The Showroom | Book Launch: SUPPORT STRUCTURES and Displayer 03

The two publication projects SUPPORT STRUCTURES and Displayer 03 were made independently, and under different conditions – the first out of a self-organised initiative, and the second within the framework of an art academy – but emerged from similar concerns, starting from the re-politicisation of the cultural sphere and how it is conditioned by its modes of display. Both publications were born out of the realisation that certain vocabularies were missing or absent, and to re-invent new ones in response. This event will explore possibilities for thinking through supporting structures and modes of display, towards the production of space as a form of exhibition practice and as a permanent, collective construction site.

The evening will host a dialogue between Céline Condorelli and Doreen Mende, performed through both publications and interrupted by various contributions including: Martin Beck’s video work About the Relative Size of Things in the Universe, a filmed Displayer by Filipa César, and the 10th anniversary 2nd edition set of Fluffers by Flatpack 001 (Mark and Stephen Beasley). 23 packs of the Fluffers II cards will be hidden upstairs at The Showroom, for people to find and keep on the night.

SUPPORT STRUCTURES
Author/editor: Céline Condorelli
A co-production with: Support Structure (Céline Condorelli & Gavin Wade) with James Langdon
Published by: Sternberg Press, Berlin, New York (2009)

Displayer 03
Publisher: Wilfried Kuehn, Exhibition Design and Curatorial Practice programme and Stephan Trüby, Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) / ZKM Karlsruhe
Chief-Editor: Doreen Mende
Editorial team: Students of the program Exhibition Design and Curatorial Practice

SUPPORT STRUCTURES is a manual for what bears, sustains, props, and holds up, for those things that give 'support'. While the work of supporting might traditionally appear as subsequent, unessential, and lacking value in itself, this manual is an attempt to restore attention to one of the neglected, yet crucial modes through which we apprehend and shape the world. The book offers support through potential methodologies, inspirations and activations for practice, and addresses important questions for art and architecture practices on forms of display, organisation, articulation, appropriation, autonomy, and temporariness, and the manifestations of blindness towards them. It is a publication project for the creation of the missing bibliography of support structures.

Contributors include: Céline Condorelli, Mark Cousins, Jaime Stapleton, Andrea Phillips, Bart de Baere, Wouter Davidts, Eyal Weizman & Rony Brauman, Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, Jan Verwoert; Michael Asher, Artist Placement Group, Can Altay, Conrad Atkinson, Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Lonnie van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan, Filippo Brunelleschi, Banu Cennetoglu, Christopher D’Arcangelo, Martin Beck, Cevdet Erek, Flatpack 001 (Mark and Stephen Beasley), Andrea Fraser, Buckminster Fuller, Ryan Gander, Ella Gibbs, Gareth Jones, Frederick Kiesler, Lucy Kimbell, James Langdon, El Lissitzky, Gordon Matta-Clark, Enzo Mari, Antoni Muntadas, Peter Nadin, ‘The offices of Peter Fend, Coleen Fitzgibbon, Jenny Holzer, Peter Nadin, Richard Prince & Robin Winters’, Radim Pesko, Lilly Reich, Jane Rendell, Support Structure, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Kurt Vonnegut, Lawrence Weiner, Christopher Williams, Carey Young.

http://supportstructures.org

DISPLAYER 03, The points of departure for the third issue of Displayer are the demands, challenges, and the potentialities as well as the impossibilities of exhibiting space itself. In this context, space is not considered as a mere geometric entity but rather as a conflicting field of relations, situations and events. The exhibition of space becomes strongly connected to performative acts and to questions about the requirements of constructions in space. Space is the fabric in which events occur; and events, in turn activate space culturally, socially, politically and geographically. More than 20 interviews, statements and essays were produced exclusively for Displayer 03. The contributions of the artists, architects and writers have arisen from intensive several-day workshops, as well as panel discussions, email and phone conversations, dialogic talks, public presentations, debates and seminar projects that were initiated through the programʼs curriculum.

Displayer is a magazine of original sound. It is released once a year as a publication series of the Exhibition Design and Curatorial Practice programme at the University of Art and Design in Karlsruhe.

Contributions in include: Eva Kraus, Tilo Schulz, Martin Beck, Charles Jencks, Pablo Bronstein, Katrin Mayer, Stefan Römer, Walter Benjamin, Alfred Barr, Ines Katenhusen, Milica Tomic, Omer Fast, Sina Najafi, Hans Hollein, Joseph Dabernig, Achim Lengerer, Paul Gangloff, Dominique Gonzalez- Foerster, Ines Weizman, Moritz Küng, Kersten Geers, Giorgio Grassi, Guillaume Paoli, Heiner Mühlmann, Stephan Trüby, Wilfried Kuehn.

http://www.displayer-hfg.de