Cases and conditions
Cases and Conditions has brought together students with different artistic and architectural positions, from different geographical and cultural backgrounds, from Argentina, Australia, Iran, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, and Germany –some with Chinese and Italian roots. We have learned and continue to learn from our situated stories and experiences, from our particular works and biographies. To prepare and to begin our processes, we shared reading lists to connect and confront our work. Yet, our conversation opened with a counterpart to each position, with the ideas, methods, problems of another case, an artwork, an exhibition, a proposition, a crisis, a war – particularly and in relation to our own practices. Thus, starting from the students‘ previous work and knowledge, we have expanded our understanding of ‘practice’ through research, conversation, aesthetic, architectural, and media experimentation. Beyond forms of making, we have engaged in theoretical discussions as well as forms of social, political, and organisational engagement. Our processes are still open and ongoing. The idea is to evolve our work beyond the framework of one semester, in another, unforeseen direction, to reflect on its conditions, its premises, technologies, and goals. As a next step, we will share our processes with students of the art school in Bremen and a wider public in an exhibition / discussion at the project space top e.v. in Berlin. We do not have an answer to the question of what media architecture might be (nor do we aspire to one), but we do know that our collective project can initiate discussions about space, language and data, as well as practices and politics of life, resistance, and change.
Mona Mahall, Sabine Zierold, Yelta Köm