Bêka and Lemoine intend to make a video-diary of one month in the life of London’s Barbican, from the top floors of the towers to the underground levels of the art center. An intimate map of this masterpiece of brutalist architecture.
Every day, two men play the piano at the Barbican Centre library. And in all the four years they have been doing this, they’ve only talked to each other once –according to them they don’t need to know more about one another. On the other end, high atop one of the towers, a married couple tells us that when they got there they were fascinated with the view, except for a giant, horrible tower: another module of the Barbican, just like the one they inhabit. The Barbican Centre is a huge area of encounters, failed encounters, and deformed reflections. It’s a human highway of contradictions; like that feeling of belonging to an alienating place its inhabitants have. And since we’re talking about science and fiction, it’s also a marvelous chip filled with glitches in the matrix: like that corner where whirlpools constantly form, or that particular nook that is impossible to photograph because of the way sunlight hits it. DA
D, G, E, DA: Ila Bêka, Louise Lemoine F: Ila Bêka S: Louise Lemoine M: Walter Fuji, Lo Studio P: Filippo Clericuzio PE: Marco Mona CP: Bêka&Partners
Bêka&Partners. Sara Gardella T +39 339 184 2284 E contact@bekapartners.com W living-architectures.com
He was born in Italy and studied architecture. In 2005, he founded, along with Louise Lemoine, the platform Bêka&Partners.
She was born in France and graduated in film and philosophy from the Sorbonne, in Paris.