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

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

Venue

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

Print

Berlin based artist Klaus Decker explores the marginal areas of paintings. With the choice of his picture carriers (MDF, multiplex, cardboard, laid paper, plexiglass) as well as the motivic and technical elements, he creates a specific language that transcends the limits of conventional painting and questions the traditional composition of the picture. However, there is always a precise coordination with regard to the content of the image and the size of the motif, as well as in terms of material, shape and color, in order to achieve exciting and surprising puzzle games with perception. Another essential element that shapes his art is serial thinking. In order to approach his topics, he mainly works in series of works that vary and explore formal and content-related aspects. What unites all the works despite their formal and material differences is a form of expression that makes the influence of chance and conscious artistic decisions equally tangible, and raises fundamental questions about the perception and understanding of art.

Klaus Decker Colours of Noon / Dusk / Midnight Series

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

Development

Peninah Amanda Styling is Berlin-based stylist and consulting studio, advising clients in fashion, image creation and creative fashion direction. Peninah’s Kenyan roots enable her to think about the world as her playground regarding the brightness of colors, the mixture of materials, and knowledge of today’s trends in fashion and pop culture. With her individual and creative styling, Peninah successfully established herself as a fashion stylist in demand for international campaign shoots, editorial, celebrity and film productions. We provided s small corporate design consisting of the website and a series of silkscreen printed business cards.

Peninah Amanda 

Website

Tools

Coulisse is an Art Gallery based in Stockholm. From the beginning the gallery’s focus was to present young, cutting-edge artists and designers, from Scandinavia and beyond. 

Alongside exhibitions Coulisse Gallery, together with collaborators, also initiates events to bring a vibrant energy to the Stockholm art scene.

Working closely with the Gallery we designed their visual identity along side with the layout and programming of their website.

The visual Identity of the website relies on the three key elements; heavy typeface, light background grid and the overlaying clip-masked images of art pieces, which provide a very different feel depending on the artists work. While the grid is structuring the pages and gives depth to the content, the heavy type in combination with the overlaying image provides it a bit of a more playful touch and creates a variation through-out different subpages. The navigation aligned on the bottom plays along with the grid and allows for a lot of headspace and flexibility for the content, while also more accessible on mobile devices. Each page type is laid out very different but are also following the rules of the three basic elements.

Coulisse Gallery Stockholm

We were asked to design the new visual identity for Zurich based Clea Gross Architekten. The goal was to create a unique identity made up of different printed media and a digital portfolio of the studios more recent work. On every aspect of this project there was a lot of experimentation and trial and error involved. We designed a design a slightly unusual website that demonstrates a new "user experience". The main element of their website consists study models, providing the viewer with a formal understanding of the building volume. A major part of their corporate stationery was printed in our printing workshop. 

GrossR Architektur

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

Due to Covid-19 fear and anxiety still prevail and it feels difficult to take any positives from the situation. When we turn towards the concept of crises, we mean to focus on our pre-Covid understanding of it, yet reading it in the light of what we have learned and vice versa: How could we draw on our understanding of crises as a resource during the pandemic? How has our experience of lockdown and social distancing given us space to let crises be a part of our lives, and to give space to admitting needs and vulnerability? Crises are turning points in which we fully understand that things need to change, and that whether we want them to or not, they will. Our social behaviour and the balance between human and nature has been shifted due to Covid-19. Social distancing and isolation have become necessary rules; they force us to face the question of life and death. I Am here now / Ich im Hier & Jetzt is a series of initiations that invert notions of the living and the dead, the live and the inanimate, “awakening” the commemorative architecture at Diakonie Landgut Holzdorf.

I am here now

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

Copyediting

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. 

Re: Pavillon

General management Dunant Museum

Webmaster

Support by

Framework

The Henry Dunant Museum is the only museum worldwide dedicated to the life and work of the visionary founder of the international Red Cross and the Geneva Conventions – Henry Dunant. Heiden was Henry Dunant's (1828-1910) home for the last 18 years of his life. This village in the Appenzell, famed for its neoclassical architecture, was an internationally renowned resort. This is where he wrote his memoirs. At 800  l, with a view onto Lake Constance and beyond the border, he developed his idea for a more peaceful world and an international court of justice. In 1901, in Heiden, he received word that he had become the first person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The museum dedicated to Dunant is located in the building in which he lived out his days as a reclusive pensioner until his death on 30 October 1910.

