Notes on Portals: the magics and mechanics of civic teleportation

Speakers: Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg (Space Popular)

Faust Shop presents:

The desire to travel virtually across time, space and realms has been a recurring theme in the collective imagination – one that many have explored through fictional narratives. Lesmes and Hellberg will discuss historical examples, portal archetypes, and present their proposition for a public infrastructure for civic teleportation.

In this seminar, Space Popular founders Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg will discuss their recent research on ‘the portal’: a door or threshold that grants entrance into another environment, whether physical or virtual. The desire to travel virtually across time, space and realms has been a recurring theme in the collective imagination – one that many have explored through fictional narratives. Lesmes and Hellberg will discuss historical examples, portal archetypes, and present their proposition for a public infrastructure for civic teleportation.

Convenor: Dr Annja Neumann

The seminar will be followed by the mixed media installation FAUST SHOP: a mixed reality installation

Space Popular is a research driven architecture, design, and media studio that explores the future of spatial experience through virtual reality, film, exhibitions, and writing, as well as buildings and objects. The studio is directed by architects Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg, both alumni of the Architectural Association in London (2011). They founded the practice in Bangkok (2013) and have been based in London and Spain since 2016. The studio has completed buildings, exhibitions, public artworks, furniture collections, and interiors across Asia and Europe, as well as virtual architecture for the immersive internet (aka. the metaverse).

Clients, collaborators, and commissioners include national institutions such as MAXXI - National Museum of 21st Century Art, Rome, Italy; The Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design –ArkDes, Stockholm, Sweden; Royal Institute of British Architects, London, UK; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea; as well as independent galleries such as MAGAZIN, Vienna, Austria; and Sto Werkstatt, London, UK. Most recently Space Popular designed the digital scenography for Faust Shop: New Lands, a mixed reality performance in collaboration with the Re-staging Public Spaces project at Cambridge Digital Humanities.

Lesmes and Hellberg both have extensive academic experience having taught architectural design studio since 2011, first at INDA, Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok from 2021 to 2016, at the Architectural Association in London from 2016 to 2021, and currently at Daniels, Faculty of Architecture, University of Toronto since 2020, and UCLA Architecture and Urban Design since 2022. Their current MArch design and research studios both at University of Toronto and UCLA investigate visions for civic architecture in the immersive internet.

Related links:

Upcoming virtual reality film and installation by Space Popular: The Portal Galleries, for further information: https://www.soane.org/exhibitions/space-popular-portal-galleries

Space Popular: http://www.spacepopular.com

Re-staging Public Spaces: https://www.cdh.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/restaging-public-spaces/

Further events presented by FAUST SHOP and CDH:

FAUST SHOP: New Lands (Performance)

FAUST SHOP: a mixed reality installation

Tickets:

This event will be held in person. Please get in touch if you have access requirements.