idier Fiuza Faustino is a French architect suffering the effects of success. Nice problem to have, you might think. He’s in his mid-30’s and his work is all over the place, both literally (works up or in progress in several European countries) and figuratively (everything from video to sculpture). His Bureau Des Mesarchitectures in Paris is the center of operations for this plumber/punk turned architect. Open the door to his “firm” in the quiet courtyard off rue Montorgueil and prepare yourself for the strains of Marilyn Manson over the hum of architectural activity. Didier, skull rings on his fingers, will welcome you with the bemused look of someone who suddenly finds himself on the way to the top of the heap.
So what could possibly be wrong? Well, no one seems to know which heap he is going to the top of, the architecture heap or the art heap. It’s an old game to blur the line between art and architecture, Kiesler and Moholy-Magy did it; but there’s one thing you can bet on with Faustino: like them, he isn’t going to trade his artistic freedom for 15 minutes of fame and a couple of euros. Maybe it’s his name: Little Faust. His white angel is freedom of expression, his black angel is public money to build. Everybody knows architecture, like film, can require compromise simply because of the sums involved. But when such ideas (see www.mesarchitecture.com) as the Stairway to Heaven, One Square Meter House, Body in Transit, Casa Nostra, and Love Me Tender are being engendered, why not let the shit fly and see what sticks to the walls? As Motorhead says, “I wanna feel a little danger, feel a little stranger, Angel City tonight!”.
Richard Dailey
Didier Fiuza Faustino
Stairway to heaven
Published January 2004
There is no rest for the weary; we’re lost, we drop blindly hour by hour, we who suffer, tossed like water from cheek to cheek, for long years thrown into uncertainty”: such might assuredly be the enchanting Schicksalslied of Anna Jermolaewa’s take on the urban scene in her last book Ass peeping from onestar press. The contemporary reader here finds him/herself confronted with a multitude of rearends that make faces, in the literal sense of Catherine M. (for whom the anatomical center is the ontological center with which communication is immediate and unmediated). This invitation to investigate deeply also pushes us to move forward, to openly follow, without any hope of ever being able to see the other side of the dream decor. So let us dream, but let us also move on. He who follows is surely the foundation of he who leads.