The new identity of the Henry Dunant Museum was conceived in 2021 and adapted to various carrier media. The museum's goal was to reposition itself in the digital space and visually repurpose its rich content. The overarching narrative links all media and areas in the context of the museum. In doing so, the work and worldviews of Henry Dunant were transferred into a visual language. Henry Dunant's large fund of content was placed in a branching network to each other. These first considerations resulted in a cosmic representation of diverse aspects in different times and spaces. The cosmos as a narrative links Dunant's work and thinking with contemporary impulses in an interplay of far-and-near. The website allows the viewer to move from one impulse to the next, becoming a never-ending process. The overarching narrative is supported by rounding off navigational elements and adding a spatial feel to design elements. In addition to the spherical representation, two typefaces were designed, revealing both a contemporary and a historical time period. The design and development of the website was the first implementation of the visual concept.

Henry Dunant Museum Website

The website playfully interacts with the concept of applying to a neutral base, much like a plain paper. The name Architecture Office, not saying much expect what they are in technical terms. The website adapts that idea by refusing to have a certain theme, instead the user can depicts his own idea of what he wants it to be. Change color or the order of the website while navigating through the projects.

Architecture Office

Curation

The virtual exhibition Redirection Berlin started with a public correspondence amongst the 10 involved artists. This correpondence is being archived on the Website. The project is leading up to a hybrid (physical/digital) exhibition, that will be held in late 2020 in different locations in Berlin. The exhibition is free for everyone who will visit the site which will be guided through the website and can be accessed on the phone. Alternatively you can order a screen print by the artist to access their piece from anywhere.

Redirection Berlin

Title

Working with the curators of the Henry-Dunant-Museum Heiden we designed a contemporary identity for the legacy of Henry Dunant in Heiden, Appenzell Ausserhoden. Along with the website we also designed the signage for Dunant Plaza, a temporary location in downtown Heiden and a series of exhibitions for various artists as well as topics evolving around Henry Dunant’s visions for a better world in terms of humanity and equality, that never came to fruition during his live time and that are still relevant, debated and fought for today.

Henry Dunant Museum

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

HOU Lulu Shur-Tzy, TING Chaong-Wen, I-Hsuen CHEN

Translation

Chun-Chi WANG, HUANG Sun-Quan, JIAN Tzu-Chieh, CHANG Shih-Lun

Authors

Ministry of Culture of Taiwan Department of Cultural Affairs of Taipei City Government

Tokyo TDC (2021), TDC New York (TDC68) (series)

Awards

Contemporary Asian Photography is an exhibition series that takes a close look at contemporary culture and art practice from Asian artists’ perspectives. The exhibitions concentrate on specific pieces of history and life experiences, but also attempt to construct or discover relationships between historical contexts from varied perspectives. Specifically, they make observations either from different geographical locations synchronously, or from the same location at different times. The personal experiences and collective consciousness are linked with multiple historical trajectories charted by the vicissitudinal political and social forces. In Part III of the Crisis of Now series presents photographic works by three contemporary Taiwanese artists, Wei-Li YEH, LIU Ho-Jang and CHENG Ting-Ting, revealing their idiosyncratic personal trajectories and closely connected forms of memory. What, in previous crises, is proved helpful for us? What do we learn from the artists regarding future experiences of destabilization and vulnerability? How do we seek the support we need?

The publication includes a series of texts: “Fragments of Time: Wei-Li YEH’s Three Places, for Marguerite Duras (2003 to 2006)” by Julia Gwendolyn Schneider, “The Genealogy of Defect: LIU Ho-Jang’s B-5 Project” by Chen-Han YANG, and “An Alternative Narrative of Taiwan: Ting-Ting Cheng’s Lonely Planet Taiwan” by SHEN Bo-Wie.

Crisis of Now – Part III

Research & content curation

Exhibition construction

Administration & Coordination

Doris Baschnonga, Blanca Juon, Lea Schaffner

Communication & Education

Doris Baschnonga, Monika Fasola, Blanca Juon, Barbara Metzger

Reception

Gemeinde Heiden, Kulturförderung Appenzell Ausserrhoden, Paul Schiller Stiftung, SRK Kantonalverband beider Appenzell  

Support

Print flyer

During the long period of occupation from 1830 to 1962, Swiss trading companies and private individuals pursued economic interests. Henry Dunant (1828 - 1920) is known as the initiator of the world's largest humanitarian aid organization – the ICRC. Less known is that Dunant, at the age of 25, traveled to North Africa on behalf of the „Geneva Trading Company of the Swiss Colonies of Sétif“. It is the beginning of his activity as a colonial administrator and businessman, which shaped his later views and had a long-lasting impact on his life. Together with cultural researcher Ina Boesch, the exhibition focuses on this little-discussed phase of Dunant's life. Can Henry Dunant's colonial activities be reconciled with his philanthropic worldview?

