"Architecture is not a machine. Architecture is a body."
— Gianluca Peluffo
Can the performing arts reveal how architecture relates to the body?
Industry Muscle explores architecture through the lens of the trans body, presenting five imaginary scores—notations, traces—that serve as vital cues for a future architectural practice.
Together with a group of collaborators, exhibitor Teo Ala-Ruona merges architecture, performance, and installation.
Hosted inside the renowned pavilion designed by Sverre Fehn, the exhibition highlights how the built environment is nothing more than a staging of sociopolitical norms rooted in a culture based on the extraction of fossil-based raw materials.
The curators of the Nordic Pavilion, for the 19th International Architecture Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia, present a new installation and performance by Finnish artist Teo Ala-Ruona and their multidisciplinary group.
Curated by Kaisa Karvinen for the Architecture & Design Museum Helsinki, Industry Muscle: Five Scores for Architecture continues Ala-Ruona’s exploration of trans embodiment and ecology, expanding it into the field of architecture.
Industry Muscle considers the trans body as a lens through which to analyze modern architecture and the built environment, initiating a dialogue with the celebrated structure of the Nordic Pavilion, designed by Sverre Fehn in 1962. In contrast to Fehn’s modernist work, the exhibition proposes an alternative architectural model rooted in the trans body, delving into the relationship between architecture, the body, and ecological collapse.
During Industry Muscle, the public is invited to consider the Nordic Pavilion—and architecture more broadly—as a theater for all those sociopolitical norms deeply embedded in a culture shaped by fossil fuel dependency. The exhibition layout places visitors at the center of an architectural experience where each person, through performing everyday actions, finds themselves exposed. In Ala-Ruona’s interventions, the trans body forcibly inserts itself into the structure, exposing its specific framework.
Industry Muscle unfolds through five imaginary scores that serve as foundational prompts for a future architectural practice. In the context of performance art, scores are used as prompts, notes, and exercises that guide performers. The exhibition brings this concept into the realm of architecture, addressing the following themes:
Impurity: Questioning the role of ideal purity in relation to architecture and lifestyle.
Decategorization: Challenging practices within the built environment based on separation and classification.
Performance: Investigating how architectural and spatial design affects everyday actions in relation to gender and identity.
Technobody: Acknowledging the dynamic interaction between bodies, buildings, and technology, while affirming bodily autonomy.
Re-use: Viewing the trans body as a form of reuse and a tool for ecological thought.
Teo Ala-Ruona works at the intersection of performance, theatre, and choreography, with a particular focus on trans embodiment and ecology. For Industry Muscle, they gathered a multidisciplinary team including architect A.L. Hu, scenographer and artist Teo Paaer, sound designer Tuukka Haapakorpi, dramaturg Even Minn, visual artist Venla Helenius, fashion designer Ervin Latimer, graphic designer Kiia Beilinson, and performers Kid Kokko, Caroline Suinner, and Romeo Roxman Gatt.
Collaboration plays a fundamental role in Ala-Ruona’s work. Each artist contributed their individual practice to the exhibition—see, for instance, the installations created by scenographer and artist Teo Paaer.
Kaisa Karvinen, Curator of the Nordic Pavilion for the Architecture and Design Museum Helsinki, stated:
"The Nordic Pavilion by Sverre Fehn is a classic example of modernist architecture and provides the perfect stage for Teo Ala-Ruona, an artist whose practice addresses issues related to ecology and the materiality of bodies. By merging Ala-Ruona’s work with the pavilion’s architecture, new perspectives emerge—on the built environment and on how the image of the body, placed within contexts based on fossil fuel use, has influenced architecture."
"The transformative potential of the stage and performance plays a central role in Ala-Ruona’s work. In the realm of performance art, the sensory experience of bodies is examined, explored, and evaluated in ways that are equally relevant to contemporary architectural practice. I find it fascinating how Ala-Ruona approaches architecture through theatrical techniques, expanding them further in relation to it."
Teo Ala-Ruona remarked:
"Industry Muscle proposes an architectural model born from personal artistic and lived experience, both related to being trans and a performer, and to seeing the body as a site of research. It is essential to create a sense of well-being within a space that does not emphasize bodily forms, but rather offers an environment that can adapt. This is a reversal of the modernist ideal of simplification, as reflected in the architecture of the pavilion."
"The built environment is constructed primarily from dominant cultural norms. These norms play a fundamental role in the everyday staging of bodies and in the environmental threat posed by the building industry. With my group of collaborators, I aim to spark new dialogues and explore how architecture can resist the status quo."
The Nordic Pavilion is commissioned by a consortium of the Architecture & Design Museum Helsinki (Finland), the National Museum of Norway (Norway), and ArkDes (Sweden). The institutions rotate the project leadership, which for the 19th International Architecture Exhibition is held by the Architecture & Design Museum Helsinki.
“The body stands at the center of a global world undergoing a powerful and radical metamorphosis, with all the ambiguity and fragility it can express.”
— Luca Molinari
