Salamone, Pampa (Photographie und jenseits – Teil 34)

Conceived in tandem with his essayistic SLAUGHTERHOUSES OF MODERNITY, also premiered at this year’s Viennale, the prolific Heinz Emigholz travelled to Argentina to document 25 buildings by the local architect Francisco Salamone (1897–1959) for his ongoing series “Architecture as Autobiography” and “Photography and beyond”. In the 1930s, Salamone was given carte blanche by the government to design slaughterhouses, schools, town halls, squares and cemetery gates in a dozen of small cities scattered throughout the vast Buenos Aires province.
Controversial at the time, although now declared national historical monuments, Salamone’s idiosyncratic and eerie buildings stood out for their art deco ambitions amongst the desolated and underdeveloped landscape of rural Argentina. Ankle deep in the pampa húmeda, the immense flat and humid grassland that covers most of the central region of the country, Emigholz follows the evolution of Salamone to create a tour de force of monumentality and decay. An architectural road movie of sorts, SALAMONE, PAMPA traces not only the remains of a cult architect but, more importantly, the extinguished idea of a country. (Pablo Marín)

In the presence of Heinz Emigholz.

Heinz Emigholz: SCHENEC-TADY I (1973, K), NORMALSATZ (1982), DER ZYNISCHE KÖRPER (1991), GOFF IN DER WÜSTE (2003), D’ANNUNZIOS HÖHLE (2005), SCHINDLERS HÄUSER (2007), LOOS ORNAMENTAL (2008), SENSE OF ARCHITECTURE (2009), ZWEI PROJEKTE VON FRIEDRICH KIESLER (2009), EINE SERIE VON GEDANKEN (2011), PARABETON – PIER LUIGI NERVI UND RÖMISCHER BETON (2012), PERRET IN FRANKREICH UND ALGERIEN (2012), AIRSTRIP – AUFBRUCH DER MODERNE, TEIL III (2014), 2+2=22: THE ALPHABET (2017), DIE LETZTE STADT (2020), THE LOBBY (2020), SCHLACHTHÄUSER DER MODERNE (2022), MAMANI IN EL ALTO (2022)