Exhibition

  • Pidgeon Audio Visual: Architects Speak for Themselves
    Florencia Alvarez Pacheco
    Curator
    Disponible, Buenos Aires
    Dec 17, 2021 to Mar 26, 2022
  • GRANTEE
    Florencia Alvarez Pacheco
    GRANT YEAR
    2019

Selections from the Pidgeon Audio Visual collection of slide-tape lecture programs, 1979–88, London. Courtesy of the Canadian Centre for Architecture © Pidgeon Digital/World Microfilms Publications.

This project examines the Pidgeon Audio Visual (PAV) series—a collection of audiovisual materials for students that introduced architects and designers created by Monica Pidgeon—focusing on its interface and impact on education and publishing. The exhibition presents a selection of over 200 slide-tape presentations from the 1980s and 1990s, and delves into its production method through documents from the Monica Pidgeon papers. Different exhibition artifacts such as study stations and audiovisual projections explore the possibilities of this educational tool. Archival documents on display show production and distribution strategies: notes and correspondence between Pidgeon and the speakers act as a guide to understand the slide-tape lectures as artificial constructs; catalogues give a sense of the scope of the collection; and new content is elucidated through the archive in the form of annotated transcripts, translations, and revoicings. As such, the exhibition contextualizes PAV for a new audience and reflects on the current audiovisual education media landscape.

Florencia Alvarez Pacheco is an architect and curator who teaches at the School of Architecture, Design and Urbanism at the University of Buenos Aires. She holds a master’s degree in Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices in Architecture from Columbia University’s GSAPP. She was assistant exhibitions coordinator at the Arthur Ross Architectural Gallery where she acted as assistant curator for Environmental Communications: Contact High, Information Fall-Out: Buckminster Fuller’s World Game, Les Levine: Bio-Tech Rehearsals, 1965–1975, and cocurator for Every Building in Baghdad: The Rifat Chadirji Archives at the Arab Image Foundation, and Detox USA among other exhibitions. Her work has been exhibited at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the Graham Foundation, the Istanbul Design Biennial, and LAXART. Her research focuses on the implications and challenges of diverse techno-pedagogical experiences from the postwar period at the convergence of politics, education, and media.