Viral Institute of Performance Architecture

Abstract

The economic repression and moral crisis of the 1970s encouraged the experimentation in architecture with its concept, influenced widely by the art scene of the decade. Educational programmes in art and architecture schools were widely affected by the alternative spirit of the era, experimenting with the form of the classroom and the institution as well as the curriculum and the core subject of the discipline. The establishment and development of performance art throughout the decade introduced the genre into the architectural education, extending the practice into new pathways. This collaboration that started between architecture and performance art is revisited today under the new prism of performance architecture.

The Viral Institute of Performance Architecture (VIPA) was launched in June 2016 as an alternative body that promotes the experimental connection of architecture with the human body. Adopting the title of an institute the members of the group are suggesting the emergence of performance architecture as a critical and transformative movement in the architecture of the twenty-first century. The institute takes a viral form, as it is housed in the bodies of all its members, a transient and fluid international assembly of performance architects, including Alex Schweder, Kyveli Anastasiadi and Aliki Kylika.

Among its activities, VIPA participates in the architectural education, seeking to infiltrate performance practices and theories within the formal educational curriculum of architecture schools, by running workshops and small projects. In this attempt VIPA is inspired by the paradigms of many educators who experiment with the medium of performance in teaching architecture. Outside of schools, VIPA exercises an architectural education of the wider public, revitalizing the DIY cultures of the 1960s and 1970s in architecture. In collaboration with performance groups, communities and other practices VIPA explores the limits and mutations of the performance architecture genre by designing and building spaces through performance practices (participatory, improvisational, playful, performative).