For the exhibition design we worked closely with the curators and the exhibition constructors. The idea was to present a historical overview on three different cylinders. The concept given provided the possibility to divide the historical context into segments. In choosing fitting subtitles to represent Dunant’s engagement throughout the stages of his journey, the scenographic concept divides the timeline into three different segments: Dunant as a colonist, as a businessman and as an ethnographer. Facing a busy window front and giving the opportunity for spectators to be lured into the exhibition, a communicative layer to the outside was part of the initial design brief. Inspired by ancient maps shown in the exhibition, and further material studies by the construction team, a dotted line referencing shipping routes and indicating footpaths was chosen. In creating a fictional path, the visitors were able to peek into the cylinders and look at different historical material along the way. In the evening the inside of the cylinders were light with spotlights, illuminating Dunant’s path and highlighting the narrative visual.

Unternehmen Algerien

OVN is a small and handy outdoor equipment made of steel. The object translating to fire in Norwegian, was created by product design studio IRDEN Manufaktur and hand welded in in a neighboring workshop unit to Burrow. We created a custom geometric logotype existing of outlines, referencing stencil typefaces that have been historicallly applied to steel plates. Additionally it was important to execute a complete packaging, functioning as an easy to use instruction and conveying a complete setup for OVN. The information on the packaging was printed in our very own silkscreen workshop unit. 

Developed with

sl Collective is a Los Angeles-based architecture and design firm that translates identities and concepts into built environments. Established in 2020, sl Collective is a new model for expanded and scalable practice, formed by a group of individuals who work globally with forward-thinking clients on a wide range of projects, including buildings, interiors, industrial design, design-research consulting and ideation.

We provided the corporate design consisting of the design and development of the website. Additionally we designed and executed various printed materials – from letter heads to a series of silk-screen printed busines cards.

SL Collective

Concept

Editing

Editorial assistance

was founded in 1969, since its inception it has been a site for promoting contemporary art and discourse production. Its goal has always been to present contemporary fine arts to a wide public audience, as well as to invite everyone to participate in cultural processes and discourses. 

In 1970 the founded one of the first «artothek» in Germany, which includes over 4.000 art pieces, which can be borrowed against a small insurance fee. The second collection 

includes currently over 1.700 pieces of international video art. n.b.k. also hosting exhibitions and discourses on a regular basis and in collaboration with the publisher 

they have published more than 400 books in five series. Together with the team we worked on the modernisation of their existing website and discussed new ideas on how the comprehensive content can be translated and improved with modern web technologies. 

We worked with multiple instances of the society on their website and developed interactive filter systems, that allow users to navigate their way through the vast collections and entries.

Neuer Berliner Kunstverein Web

The Publication »The Story about Water — The Erie Canal as a Site of Untold Stories« by Linda Zhang and Biko Mandela Gray, documents and explores marginalised histories of the people the made the Erie Canal possible. The topic of water described by in their own words:

Water. It’s all about water. Water is formless form; it adheres to the container within which it finds itself. And in so doing, water aks us to think about form; the power of form and the power to deform. Water dissolves as much as it moves, fills, and gives life and such indeterminacy offers the space for a meditation on how life and lives along the Erie Canal are formed, transformed, deformed and reformed.

The Story of Water – Erie Canal

Location 

Date 

 Info 

Architecture Office, Nicole McIntosh & Jonathan Louie Moderator David Turturo

Organizer 

Early in 2020 the Swissness Applied project was hosted at Yale University along with the Image-Architecture-Place Symposium organized by David Turturo.

Swissness Applied Yale Architecture

IDOLONSTUDIO (Union of European Asian Artists)

Client

Ministry of Foreign AffairsRepublic of China (Taiwan), Kulturabteilung der Taipeh Vertretung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland

Supported by 

Exhibition design for Taiwan Cinema Berlinale 2020. We were asked to design the exhibition stand and the identity featuring the latest work, “Days,” of director Ming Liang TSAI (蔡明亮) at the 70th Berlinale and Film Market at Martin Gropius Bau.

