Benjamin Zurstrassen

“Contre le style" is an exercise in reappropriating and transforming Jencks' chronogram around the very idea of style: whether style is understood as the personal expression of an individual or as the shared expression of an era. Between 1851 and 1945, modernity emerged in a much more unified way than those who love labels would have us believe: Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Modernism, etc. All these trappings hide the contradictions, compromises, nuances, and continuities at work over the course of a century. A freely invented chronogram, including the “modern anti-modern” dimension of Adolf Loos and Josef Frank (creator of accidentism), will also allow us to question this new genealogy of modernity.