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The architectural collective raumlaborberlin, in cooperation with
Hebbel am Ufer, create a counter proposal to the format of the "Expo."
Under the title The World is Not Fair – The Great World's Fair
2012, a tour with 15 pavilions will be set up for exploration on the
grounds of the former airport in Tempelhof from June 1–24, 2012.
These pavilions are not to be understood as state agents for
national branding, but instead as places of highly subjective artistic and
political reflection. Beyond the boundaries of cultural disciplines,
architects, theater artists, performers, and visual artists will seek to
examine ideas, systems, and phenomena by which even the most outlying
cultures are now globally connected with each other. What will be exhibited
is not the world as it is or should be, but how we perceive, understand,
and interpret it. Can it still be represented and negotiated as a totality
at all?
Five projects that will be seen in the framework of
The World is Not Fair – The Great World's Fair 2012 should be
named here:
In an architectural structure reminiscent of
the damaged reactor blocks in Fukushima, the director Toshiki Okada,
who comes from Yokohama, together with his theater troupe chelfitsch, will
examine the abstraction and immeasurability of the catastrophic events in a
language of reduced gestures and limited words.
Hans-Werner
Kroesinger, one of the earliest representatives of contemporary
documentary theater, is conceiving a living sound installation in an
antenna building, focused on the military use and history of forced labor
at the former Tempelhof Airport.
The video artist, performer,
and activist Tracey Rose, with the help of non-professional actors,
will put on a soap opera stretched out over the whole span of the
exhibition. As a stage, she will use an oversized reconstruction of a
black-and-white Blaupunkt television, which had provided her family in
South Africa with access to world events during the Apartheid period.
Berlin-based filmmaker Harun Farocki will show the first
part of a long research project with the title Parallele, which
examines the role of computer animation for simulation systems and
prognostic services. It addresses the global circulation of air, fire, and
water—and the demand to control a world that is marked by a growing
instability in relation to the predictability of systematically defined
events.
The Stuttgart architecture collective
Umschichten will build a festival center from found materials. For
three weeks, a hybrid cultural space will emerge. It is meant to serve as a
place of meeting and exchange for the visitors to The World Is Not Fair
– The Great World's Fair 2012, but also as a venue for events. A
comprehensive program of lectures, discussions, and film screenings will be
presented here.
The World Is Not Fair – The Great
World's Fair 2012 is one of two large-scale projects organized by the
Hebbel am Ufer at the end of the directorship of Matthias Lilienthal. As
such, it is also a contribution to a debate that has been ongoing since the
fall of the Berlin Wall about the cultural use of buildings that have lost
their originally planned definitions over the course of history.
Raumlaborberlin has been working at the boundaries of architecture, art,
and urbanism since 1999. Strategies for urban restructuring are examined in
interdisciplinary working teams. As opposed to a city of inclusion and
exclusion, Raumlabor is on the lookout for a city of possibilities. In
terms of its practice, architecture is a labor for experimental,
collaborative, passionate action in urban space. Construction is thus not
so much to be understood as working on an object, but as developing a
narrative that becomes part of a place.
With:
andcompany&Co., Dellbrügge & de Moll, Lukas Feireiss, Harun
Farocki, Erik Göngrich, Institut für Raumexperimente, Hans-Werner
Kroesinger, machina eX, Rabih Mroué, Toshiki Okada, Willem de Rooij,
Tracey Rose, Umschichten, Dries Verhoeven, Tamer Yigit/Branka Prlic.
A production by HAU and raumlaborberlin. Sponsored with funds from
the Hauptstadtkulturfonds, Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin and
Schering Stiftung. A cooperation with Grün Berlin GmbH and IGA
2017.
*Image above:
Model of the pavilion of Toshiki
Okada, "Unable to see."
Copyright raumlaborberlin
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