EXHIBITION INTERRUPTED - ANNE MUNLY
Professor Anne Munly and Dean Michael Speaks approached Zain in early 2021 to bring him onto the production team for an exhibition at Syracuse Architecture. The exhibition was initially intended to be an in-person event, however due to the constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic, Zain was added to the curatorial and production team in order to develop concepts and strategies for, and produce, a series of films that allowed the show to exist in a hybrid digital/in-person format. Zain's work in this particular project centered on the directing and producing of the films that became the supporting digital content of the show and allow the work to exist beyond the physical installation in the Marble Room at Slocum Hall. This type of exhibition was a first for the school, and it was met with incredible reviews. The hybrid nature of the show also suggested new formats by which architecture can begin to dialogue with film, specifically in the age of COVID. All film and digital content for the show was filmed, produced, and edited by Zain Elwakil for Exhibition Interrupted.
The following excerpt is taken from the Exhibition Brief:
"Exhibition Interrupted explores the dual nature of the screen as an architectural device. Whether as material space divider or video monitor, screens delineate and regulate the relationship between inside and outside, historic and contemporary, sacred and profane, private and public. Consistent with the hybrid, online-in-person reality that has emerged as a result of the global pandemic, and consistent with this dual reading of the screen, Exhibition Interrupted has been designed as a physical and an online installation that can be experienced in numerous hybrid formats in the Marble Room and on social media.
Three curving wooden screens have been inserted into entry doorways of the Marble Room delineating what is inside and outside the physical exhibition and literally enacting the show’s title, Exhibition Interrupted. While these screens regulate physical movement into and out of the Marble Room gallery space, they also invite us to look through the perforations, through the screens, into the gallery space where we view projections onto the marble wall surface and a display of digitally milled and printed design objects placed throughout the gallery space. Exhibition Interrupted can also be experienced through the screen of a computer or phone where, on select social media platforms, we are able to view a series of films featuring recent projects designed by Anne Munly as well as a discussion about those projects and the challenges and opportunities of designing and exhibiting in the new hybrid online-in-person reality that has become the screens through which and on which we now live our lives.
Thanks to Michael Speaks, “Exhibition Interrupted” curator and dean, Syracuse University School of Architecture; Zain Edeen Elwakil, filmmaker, B.Arch ’21; Ting Yang, graduate research intern, M.Arch ’21; John Bryant, Michael Giannattasio and Robbie Weaver, Syracuse Architecture Fabrication Shop; Andy Molloy and Thuc Phung, Syracuse Architecture IT Services; James Hepokoski and Ted Brown, Munly Brown Studio"
More information as well as the full event and all associated videos can be seen here