Taiwan Cinema Berlinale

Bridge & Vine is a small family run strategic wine consulting agency in Nappa Valley, California. The color scheme gave reference to the natural colors found around vineyards, and acted as the visual bridge between the two segments consulting and winery. We developed a custom logotype, a series of silk screen printed business cards and a landing page website.

Bridge & Vine Branding

«Swissness Applied» is part of a larger research project that focuses on the transformation of European immigrant towns in the United States. These towns share the common aspiration of preserving and perpetuating the architectural charm of their cultural heritage to enhance the social and economic base of their community. The project contributes to the ongoing discussion on the role of imagery and cultural appropriation in architecture and urban design planning.

»New Glarus«, Wisconsin is an example of one of these towns. Its’ architectural elements accessorise the building to create an attractive Swiss appearance for visitors. To curate the setting, the building codes describe typical elements of the »Swiss Chalet« style that evoke certain associations with familiar traditional Swiss building types. Resulting in an evolution of the buildings’ front from the 1960s’ onwards. »Wisconsin’s little Switzerland«, one of many themed towns in America, is the most advanced example of this generative form of urban mutation.

The Swissness Applied exhibition series looks at the American town New Glarus from an architectural perspective, as a visual example of the challenges in contemporary social transformation on a global scale. The town originally founded by Swiss immigrants in 1845, adopted the visual identity of their heritage. Later in the 1950s, under economic pressure and the need to enhance tourism, new building regulations were formed, attempting to meet a more Swiss image by „swissifing“ the house styles.

The typical light, dynamic and decorative Calligraphic blackletter fonts as you can find them on old house facades in German speaking alpine regions such as in Switzerland, South Germany and Austria have been our source of inspiration. We developed a custom blackletter typeface, which formed the main part of the visual identity. The letter forms were adjusted and made more accessible to use in a contemporary design context. Aside from communicating a sense of Swissness it was also important to provide a visual time anchor, that points at the colonial times during which the town «New Glarus» came into existence from Swiss emigrants back then.

Additionally we designed a series of print products and developed an experimental website documenting the exhibition project while also functioning as a playground for the virtual visitor to explore the exhibition in a different context.

Swissness Applied Branding

Photography

The second Exhibition of the larger Research Project Swissness Applied was held at the Kunsthaus Glarus in the Swiss Town Glarus, that was the prototype where the emigrants originated from the would later set the foundation what later became the tourist attraction New Glarus.

Swissness Applied Kunsthaus Glarus

Institutions

Editors

Text und editing

UNGER-KUNZ. Lektorat und Redaktionsbüro GbR

Reproductions, Printing and Binding

ISBN 

Publisher

Support by 

The exhibition Schlosskinder, which translates as ‘castle children,’ focuses on the neglected chapter in the history of the baroque Molsdorf Castle and its temporary use as Rosa Luxemburg, a children’s home from 1951 to 1958. The typeface developed for the exhibition, consisting of elegant strong forms, harkens to the baroque while integrating formal aspects of the children’s home. The letters in which the interior shapes are rounded and playful set a contrast to the elegant appearance of the typeface.

The exhibition graphics and publication of SCHLOSSKINDER connect the past with the present typographically. Historical imagery and facts about "Rosa Luxemburg" are shown in combination with the custom typography while the modern grotesk typeface sets a strong contrasts to the historical layer. The exhibition publication includes an interview and documentation artwork by the Mats Staub with the historic photo album showing the life of the children during the 50s at the Mosldorf Castle. 

Schlosskinder

The Exhibition Series Swissness Applied started with the first Exhibition in Milwaukee, US in 2019. A 100 miles car ride from the projects site, the projects get introduced to an academic audience.

Swissness Applied University Milwaukee

UNO St. Claude Gallery, PhotoNOLA Festival (New Orleans, LA, USA)

Venue Support

Contemporary Asian Photography is an exhibition series that takes a close look at contemporary culture and art practice from Asian artists’ perspectives. The exhibitions concentrate on specific pieces of history and life experiences, but also attempt to construct or discover relationships between historical contexts from varied perspectives. Specifically, they make observations either from different geographical locations synchronously, or from the same location at different times. The personal experiences and collective consciousness are linked with multiple historical trajectories charted by the vicissitudinal political and social forces. In Part II of the Crisis of Now series three Taiwanese artists—I-Hsuen CHEN, HOU Lulu Shur-Tzy and TING Chaong-Wen present their contemporary photography through multi-cultural observations. 

