Curator

Ting Chang-Wen, Kang Ya-Chu, Chiu Chen-Hung (Installations) & Audrey Chen, Yuko Kaseki, Shingo Inao, Dominique Baron-Bonarjee (Performances)

Artists

Autors

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, R.O.C (Taiwan) Kulturabteilung der Taipeh Vertretung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, and Department of Cultural Affairs, Taipei City Government

Funding

Diakonie Landgut Holzdorf, Kunstfest Weimar

Venue

The Covid-19 pandemic has reinforced deep-seated inequalities in the world, it has exacerbated the precarious living and working conditions of so many of the global population and has made us feel fundamentally vulnerable. Under Covid-19 we have experienced intense fear and uncertainty. The exhibition Phit-Nan-So—Sutzraum explores questions such as: fear of mortality and the fragility of life, uncertainty about future challenges that we may have to face—existential forces that trigger our primal fears, cost us valuable strength and energy, and often leave us powerless and in a state of shock. Choreographer Shang-Chi Sun and visual artist Chaong-Wen Ting, both of whom live in Taipei and Berlin, address the term “home” from their own idiosyncratic perspective. They call their joint work for Kunstfest Weimar at the Bauhaus-Museum Weimar Phit-Nan-So—Schutzraum; the title refers to “place of refuge” or indeed “home”. In this installation visual arts, performance and music enter a dialogue in a very modern Bauhaus sense. The exhibition was part of Kunstfest Weimar 2020 and was held at Bauhaus-Museum Weimar.

Phit-Nan-So Schutzraum

Kaba Rössler & Nadine Schneider (General management Dunant Museum)

Idea & Project Lead

Research & exhibition curation

Fabian Troxler & Stefan Friedli, Szenenwerk

Exhibition Construction

Print Flyer

Exhibition fotos

Dunant Plaza as part of Henry-Dunant-Museum

Flagge Zeigen – Red Cross on white background. The initial idea was striking. One sign marks medical posts and rescuers in war, protecting them from the fighting. A sign that everyone knows and all fighting parties use. The idea found its way into international law in 1864 and was given a shape: A red cross on a white background. But it did not remain with the one, universal protective sign, soon there were two, then three, and now multiple iterations of the initial red cross on a white background exist. The protective signs became subjects of religious and political disputes that lasted for decades. To this day, the neutrality and universal acceptance of the signs remains a vulnerable asset. Constant educational, mediating and diplomatic skills are needed worldwide to strengthen recognition of the signs of protection. After all, in war, human lives depend on them. 

The visual direction shows three different signs interweaving and merging into a new symbol. Throughout the overall exhibition identity we worked with the original red tone as a transporting color reference. Additionally it was important to work within a set of grid structuring exhibition elements. Therefore the concept of segmentation and rearranging the fragments can be seen as a superordinate design choice in every part of the project. The curators expressed the idea of recycling frame elements form a previous exhibition concept. These already existing exhibition elements functioned as a visual reference. They formed the anchor point for the idea of segmentation and reconstruction. Initially we played around with iterations of the different symbols and pasted the fragments on a grid like structure. These were the first ideas around segmenting the different elements and reconstructing them. After some playful and seemingly suprematist first drafts, we came to the conclusion that one joint symbol referencing the various political ideas would be the strongest solution for the key visual.

Flagge zeigen

Location

Text by

We designed a poster for the upcoming group exhibition OFF GRID hosted at Material in Zürich

The exhibition was showing the works of Noel Hochuli, Giorgo Zenograf, Leandra Agazzi and Massimilliano Rossetto .

Off Grid

Print 

Cover 

The publication Geopolitics is part of a exhibition identity for the exhibition series of the same name. The project initiated by curator Chun-chi Wang (IDOLONSTUDIO) is conducted within the field of art; producing and presenting artworks related to and investigating geopolitical borders. 

The multisciptual publication reads from both sides and includes a series of texts in Arabic and English. The offset printing on the inside pages was done on one paper type; the white side with four colors (CMYK) for the imagery and the green side with black (K) for the texts. The magenta elastic band holding it all together can be shifted from left to right changing languages and starting points. Therefore the publication has two covers, one English and one Arabic one. The green finish on the cover is hand silkscreen printed  in our own workshop and references the layout of the artwork shown inside. 

