andrés jaque + miguel de guzmán celebrate 20 years of sex and the city

architect andrés jaque has teamed up with photographer miguel de guzmán to create an alternative version of sex and the city (SATC) on the occasion of the TV show’s 20th anniversary. the exhibition, which remains on view at storefront for art and architecture in new york until april 3, 2018, has been conceived as a ‘non-stop, ten-week summit that stages the most relevant people, places, and processes that played a role in new york’s cultural shift of the last two decades.’

all images by miguel de guzman / imagen subliminal

andrés jaque (office for political innovation) and miguel de guzmán (imagen subliminal) have transformed storefront’s gallery space into a ‘transmedia studio’ where a documentary reenactment of the TV series is broadcast. titled ‘sex and the so-called city’, the display also brings together objects and artifacts that celebrate the 20th anniversary of ‘new york’s most influential archisocial manifesto’. read more about the exhibition in the words of its curators below.

the display brings together artifacts that celebrate the 20th anniversary of the TV show

since the release of SATC’s first episode in 1998, new york’s real estate market has doubled. as carrie, charlotte, miranda and samantha made their way from patricia fields’ thrift-store-heterogeneous-outfits to multi-brand-high-end-opulence, and from one-bedroom rentals to the-world-of-interiors-like-apartments, new york engaged in an equivalent evolution. the city progressed by evacuating its clumsiness, depurating its air and waters and reclaiming its dumping fields. SATC anticipated what would later become a post-2008, sanitized, assets-oriented urbanism, a highendcracy by which new forms of trading air-rights within blocks, LLC-shelled identities and the reinforcement of the 421-a tax exception rendered the city an ecosystem to produce, reproduce and accommodate value.

a documentary reenactment of the TV series is broadcast

as fictional charlotte and miranda struggled to engineer reproduction, and real-life sarah jessica parker’s daughters were born through surrogacy, columbus circle was being transformed as the world center for the reinvention of human reproduction. elective cytoplasm selection, spindle nuclear transfer, cell banks and surrogacy have been combined in the last decades though archiurban calibrations to make new york the location for a new human type, the citizens of highendcracy.

the video is displayed across four flat surfaces

as shown in SATC’s second episode, new york city brought together for the first time samantha’s two biggest passions: namely, sex and real estate. twenty years later, real estate rendered new york fully sexualized. chelsea became the planet’s most wanted location to switch on grindr. and as new san fernando valleys, rent-spiking greenpoint and chelsea are now home to two of the hottest adult studios, burning angel and cocky boys, where refined productions scape garage-like interiors to shoot their pornhub scenes, which get millions of views, in sunny lofty condominiums with views of purified blue skies.

the exhibition has been conceived as a ‘non-stop, ten-week summit’

this kind of blueish sky was invented as a rendered reality for new york’s most successful architectural icon, 432 park avenue, and then taken as a detail of its architecture by using a fixed austrian eckelt lite-wall glass for its windows, designed to intensify the blue part of daylight’s spectrum. this material adjustment synchronizes the architectural detail with the city’s territorial project of displacing the environmental cost of its consumptions to rural locations in neighboring states.

the exhibit stages the people and places that played a role in NY’s cultural shift of the last two decades

storefront has been converted into a ‘transmedia studio’

the objects relate to the documentary style video

the display is on view at new york’s storefront for art and architecture

‘sex and the so-called city’ remains open until april 3, 2018

project info:

research: andrés jaque, paola pardo
fact checking: paola pardo
object collection: paola pardo, roberto gonzález, max lauter
coordination: roberto gonzález
design: laura mora, felipe arango, ayushi drolia, roberto garcía, marta jarabo, pablo maldonado, solé mallol, valentina marín
cinematography and AV installation art: miguel de guzmán (imagen subliminal)
music art: emiliano caballero
episodes’ video art: óscar espín
actress voice over: elizabeth sanjuan
sound studio: robin groove
text editing: walter ancarrow

with the help of:
mauricio trivino, iván l. munuera, nerea calvillo, laura kurgan, valerie renwick, vera scroggins, bart-jan polman, noelia lecue, jake jaxson, j.r. sebastian, sharif aggour, joanna angel, charles aubin, cocky boys, matthew bannister, burning angels, lisa caso, douglas crimp, d-box, josephine dimiceli, lisa s. dozier, eckelt glass gmbh, michael gruber, dottie hermann, id model management, miguel núñez, nancy otavalo, rafael pelli, pelli clarke pelli architects, joel simkhai, landis smithers, robin standefer, john zhang