Markus Miessen: Cultures of Assembly / Para-Platforms
Galerie VI PER invites you on Thursday, April 11, 2019, at 19:00 to a lecture by German architect Markus Miessen titled Cultures of Assembly / Para-Platforms.
Welcome to Harmonistan! In the last decade, the term "participation" has been increasingly overused. At the moment when everyone becomes a participant, the often uncritical, innocent, and even romantic use of this term becomes frightening. The concept of participation, repeatedly supported by a nostalgic gloss of worthiness, false solidarity, and political correctness, has become a fundamental mode for politicians evading their responsibilities. Similarly to the concept of the independent politician, separated from a particular party, this third part of Miessen's trilogy on "participation" supports the role of what he calls "the one who sits on the bench of impartials," "an unbiased observer from the outside," or "an unauthorized participant"; someone who is not restricted by existing protocols and who enters the battlefield with the ambition to bring about change.
Miessen advocates for an immediate inversion of participation, a model that goes beyond consensus. Instead of understanding participation as a benevolent savior of political struggle, Miessen openly points to the limits and traps of its real motivations. Rather than cultivating a future generation of consensual facilitators and mediators, he defends conflict as a force that does not hinder, but enables. In his work, he calls for a format of conflicting participation – no longer a process in which others are invited "inside," but a means of action without a mandate, in the form of an unsolicited stimulus: a process of forced entry into areas of knowledge that clearly benefit from outside thinking. The lecture will focus on the topic of gathering and physical forms of gathering in the context of Miessen's latest work at Studio Miessen. During the lecture, parallel to the release of his book, Miessen will also present the research project Para-Platforms. Right-wing populism is not a novelty. However, our current historical conjuncture brings its extreme and gaining strength forms that require critical exploration. This applies at the level of spatial representation, virtually executed, designed, and physically constructed – each facilitating an unprecedented development of right-wing political opinions in different ways. In Europe and other countries, neo-Nazism, fundamentalism, and ideologies based on hatred, rooted in violence-prone patriarchal societies, have gained institutional acceptance and political sponsorship across a range of degrees. This reader deals with new ways of moving through space and new patterns of occupying space, examining the implicit relationship between design and politics. Material is never neutral.
Markus Miessen is an architect, publicist, and professor at the Academy of Design at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. He lives in Berlin. He obtained his doctorate at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, London, under the supervision of Eyal Weizman. He is the initiator of the participatory tetralogy, and his work revolves around issues of critical spatial practice, institutional building, and place-related politics. Miessen has previously taught at the Architectural Association in London and was a fellow at Harvard. Recently, he has been awarded the Stiftungsprofessur for critical spatial practice at Städelschule in Frankfurt, as well as the title of Distinguished Professor of Practice at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Miessen is the author of books such as The Nightmare of Participation and Crossbenching (both Sternberg Press, Berlin). His architectural office, Studio Miessen, closely collaborates with a number of artists, including Hito Steyerl and Flaka Haliti, and is currently involved in the spatial re-conceptualization of the Martin-Gropius-Bau museum in Berlin under the new leadership of Stephanie Rosenthal. The studio has realized projects for Artists Space (New York, USA), Artsonje (Seoul, South Korea), Bergen Assembly (Norway), the Berlin Biennale, HKW Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin, Germany), IMA Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane, Australia), Istanbul Biennale (Istanbul, Turkey), Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna, Austria), Kunstverein in Hamburg (Germany), nbk Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (Berlin, Germany), Performa Biennial (New York, USA), Serpentine Gallery (London, UK), Art Institute of Chicago (USA), Witte de With (Rotterdam, Netherlands), and Weltkulturen Museum (Frankfurt, Germany).
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Welcome to Harmonistan! In the last decade, the term "participation" has been increasingly overused. At the moment when everyone becomes a participant, the often uncritical, innocent, and even romantic use of this term becomes frightening. The concept of participation, repeatedly supported by a nostalgic gloss of worthiness, false solidarity, and political correctness, has become a fundamental mode for politicians evading their responsibilities. Similarly to the concept of the independent politician, separated from a particular party, this third part of Miessen's trilogy on "participation" supports the role of what he calls "the one who sits on the bench of impartials," "an unbiased observer from the outside," or "an unauthorized participant"; someone who is not restricted by existing protocols and who enters the battlefield with the ambition to bring about change.
Miessen advocates for an immediate inversion of participation, a model that goes beyond consensus. Instead of understanding participation as a benevolent savior of political struggle, Miessen openly points to the limits and traps of its real motivations. Rather than cultivating a future generation of consensual facilitators and mediators, he defends conflict as a force that does not hinder, but enables. In his work, he calls for a format of conflicting participation – no longer a process in which others are invited "inside," but a means of action without a mandate, in the form of an unsolicited stimulus: a process of forced entry into areas of knowledge that clearly benefit from outside thinking. The lecture will focus on the topic of gathering and physical forms of gathering in the context of Miessen's latest work at Studio Miessen. During the lecture, parallel to the release of his book, Miessen will also present the research project Para-Platforms. Right-wing populism is not a novelty. However, our current historical conjuncture brings its extreme and gaining strength forms that require critical exploration. This applies at the level of spatial representation, virtually executed, designed, and physically constructed – each facilitating an unprecedented development of right-wing political opinions in different ways. In Europe and other countries, neo-Nazism, fundamentalism, and ideologies based on hatred, rooted in violence-prone patriarchal societies, have gained institutional acceptance and political sponsorship across a range of degrees. This reader deals with new ways of moving through space and new patterns of occupying space, examining the implicit relationship between design and politics. Material is never neutral.
Markus Miessen is an architect, publicist, and professor at the Academy of Design at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. He lives in Berlin. He obtained his doctorate at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, London, under the supervision of Eyal Weizman. He is the initiator of the participatory tetralogy, and his work revolves around issues of critical spatial practice, institutional building, and place-related politics. Miessen has previously taught at the Architectural Association in London and was a fellow at Harvard. Recently, he has been awarded the Stiftungsprofessur for critical spatial practice at Städelschule in Frankfurt, as well as the title of Distinguished Professor of Practice at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Miessen is the author of books such as The Nightmare of Participation and Crossbenching (both Sternberg Press, Berlin). His architectural office, Studio Miessen, closely collaborates with a number of artists, including Hito Steyerl and Flaka Haliti, and is currently involved in the spatial re-conceptualization of the Martin-Gropius-Bau museum in Berlin under the new leadership of Stephanie Rosenthal. The studio has realized projects for Artists Space (New York, USA), Artsonje (Seoul, South Korea), Bergen Assembly (Norway), the Berlin Biennale, HKW Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin, Germany), IMA Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane, Australia), Istanbul Biennale (Istanbul, Turkey), Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna, Austria), Kunstverein in Hamburg (Germany), nbk Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (Berlin, Germany), Performa Biennial (New York, USA), Serpentine Gallery (London, UK), Art Institute of Chicago (USA), Witte de With (Rotterdam, Netherlands), and Weltkulturen Museum (Frankfurt, Germany).
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