Critical Mass for Freedom and Movement

© Crit­i­cal Mass Berlin

Every last Fri­day of the month, cyclists meet in both large and small cities to take to the streets in con­voy and as sheer mass. The prin­ci­ple of this gath­er­ing uses a rule of the road traf­fic reg­u­la­tions accord­ing to which a group of at least twelve cyclists is con­sid­ered a vehi­cle and can, there­fore, pass through a traf­fic light that turns red. Those who cycle in front decide where to go. The cyclists want to draw atten­tion to the fact that even today, the car-friend­ly city from the last cen­tu­ry is still a real­i­ty in many places. Thus, Crit­i­cal Mass is a peace­ful and sol­idary protest against the hege­mo­ny of motor­ized traf­fic in urban plan­ning worldwide.


Project

Crit­i­cal Mass


Actors

cyclists


Year

Since 1997


Loca­tion

Berlin, Ger­many

© Crit­i­cal Mass Berlin
© Crit­i­cal Mass Berlin
© Crit­i­cal Mass Berlin
© Crit­i­cal Mass Berlin

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Through the City, Again

© VG Bild-Kun­st, Bonn, 2020; Pho­to Angela Siev­er, Cour­tesy of Ger­hard Lang and Galerie Albrecht in Berlin

The Mobile Zebra Cross­ing is a portable device that can be deployed when encoun­ter­ing unwieldy street sit­u­a­tions. Its pur­pose is to make it easy for pedes­tri­ans to tra­verse in places where there are no legal cross­ing options. How­ev­er, because of the size and cor­re­spond­ing weight of the car­pet-cross­ing, it can­not be used by one per­son alone. It takes many who must be will­ing to car­ry and roll. The cross­ing of an oth­er­wise uncross­able street con­se­quen­tial­ly becomes a col­lec­tive action, a kind of protest march. While this arti­fact may seem play­ful, it also points to the stub­born­ly per­sis­tent seg­re­ga­tion of var­i­ous groups in urban space. Cel­e­brat­ing the most sus­tain­able of all modes of trans­porta­tion, the Mobile Zebra Cross­ing engages in ques­tions about how a just city for pedes­tri­ans might look.


Project

The Mobile Zebra Crossing


Artists

Ger­hard Lang with Hel­mut Aebis­ch­er, Ruth Jureczek and numer­ous walk­ers and artists


Year

1993


Loca­tion

Kas­sel, Germany



Ger­hard Lang, The Mobile Zebra Cross­ing (1993). A pro­ces­sion of 600 peo­ple moves through the streets, back­yards and park­ing lots in the cen­ter of Kas­sel and, in hon­or of the founder of the sci­ence of walk­ing, Lucius Bur­ck­hardt, rolls out the car­ried car­pet wher­ev­er nec­es­sary to cross large routes. © VG Bild-Kun­st, Bonn, 2020; Pho­to Angela Siev­er, Cour­tesy of Ger­hard Lang and Galerie Albrecht in Berlin
© VG Bild-Kun­st, Bonn, 2020; Pho­to Angela Siev­er, Cour­tesy of Ger­hard Lang and Galerie Albrecht in Berlin
© VG Bild-Kun­st, Bonn, 2020; Pho­to Angela Siev­er, Cour­tesy of Ger­hard Lang and Galerie Albrecht in Berlin

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Provoking Encounters

The Robert Walser sculp­ture wants to rethink Robert Walser and pro­voke encoun­ters. Accord­ing to Hirschhorn, it wants to be an event and shape a new form of art in pub­lic space. Yet the Hirschhorn land­scape of palettes, ply­wood boards and adhe­sive tape is not an object that is just stand­ing around some­where and always looks the same. It wants to be acces­si­ble to every­one at all times and is actu­al­ly only cre­at­ed through inter­ac­tion with the space, through the activ­i­ties that take place in it, and through the peo­ple who appro­pri­ate these spaces. Thomas Hirschhorn, Robert Walser-Sculp­ture, 2019, Place de la Gare, Biel/Bienne, Switzer­land. Cour­tesy the artist and ESS/SPA Swiss Sculp­ture Exhi­bi­tion. © Enrique Muñoz García

Thomas Hirschhorn’s works address the chal­lenges of our time. They deal with cli­mate emer­gency and jus­tice, con­sumer excess and alien­ation. Many of the geopo­lit­i­cal dis­cus­sions raised by the artist, which we can usu­al­ly hold at a dis­tance, col­lapse over and upon us. We break in. We become part of the Hirschhorn­ian cos­mos, which so clear­ly says how impor­tant it is to take a stance. At first glance, the exhib­it­ed col­lage seems strange­ly sober, almost alien­at­ed. Val­ues and atti­tudes, not solu­tions, are at its core. We seek sim­ple answers to the mul­ti­tude of ques­tions in vain. Rather, the project is about estab­lish­ing social rela­tion­ships, act­ing togeth­er, the inven­tion of prac­tices that pro­duce or change spaces.


