hier entsteht
what: book design
where: berlin
when: 2004
the book is part of the the »metrozones« book series and was edited by jesko fezer and matthias heyden and published by “b_books”. the book deals with questions of participation in architecture.
the book itself is divided in 3 parts / 3 kinds of paper: introduction, interview texts and an architecture guide. the main part, the interview text section in the book has a complex footnote and comment system which was developed by the editors and myself. it allows the editors to comment on the interview texts in a highly differentiated way – from classical footnotes, quotes, references to showing book covers and architectural drafts. these comment layout boxes run parallel to the main text in the upper part of the pages. the extremely high format of the book refers to architectural guides. to assure a good usability when opening and holding the book, a OTA binding was chosen (allows the book to open easily and reduces the tension in the book back) the book has received an acknowledgement by the »stiftung buchkunst« for one of the best german book designs.
metrozones
G8 Hello posters
what: poster series
where: germany
when: 2007
“spring 2007; ahead of the g8 summit in germany. the g8 working group of the berlin-based group fels (für eine linke strömung) and the design studio image-shift (www.image-shift.net) have been meeting and discussing. the first material output of these meetings is the posters series hello flexibility, hello borders and hello gender. through the texts, the images and their interplay, we have sought to highlight the ambivalence of the themes addressed. their goal is to make a contribution (hopefully lasting beyond june 2007) to the making sense of the social reality for which the g8 – as an aspect of governance within empire – stands. the discussion is now opened, and we look forward to your response.”
hello flexibility: living – and making a living – nowadays demands unrelenting flexibility. we have to be able to do more, know more, and learn more. we have to move further, and at shorter notice. we’ve got used to having to walk into/out of jobs on demand (and sometimes as we please), and finding ways of making our ‘free’ time productive. decades ago, the routine of 9-to-5, five days a week, was rejected. and we wouldn’t want to go back. but is this really what we – or those who came before us – fought for? and where will the pressing needs and desires in the struggles of today and tomorrow take us?
hello borders: rolled out, seemingly arbitrarily. segregating. stratifying. governed and sometimes guarded. between and within territories. yet these borders are never entirely impermeable. there are always flight lines which take us through them and beyond – their realisation expressive of an irre-pressible desire. as deterritorialisation is enacted, everyone finds themselves constituent of a new social reality – a process which nobody can hold back.
hello gender: sex and gender roles are not as clear or static as they once seemed. but what if we tried to push things a little further? what if we were to more fully unlearn the gender and sex roles assigned to us? what if we were to stop saying “i am…” and started to say, “we want to become…”? and why is it so much easier to pose questions like these, than it is to enact them in our daily practice?
we have printed 2000 copies of each poster. we hope that they will be hung in people’s flats, in bars, in cinemas, schools, universities and bookshops, as well as in the streets. we are more than happy for them to be reprinted – including and especially in other languages and countries.
the iraqi equation
what: booklet
where: berlin
when: 2006
“contemporary arab representations. the iraqi equation” – was a exhibition at the kunstwerke berlin (KW) curated by catherine david. notes by the exhibitors: “the images and news that have reached us since the gulf war, since the invasion and occupation of iraq, depict the extremely complex political, but also cultural and social situation of the country in extremely simplified form. but the dramatic situation the country is living through is no reason to ignore the creative achievements, ideas, and difficulties that have shaped iraqi culture in the past decades – a period upon which the revolution, political violence, and finally the consolidation of the dictatorship have left their stamp.since the end of the 1950s, iraqi culture has been characterized by several phases of short, long, or sometimes permanent exile, by the growth of a vast, worldwide diaspora, and by the constrained development of artistic creation in the country itself. it is high time to confront with each other the various discourses and positions that have developed differently in iraq and abroad, in order to map out the tensions and antagonisms resulting from this special situation. to this end, it seemed important to us to provide a forum for creative iraqis who worked and work in the country itself or in exile: writers and poets, filmmakers, photographers and artists, experts and political analysts, but also a few foreign iraq specialists, whose analyses contribute to a better understanding of the problems that led to the current situation”
kunstwerke berlin
