Zaha Hadid

Went to the Zaha Hadid's Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. Always wanted to walk around one of her buildings, never made it to the fire station. And what an amazing treat this visit was!

There is all sorts of architectural theory that describes the connection between space and cinema, but this building does not leave the connection to chance; it is designed to bring the out the experience of walking through space as watching a move. Motion forward is like time unreeling on the screen. When you walk through the museum, you pass through galleries as if you were the camera capturing images.

The long staircases hold you in a steady line as you move up from one floor to the next. They are narrow and long, so that one wonders what would happen if the building were crowded. As it turned out, I was alone in the concrete cavern the morning I visited. A bright Sunday with no one else around; game day the young man at the entrance said. Indeed there were streams of orange glad couples heading toward the stadium, and no one turned into Zaha Hadid's museum.

So much the better

The place was spooky, like a fun house ride made at great expense with sophistication beyond anything the Jersey shore has to offer. But that is the thing about deconstruction in architecture—call it that for lack of more clever word. You keep comparing it to the set of Dr. Caligari. I almost felt I should have been dragging some damsel in distress over my shoulder as climbed up the stairs.

The curators certainly understood the fun house fright. The first floor showed the bubble gum tongue of Marilyn Minter, a huge tongue on a video licking a glass surface covered in bright sugar crystals. Between tongue, teeth, lips and bubble bursts, you had nothing on your mind but the bright-colored pleasures of the mouth.

Then the next two floors went pitch-black cinematic with dark, dark rooms at the end of the long stairs with Anri Sala videos splattering the reflected spot light off a cymbal. A huge wall of Keith Moon fantasy cymbal with drums set up around the place to hammer out there own beat untouched by human hands.

The drumbeat echoed through the cement rooms, a feeling familiar from walking around 3AM lofts full of bands. Made me think of Danceteria in the 80s but here every line of the room reinforced the disorientation. Remember it was Sunday morning 11:30, and yet the exhibition space made it feel like an all night disorientation, one in which you were remarkably lucid despite the drum banging out around eerie videos projected onto the walls. Incoherence very carefully crafted.

And through each stage you walked along a narrow path, as if you were in a fun house cart running along a track. Your every step anticipated by the design. Look here at the opening that makes three dimensions seem flat, Turn your head to see the vertiginous depth next to the staircase . Right away you realize how the corners of the open space are meant to confuse your sense of up and down, horizonal and vertical. Your perceptions are tampered with. We can easily compared the place to a Borromini church or Piranesi drawing but that does a huge disservice to the way the building grips your body whole like it were King Kong and you Fay Rey. There is no piety left to preserve here, no sense of symmetry to recover after it has been manipulated. You dance with the building, only with skill and experience can you stay ahead of its diva angles. For it never wants to overwhelm you, but it does expect a lot of turns, like a partner who knows the song far better than you, but who kindly grants the illusion that you are making the decision to spin and step.