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“AS A MALL I REALLY LIKE MoMA II- Architecture-Souvenir

Perhaps buildings are nothing but souvenirs that travel in tourist suitcases though the world.
(Eiffel towers, empire states,… miniature buildings are sold in tourist stores).
In some cases such as the Central Chinese Television CCTV New Headquarters by OMA in Beijing, China (OMA in Beijing in MoMA) the time between the building being constructed and becoming an icon (if it happens) and then being reproduced in miniature as a souvenir is missing. What is being built for real is a giant souvenir. The CCTV resembles a takeaway Chinese box, such a superficial reference with the building being in China is a joke in bad taste. Common on our times, buildings look like some popular symbol of the place. This frivolity is on the line with the new MoMA, a mall of modern art, fully involved in marketing and packaging the elements of art that is dispensable.
This object was made, as an architecture souvenir questioning the show.
Inside the takeaway box there was a manifesto further developing the ideas above. Souvenirs were sold February 9 2007 at the MoMa at the main entrance. This same day as the missing sketch model, I drop one Chinese takeaway box in the show “OMA in Beijing”, I was caught and a guard removes immediately. I left. Adeola was still around, the guard called other guards, these are the comments: “remember the paper airplanes, last year by the same time… the paper airplanes flying from the six floor, there was an architecture show there….”

The MoMA didn’t mention anything about the planes, as if never happens, but the guards are right to bring up this memory. In  “AS A MALL I REALLY LIKE MoMA- flying a paper airplane” two hundred paper airplanes were flown “Without invitation” from the balconies over the atrium in MoMA on March 24 2006 at 6pm. A poetic protest against the Museum as the Modern Mall of Art. A site specific and participatory art situation made for the New MoMA and its exhibitions program, specifically a critique of the show: "On Site, New Architecture in Spain".

Manifesto

Credits: Second Intervention on February 19 2007 “AS A MALL I REALLY LIKE MoMA- architecture souvenirs. Intervention directed by Jana Leo  done in Collaboration Adeola Enigbokan. Takeawaybox’’text  and manifesto by Adeola Enigbokan  and Jana Leo. Special thanks Gearoid Dolan; photos by Simon Lund.