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KATERINA RÜEDI RAY
Katerina Rüedi Ray is director of the School of Art at Bowling Green State University in Ohio and former director of the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Together with Igor Marjanovic she is a principal of Ready Made Studio, an interdisciplinary art and design practice. Rüedi Ray studied architecture at the Architectural Association in London and the Bartlett School at University College in London, and has taught at the Architectural Association, the Bartlett School, and Kingston University in the United Kingdom. She has won various European design awards and acted as a visiting professor, critic, and lecturer at numerous European and North American architecture and art schools. Her research focuses on design education, interdisciplinary practices, and identity politics. Her publications include Desiring Practices: Architecture, Gender and the Interdisciplinary; Desiring Practices: Artists and Architects; The Dissertation; and The Portfolio. Forthcoming books include Chicago Is History and The Practical Experience Year.
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Chicago, City of Arrivals
This installation explores the common experiences of children and immigrants, including enchantmentthe experience of the city as a liberating worldand alienation, the experience of the city as a debasing, oppressive world. The installation attempts to document urban enchantment and alienation in environments that represent a daytime streetscape in front of Chicago’s Immigration and Naturalization Service Building and a child’s playroom at night.
Architect’s statement (excerpt)
The future of Chicago belongs to its children and its immigrants. . . Our space brings together the rich culture of Chicago immigrants and children in an effort to document both urban enchantment and alienation through images, texts, and objects of estrangement. The space of estrangement for the immigrant is designed as an urban exterior: a daytime streetscape in front of Chicago’s Immigration and Naturalization Service Building. Here, a towering image of an immigrant child makes the visitors themselves shrink to a child’s scale as they move through the space like immigrants waiting in line. In contrast, the space of estrangement for the child is projected as an urban interior: a nighttime playroom. In this space, the visitors become children for the second time as they discover and play with drawings, models, and stories created in collaboration with Chicago’s immigrants and children.
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