Artist

Thomas Hirschhorn


Project

Schema Art and Pub­lic Space


Year

2020


Project

Robert-Walser-Sculp­ture


Com­mis­sion

Fon­da­tion Expo­si­tion Suisse de Sculp­ture-ESS/S­tiftung Schweiz­erische Plas­tikausstel­lung SPA


Year

2019


Loca­tion

Biel, Switzer­land


Project

Too too-much much


Com­mis­sion

Muse­um Dhondt-Dhaenens


Year

2010


Loca­tion

Deurle, Bel­gium

»I love Robert Walser« says Hirschhorn about the writer born in Biel, Switzer­land. Walser always “described the small, the unno­ticed, the weak, the unim­por­tant, the seri­ous, [took it] seri­ous­ly and was inter­est­ed in it. It was in this spir­it that the Robert Walser sculp­ture, a built land­scape that will fill the entire sta­tion fore­court of Biel/Bienne in 2019, was cre­at­ed as a reminder and homage to as well as a meet­ing place with this man and his work. It was planned and real­ized as a pub­lic place of expe­ri­ence, open to all—with 86 days—of read­ings, exhi­bi­tions, a lit­er­a­ture insti­tute, a Walser cen­ter with a work­ing library, a dai­ly news­pa­per and a bar, Esperan­to cours­es and the­ater, children’s pro­grams, talks, films, doc­u­men­taries, hikes and dai­ly open­ings. Thomas Hirschhorn, Robert Walser-Sculp­ture, 2019, Place de la Gare, Biel/Bienne, Switzer­land. Cour­tesy the artist and ESS/SPA Swiss Sculp­ture Exhi­bi­tion. © Enrique Muñoz García
»You need to have a plan,« says Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn, and there­fore maps his work and think­ing in detailed text-image col­lages. Thomas Hirschhorn, Schema: Art and Pub­lic Space, 2016, 80×150 cm, Card­board, prints, tape. Cour­tesy of the Artist and Gal­le­ria Alfon­so Arti­a­co, Napoli
Thomas Hirschhorn, Robert Walser-Sculp­ture, 2019, Place de la Gare, Biel/Bienne, Switzer­land. Cour­tesy the artist and ESS/SPA Swiss Sculp­ture Exhi­bi­tion. © Enrique Muñoz García

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The Street as a Protest Space

© Crim­son His­to­ri­ans & Urbanists

As the work of Crim­son His­to­ri­ans and Urban­ists shows, lim­it­ing roads to dis­cus­sions of mobil­i­ty would be neg­li­gent. After all, street spaces also act pri­mar­i­ly as spaces of protest. The street, closed off and swept emp­ty of traf­fic, becomes a stage for expres­sions of dis­con­tent­ment and dis­sat­is­fac­tion with state sys­tems or polit­i­cal deci­sions. Crimson’s work speaks of these strug­gles as well as of the dynam­ics and forces that are revealed here. The future of protest move­ments, they argue, is close­ly linked to the street as a place of assem­bly acces­si­ble to all. But this under­stand­ing is not a giv­en every­where. What hap­pens, for exam­ple, if sur­veil­lance gets out of hand? Or, Crim­son asks, will this be the very thing that trig­gers new protests?


Project

Do You Hear the Peo­ple Sing?


Authors

Crim­son His­to­ri­ans and Urbanists


Year

Since 2015


Loca­tions

Var­i­ous

Exhi­bi­tion view Venice Bien­nale of Archi­tec­ture, Venice »Free­space«, Venice, Italy, 2018 © Andrea Sarti/CAST1466. Cour­tesy of the Japan Foundation

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Small Fortified Buildings

The iso­lat­ed house stands like a bas­tion against the changes of the Istan­bul dis­trict Fikirte­pe decid­ed by the author­i­ties. Ahmet Öğüt, Plea­sure Places of All Kinds; Fikirte­pe Quar­ter, sculp­ture, 150×150×70 cm, 2014 © pri­vate col­lec­tion, Amsterdam

We peer into a pit dug deep into the ground. In the mid­dle: a last iso­lat­ed house on a mas­sive clump of earth. Nail hous­es, that’s what these structures—left in appar­ent wastelands—are called. For Ahmet Öğüt, these hous­es are »expres­sions of indi­vid­ual every­day resis­tance against strate­gies of state or cor­po­rate con­straint.« They are rem­nants of hasty urban­iza­tion process­es and, at the same time, speak of dis­place­ment. Öğüt’s mod­el rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the nail hous­es record this state of things as a warn­ing. And so, resis­tance to the relent­less glob­al real estate indus­try and spec­u­la­tive land devel­op­ment is made vis­i­ble in the long term and thus nego­tiable for others.


Pro­jekt

Plea­sure Places of All Kinds


Artist

Ahmet Öğüt


Year

2014


Loca­tion

Istan­bul, Turkey

Ahmet Öğüt, Plea­sure Places of All Kinds © Ahmet Öğüt
Ahmet Öğüt, Plea­sure Places of All Kinds © Ahmet Öğüt
Instal­la­tion view of a nail house, Istan­bul. Since a law was passed in 2012, res­i­den­tial build­ings that do not meet the earth­quake safe­ty reg­u­la­tions may be demol­ished. In the Istan­bul dis­trict of Fikirte­pe, many thou­sands of hous­es, many of which were home-built with the tac­it approval of the author­i­ties, have been affect­ed by the demo­li­tion due to the accom­pa­ny­ing urban trans­for­ma­tion process­es. These changes have been cre­at­ing immense con­flicts between res­i­dents of the quar­ter and the city admin­is­tra­tion or real estate com­pa­nies for years. Ahmet Ögüt, Plea­sure Places Of All Kinds, Fikirte­pe Quar­ter, sculp­ture, 150×150×70cm, 2014. pri­vate col­lec­tion, Ams­ter­dam. Exhi­bi­tion view Van Abbe­mu­se­um, Eind­hoven © Peter Cox

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