The Proposal (Critical Spatial Practice)

The eighth volume in the ongoing CSP series edited by Hirsch and Miessen, The Proposal focuses on American artist Jill Magid s The Barragan Archives. Magid s multiyear project examining the career of Pritzker Prize winning architect Luis Barragan (1902 1988) questions the forms of power, public access and copyright used to construct artistic legacy. After his death, Barragan s archive was split in two. His personal archive went to his home in Mexico, now a UNE SCO World Heritage Site, while his professional archive was purchased in 1995 by Vitra chairman Rolf Fehlbaum and housed at the corporation s headquarters, where it became inaccessible to the public. As Magid attempts to bring together Barragan's professional and personal archives and probes the architect s official and private selves, she engages the intersections of the psychological and the judicial, national identity and repatriation, international property rights and copyright law, authorship and ownership, the human body and the body of work. Eight additional essays round out Magrid s discussion. Contributions by Leonardo Diaz Borioli, Nikolaus Hirsch, David Kim, Cuauhtemoc Medina Gonzalez, Daniel McClean, Hesse McGraw, Elizabeth A. Povinelli and Ines Weizman.