The first exhibition was shown In Al Madina Theater, Beirut, Lebanon during November 29–Dec 19, 2021. The exhibition project is part of the larger series „Contemporary Art from Taiwan—Exhibitions, Screenings, Publications“, in which three artists were invited: CHEN Shiau-Peng, TING Chaong-Wen and LIU Ho-Jang. The presented artworks deal with geopolitics and broader questions of aesthetics and politics. We were invited 

Geopolitics

The monograph „Listen to the Space – Maps—Traces—Cosmos“ we developed with and for the artist Ulrike Flaig can be seen as an interface of art and music, showcasing the artists art practice through different media. She describes her works as making images audible and translates paintings into installations set to music. The artist's analytical view and reflection on art practices play a major role throughout the whole design of the book project. The book was published by 

 and the reproductions were done by Johann Hausstätter (hausstaetter herstellung)

With texts by Renate Wiehager, Dorothée Bauerle-Willert, Angela Lammert and Valeria Schulte-Fischedick.

Listen to the Space

Co-authored

Diary Text and Drawings

Introductory Text

Yasmeen Daher (English/Arabic), Shirly Eran (English/Hebrew), Carola Kleinstück-Schulman (German/English)

Translations

Text Editing

Katharina Kunz (German/English), Hasan Solanun Melongena (Arabic), Shirly Eran (Hebrew)

Copyediting

DZA Druckerei zu Altenburg GmbH and silk-screen print at Burrow

Printing and Binding

Publisher

ISBN

Ministry of Science, Research and Arts Baden-Württemberg

Awards

As the highest point on earth, Mount Everest is also called the third pole. The fourth pole is therefore logically the lowest continental point. The pole has emerged in its present form due to the steady decline of the Dead Sea and is located in the West Bank in Palestine. On a terrain shaped like no other by decades of political struggle. The multiscriptual diary of the artist’s expedition to the fourth pole is typeset in four different languages – English, German, Arabic and Hebrew. The book consists of an introductionary text, a diary and various imaginative pole drawings by the two artists. The publication has two identical starting points – front- and backcover. English and German, which is usually read from left to right, starts out on the left side, while Arabic and Hebrew start out from the right side. We designed the reading journey so that each language system leads towards the middle, where the four languages all meet at the pole. The book opens up a space of imagination that is less defined by national – than by topographical and autobiographical coordinates.

The Fourth Pole

Client & Editor

Koordinationsbüro für Stadtentwicklung und Projektmanagement (Christin Noack, Hannah Münzer, Birgit Kahl, Isabelle Klein)

Research Assistance

Exhibition concept

Dr. Thomas Flierl, Kristina Laduch, Hannah Münzer, Christin Noack, Niklas Sanders (text concept), André Zschaler

Exhibition texts & Editorial

Bundesarchiv Berlin, bpk-Bildagentur, Akademie der Künste

Image Archive

AFF Architekten, Brandlhuber + Büros für Konstruktivismus, Brenne Architekten, Kawahara Krause Architects, mghs architekten + Rolf Mühlethaler

Architecture Studios

Print Book

The extension of Karl-Marx-Allee between Strausberger Platz and Alexanderplatz marked the turning point towards modernism in the GDR. Industrially manufactured „socialist housing“ between Mollstrasse and Holzmarktstrasse, was combined with a completely new architecture. Today, undeveloped spaces between Schillingstrasse and Alexanderplatz are evident. Six additional pavilions were initially planned by the original city plan of the 1950s, but they were never built. Under the condition of respectful treatment of the existing surroundings, the still open urban spaces are to be incorporated with pavilion buildings in a modern, contemporary architecture. The exhibition presents the pavilion history from the original planning to today's workshop-inspired public procurement process – including the designs for the six new pavilions. In the same way, the workshop-inspired process brings a past idea into the present in a contemporary way, the exhibition Re: Pavilion presents answers to an urban plan from the 1950’s.

For the graphic guidelines a systematic concept that takes up design elements of socialism has been developed. The modular system creates an appearance that provides the ability to dynamically react to the contents of the various media. Formally, the graphic design uses the title „Re: Pavilion“ and takes up the question-answer principle. The familiar form of a modern (email) communication flow, divides the chronicle between the recipient and sender (or answer and reply) on different design layers. The color concept is characterized by pluralism, the idea behind the concept was not be subjected to one single color. Hence, the representation of the restrained pastel tones in conjunction with the violet luminous spot color, invites visitors to question the relationships of the colors within themselves. By choosing the color combination accordingly – a contemporary view into the past – a response to the much used pastel tones during socialism, with a current leap into a diverse color spectrum has been undertaken. Additionally a reinterpreted version by Reto Moser and Tobias Rechtsteiner of the historical typeface design by Anatoliy Vasilyevich Shchukin from 1940-1956 has been used to transport information throughout the visuals. 