persistent feeling of dislocation from everyday reality.
A Moment in the Exhibition: Cooper Holoweski's Video
One of the strongest moments described by Bursese occurs in Cooper Holoweski's video.
Standing in the small dark video space at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Bursese describes watching pieces of paper, computer imagery, and animation gradually form a human foot.
The foot develops into a leg and then a thigh, seemingly assembled by invisible hands. The process resembles a growing collection of material: something that builds itself piece by piece.
For Bursese, the moment expands beyond the individual artwork. Bodies, buildings, people, and cities can all be understood as accumulations of smaller materials and experiences. The seemingly simple act of watching an animated body form becomes a meditation on how things are constructed.
This movement between the microscopic and the architectural is one reason the exhibition's relationship to Archigram feels particularly relevant. Both the body and the city become systems assembled from individual parts.
FJORD and Tiger Strikes Asteroid: Philadelphia's Independent Art Scene
The exhibition was presented across two independent Philadelphia art spaces: Tiger Strikes Asteroid and FJORD Gallery.
The two locations provide an important part of the historical context surrounding the exhibition. Rather than existing within a large institutional museum environment, the project was situated within Philadelphia's network of independently operated contemporary art spaces.
For readers researching the history of independent contemporary art in Philadelphia, exhibitions such as this one provide a useful record of how artists, curators, and small galleries were developing conversations around contemporary art outside larger institutions.
Tiger Strikes Asteroid
319A North 11th Street, Suite 2H
Philadelphia, PA
FJORD Gallery
2419 Frankford Ave.
Philadelphia, PA
Why This 2013 Exhibition Still Matters
Looking back at A City(ies) That Walked today, the exhibition is valuable not only as a record of a 2013 Philadelphia art exhibition, but also as a document of an independent art community thinking through questions that remain relevant.
How do artists inherit ideas from earlier generations? How does architecture influence contemporary artistic practice? What happens when speculative ideas about cities are translated into sculpture, video, painting, and installation?
These questions remain relevant to contemporary artists working across disciplines. They also demonstrate why independent art publications and archives are important: they preserve not only information about exhibitions, but the conversations and reactions surrounding them.
In that sense, this review is part of The St.Claire's larger Philadelphia art archive—a record of artists, exhibitions, galleries, and critical conversations that helped shape the city's independent contemporary art community.
The Original Form Review
The Form Review is a simple attempt to increase dialogue within art journalism and highlight the subjectivity of a traditional exhibition review. Artists, curators, and responsible parties of an exhibition are invited to respond to five short prompts. In turn, a representative of The St.Claire views the exhibition and independently responds to the same five prompts. Both sets of "form answers" are published in tandem.
Responses by Rubens Ghenov, Curator
1. What is hidden in this exhibition? What is in plain sight?
Hidden: A city(ies) that walked
Plain sight: The or (an) Archigram Space Program.
2. Who would be this exhibition's parents? What might its children look like?
Parents: Peter Cook, David Greene, Warren Chalk, Dennis Crompton, Ron Herron and Michael Webb. Plus big ups to Theo Crosby.
Children: This is an interesting point to pursue and perhaps most pivotal to the exhibit due to the show being minded on parent/children's relationships. The artists in the show represent some of the parents' children, pupils or illegitimate offspring.
These children are Ricky Allman, Elizabeth Blau, Jacob Feige, Cooper Holoweski, Greg Kalliche, Todd Keyser, Justin Michelll, Letha Wilson, Kevin Zucker and the Artist as Tourist Collective consisting of Ann Cleary, Brigid McCaffrey, Jane Parrott, Jess Perlitz and Jessica Segall. Not exhibited, Sarah Oppenheimer.
The Exhibition's Children may look like: Autechre's Amber with the pitch at -2 laced with The Zombies, Carlos Diegues' Bye Bye Brazil meets Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, minus actors, if Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives were filmed in a set consisting of a favela made a la Schwitters' Merzbau in Dubai furnished with Louis Kahn's secret line of Merzbau-inspired concrete furniture, Korakrit Arunanondchai's work sans denim and if Abraham Cruzvillegas, B. Wurtz and Agnes Martin had a design firm and were hired by Fassbinder in 2073 to make posters for World on a Wire.
3. Describe one moment in this exhibition.
A right to left swoop of a yellow orthogonal-like ray that travels across the brick wall to the adjacent white, carried by the guidance of a light blue partner named Michell(e) Z. Wilson.
4. This exhibition answers the following question:
Good morning class, give me one example of the Cézannic Chair Effect Theory?
5. You should message this exhibition if…
You happen to have any connection to the parents.
Responses by Stephanie Bursese, Editor of The St.Claire
1. What is hidden in this exhibition? What is in plain sight?
You can see a lot of paint. You can see a lot of lines. You can see these smoke-covered colored landscapes, parts of landscapes, remnants of landscapes — sliced off and stuck in the corner. Or cut into a neat little cone, cube, or cylinder.
Everything has been trimmed, neatly. You can't see, but feel, the thick cloud of intimidation. It hangs in between the prints and sculptures. It's with you when you travel between Tiger Strikes Asteroid and Fjord.
It stinks — like someone thought about this show for a long time. They combed and picked through work. They actually started with an idea.
It's been about 50 years since Archigram published their first issue of a magazine devoted to theoretical architectural designs. They were often beautifully irrational. Much like this exhibition, they were intimidating in their palpable genius and reeking of a dislocation with reality.
2. Who would be this exhibition's parents? What might its children look like?
Rebar and Kraftwerk. Kate Steciw could be part of an estranged child custody battle.
3. Describe one moment in this exhibition.
I was standing, facing the little dark video cove in the archway behind the desk at Tiger Strikes Asteroid. I was watching Cooper Holoweski's video.
There's a part where pieces of paper, computer, and animation start to form a human foot and it builds itself with invisible hands. It looks like a ball of colored tape or a bird's nest, wrapping around itself and collecting material along the way. First a foot and then a leg and then a thigh.
It was one of those macro-micro moments where you can see how everything is built, shockingly. All of the pieces of people and buildings and life are all the same things, built slowly, thing by thing.
4. This exhibition answers the following question:
Given the rapid turn around time of Philadelphia's small, independently run gallery circle, can a curated group exhibition operate as both a tightly woven aesthetic experience and contain a solid, smart, layered conceptual foundation that actually resonates?
5. You should message this exhibition if…
You want to get cut.
Exhibition Information
“A City(ies) That Walked, The Archigram Space Program”
Curated by Rubens Ghenov and Cooper Holoweski
On view:
September 6 – September 29, 2013
Tiger Strikes Asteroid
319A North 11th Street, Suite 2H
Philadelphia, PA
FJORD Gallery
2419 Frankford Ave.
Philadelphia, PA