#1 - Walk
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back to the current AAVS Frankfurt | Rhein Main 2016
Peripheral Museum of Contemporary Art #1 at Salon Kennedy
See the exhibition at Salon Kennedy.
Step 5: EXHIBITION
Benchmark
Group two, consiting of Joe Huyn, Judy Mahfouz and Victor Sardenberg created "Benchmark", a fictional hiking trail through the Spessart forest. The trail connects 17 villages within a distance of more than 107 km of the Spessart Natural Park. The route is characterized by individual benches, that are gradually incorporated into the trail every 2 km. Each bench is designed and created by an interanational artist. "Benchmark" integrates existing infrastructures and leaves its marks on bus-stops or camping sites. Initiated by the local Kunstverein, the trail is then taken further and developed by the citizens of the Spessart.
Including international artists attract an external art-audience while the benches are at the same time practical for the everyday hiker as well as the citizens to rest, relax and enjoy their forest.
Between Quarries
To answer the above question, one group, including Pujan Karam, Dalal Alhashash and Cláudia Costa developed a reactivation for the derelict quarries of the Spessart. Being a witness of former econimcal systems and structures of the area, the quarries are mainly left to be taken back by nature. Yet, the huge sinkholes present an opportunity for creative usage that can attract a new audience to the area, creating an interest and at the same time raisng awareness.
Through a ficitional trailer, the group imagined a festival of arts and culture with internationally renowned artist such as Lawrence Weiner Pierre Hughes and Claire, who use the territory as an inspiration for new works, to then display and present them in line with the 'Between Quarries' festival. The festival is a settle approach of using culture to reactivate the area. Rather than externally landing there, the festival is integrated in its surrounding. It presents an organic developing in line with the exhitsing nature and culture.
To see the full trailer click here.
Step 4: STRATEGY
Spessart
For the first AAVS, we focused on the Spessart - a forestry mountain range to the east of the Rhein-Main area. Spessart is a Mittelgebirge, a range of low wooded mountains - an area of 87% woodlands, which presents the largest oak forest worldwide. Within the area, villages appear as small „islands“ split up and isolated by mountains and woods. The hills and its settlements range in an altitude from 450-600m height. The Spessart is bordered by two motorways and is being crossed by two further Bundesstraßen; all running in an east-west axis. The whole area falls under two governing counties: 3/5 are Bavarian while 2/5 are on Hessians grounds. Economically, the Spessart villages are on a downturn. Over the last years, essential services, like retail, the butcher and even the supermarket shut down. Even educational facilities such as schools or kindergarten have to close down. Moreover citizens accept hours of commuting everyday in order to find services, leisure and cultural activities in the metropolitan region.
So how can cultural value be added to the urban and its territory?
Step 3: TERRITORY
Symposium
Lecturers
Juliane von Herz (Art Historian, Curator)
Independent curator, consultant and writer, Frankfurt.
Dipl. – Ing. Christian Holl (Architect, Journalist)
Founder and publisher „frei04-publizistik“
Director BDA (Bund Deutscher Architekten) Hessen
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Martin Knöll
Professor, Research Group Urban Health Games, TU Darmstadt
M.A. Christina Korzen (Curator, Art Historian)
Director and curator of Sammlung Grässlin
Fabian Schöneich (Curator)
Curator of Portikus, Frankfurt
previously assistant curator at Kunsthalle Basel
Yves Scherer (Artist)
Artist, New York & Berlin
Matthias Ulrich (Curator)
Curator of Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt
Prof. Dr. Kai Vöckler (Urbanist, Journalist)
Founder of „Archis Interventions“
Endowed Professor for „creativity in urban context“, HfG Offenbach
Step 2: DEBATE
For the first time the AA Visiting School Program was present in the Rhein-Main Metropolitan space and identified, conceptualized and realized Cross Territorial Cultural Supply Chains. A cultural network through architectural interventions redefined territorial strategies connecting the metropolitan with the Hinterland and vice versa.
Todays central European landscape can be defined as a multiple image of a fragmented space with little dynamics within its territorial elements. A clear division towards the Hinterland (rural areas) is taking place resulting in a cultural split with the metropolitan space. While the Hinterland is economically still strongly positioned, it tends to loose its social and cultural voice resulting in isolation.
A clear focus that year lied on the cross territorial supply chain between Frankfurt, its metropolitan space and the hinterland of Spessart. Various scenarios were developed in order to propose different levels of intensifications, new relations and negotiations within the territory and across the metropolitan space. The students were encouraged to rethink cultural productions and social infrastructures through cross territorial supply chains. Strategies should operate on territorial level, proposing systems of architectural interventions closely negotiating with the metropolitan institutions to establish a local and cross territorial knowledge production.
The aim of the Peripheral Museum of Contemporary Art is to add sustainable value to the urban and territory and create a voice for the citizens, while the architectural presence must be established both from above – conceiving new territories and networks – and from beneath – establishing architectural spaces.
Our Understanding
Conclusivly we established one coherent as well as several individual, personal devices for the Peripheral Museum of Contemporary Art. As partly previously mentioned, (from top left, clockwise) Victor established a system among public sculptures in the city to form one urban network.
Dalal saw the Rotunde at the Schirn Kunsthalle as an urban hybrid and a museum buffer zone; Claudia questioned the role of the inside and outside of a museum in relation to the Portikus in Frankfurt; Pujan established an online archive which activates and goes bejond the pure documentation; Judy understood an urban stretch, the embankment, as one continuous museum.
Exercise II
Having previously looked at one important art institution with a specific personal viewpoint, each student chose one Frankfurt institution to be mapped, documented, fragmentated or drawn in relation to the larger system, having the PMCA in mind.
On the left, Judy understood the embankment with its high density of individual museums as one urban museum.
On the right Victor is looking at art in the public realm and how the fragmented institution can organize urbanity.
Exercise I
For the first exercise students were asked to deliver a Polyptich consisting of 9 x 9 images = 81 image in total, representing their personal view of the Städel museum, one of the leading art institutions worldwide.
On the left Claudia questioned the persistence of an exhibition through the medium of printing.
On the right Dalal highlighted the identification of an institution by its path internally and externally.
The Analysis
A series of fieldtrips to local art institutions allowed to sharpen the understanding of the current system and its architecture. The different spaces presented various mechanisms of establishing cultural production. For example, the visit at the collection of Lufthansa at their headquater Aviation Centre examplified how architecture and art can organize a working environment, while the Rotunde of the Schirn operates on an urban level.
The Museum
What constitutes a museum nowadays? Is it an archive, a space that preserves, organizes and registers art? Is it an educational tool that supports cultural knowledge production among the citizens? Is it about attracting visitor flows and creating spectacles? Is it about the exhibit, no matter where it is presented?
How will the PMCA look like?
Step 1: DEVICE
10.03.2015 - 22.03.2015
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PMCA #1 - Spessart | WALK
Peripheral Museum of Contemporary Art
AA Visiting School Frankfurt | Rhein Main
Architectural Association School of Architecture
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