The Mackintosh Building

Today I attended the International symposium with the Leverhulme International Network for Contemporary Studies (LINCS) at the Glasgow School of Art.

It is over fifteen months since the Mackintosh Building was badly damaged in that devastating fire.

The symposium examined three moments of the contemporary on the GSA campus: namely the Mackintosh Art School itself as a ‘contemporary’ rather than ‘modern’ building; the Reid Building as a contemporary reworking of the original Mac; and the project for  the  contemporary rebuilding of the Mackintosh library. The symposium featured talks and events presented by academics, architects, artists, conservationists, filmmakers, historians and musicians.

The excellent day finished with a special performance,  ‘Sounding the Reid’.  This specially composed site specific piece of music was performed in and throughout the Reid Building in promenade at GSA.  The music was composed by Stephen Davismoon incorporating texts on the Reid Building by Johnny Rodger, Steven Holl and Charles Rennie Mackintosh performed by a flautist, violinist and mezzo-soprano.

Earlier in the day we had a special viewing of  ‘A Beautiful Living Thing’, a film by artists Ross Birrell and Jo Crotch, which showed specially composed music performed in the burnt out ruins of the Mackintosh Library.