The publication includes a series of texts: an essay written by CHANG Shih-Lunby, “Between Transparency and Blur”; HUANG Sun-Quan, “Out of Place—HOU Lulu Shur-Tzy and Her Trilogy on Kaohsiung Military Dependents’ Villages”; JIA Tzu-Chieh, “A Pleat in Tainan City Hall (Minzhi). On TING Chaong-Wen’s Photographic Works Prophet and North”.

Crisis of Now – Part II

Creative Direction

Schwerin, Görlitz, Mannheim, Bochum, Auen in Bewegung und Auf Anfang! Festival, Finsterwalde, Artlake Festival, Erfurt, Neukölln Open Festival, Reeperbahnfestival, Hamburg, Aachen, Passau, Chemnitz, Berlin

Touring cities

"100 years of the Weimar Republic, 70 years of the Basic Law, 30 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall - history shows that our society is capable of improvement. What once sounded completely utopian is now taken for granted: from rights of personal freedom to peace in a united Europe. Unfortunately, however, this simple knowledge quickly gets lost. Pessimism and discouragement determine the current debates far too much". – Open Society e.V. (in German: Offene Gesellschaft e.V.

What country do we want to be? With this question in mind, the Open Society is touring through Germany. The initiative asks for good ideas and new thoughts not only in Bochum and Aachen but also in Finsterwalde and Passau. Through a network of local groups and initiatives, debates, workshops and art actions are organised in the respective tour locations.

Five modules plus an opening module are clustered into different privileges, such as freedom of expression, freedom of the press or freedom of assembly, which we enjoy and which we must defend. The privileges of an open society are communicated interactively: For example, visitors can experience how equal opportunities in Germany behave at an XXL marble track; or they press protest buttons to generate loud attention and underline our right to be on the streets. We provided them with the key visuals and the visual identity and helped finish the exhibition concept. 

Open Society on Tour

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)

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

Printing and Binding

ISBN

Ministry of Science, Research and Arts Baden-Württemberg

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

Artistic Director

Patrick (Boris) Kremer (De/En), Sumie Kawai (De/Jp), Nanaé Suzuki (De/Jp), Reina Shimizu (Jp/En) 

Christoph Tannert, Heike Fuhlbrügge, Kyoco Taniyama

Texts

Craig Stewart (En), Bettina Baer (De), Setsuko Ito (Jp)

Proofreading

Artist & Photos

Reproductions

Printing and Production

In Kyoco Taniyama's practice, the concept of ubiquity - being situated in a particular context, in a particular place - is omnipresent. Her installations are multi-layered interpretations of this interrelation between places, people, and identities with a view to culture, history, and everyday life in a particular place. Hereby, she is interested in the way politics and society deal with negative aspects and events in the present and in the past, and the tendency not to come to terms with them, but to to conceal them. In Berlin, she combines thrown-away objects that she collects into abstract sculptures, which she documents photographically and by video before creating beautifully formed artistic metaphors for concealment. 

"Stone will flow, leaves will sink" is a Japanese phrase – it is a metaphor used to denote unusual or contradictory deviations from expected outcomes or conditions. This project is part of a small multilingual visual identity, used for printed announcement materials and a larger publication as part of the exhibition „stone will flow, leaves will sink“, shown at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin from 17 Jan – 19 Feb 2019. The multi-layered identity has been developed by experimenting with different printing techniques and different paper types. In total 3 different paper types have been used though-out, including a recycling paper in combination with silkscreen print. The contradiction of printing on cheaply produced recycling paper with a precious printing technique, transfers Taniyama’s concept of concealment and revelation into the context of graphic design and print.

Stone will flow, Leaves will sink

Artist Gabriel Hensche and curator Ashlee Conery have compiled a catalogue of the work Hensche produced while in residence at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, in 2017. The publication includes witness reports that are formally based on actual incident report forms. Adopting the posture of an onlooker, while at the same time acknowledging his role as instigator, Hensche recounts observations of his works as incidents by taking into account the involvement of people and circumstances that led to the events. These protocols are concluded with a final report by Conery in which she adopts the conditions of a mother, a partner and a particle for considering one’s own perspective when acting as a witness, a curator or a bystander.

The publication was printed in a total four different print runs with three different printing techniques. The Offset printing technique was used for the blank incident reports and for the material accompanying the incidents. A laser printer was used to fill out each report with its respective informational layer. And the 6-paged cover was printed on the silkscreen press.

Gabriel Henschel - Incident Reports

Tao Ya-Lun, Fujui Wang, Wu Chi-Tsung, Liping Ting