Utopia Station

UTOPIA STATION, MUNICH

press release May 2004

This Utopia Station, curated by Molly Nesbit, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Rirkrit Tiravanija, follows from several others, some of them gatherings, some of them virtual, some of them exhibitions. The best known, the first large exhibition of Utopia Station, was organized for the Venice Biennale 2003. Before it had closed, the Utopia Station Posters opened in September 2003 at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. This exhibition of the posters was conceived as a prelude to a newly conceived Utopia Station designed to occupy the former Ehrenhalle of the Haus der Kunst. This Utopia Station will become a reality on October 7, 2004, and last for three months, until January 16, 2005.

The former Ehrenhalle of the Haus der Kunst has several pasts, the first being the most infamous: it was designed as a speaking platform and broadcast center for Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist Party. The current administration of the Haus der Kunst has made it a priority to restore the hall to its first state, the better to see its past plainly, tabula rasa, and to establish new, even more powerful uses for a space destined to be haunted by its history. The Utopia Station will contribute to that effort to re-program the space by letting the catalyst Utopia loose there.

The result? Time as well as space in the former Ehrenhalle will be re-programmed and opened. The Utopia Station will become an alternate real-time, a portal through which every visitor can travel as they wish. The Station will be a way-station for those en route to Utopia, the no-place, the unattainable place, that has come to represent the ideal of the better life. Time in the Utopia Station will be structured by a computerized sequence of sounds, videos and quiet time filling an entire day differently.

This new real-time is haunted too. It follows from documentary film and photography, from the living theatre, from critical theory, from geodesies, from contact improvisation, from protest.

Special events, performances, lectures and discussions will be scheduled for Utopia Station itself and others will be offered by Bayerische Rundfunk/ Horspiel und Medienkunst, intermedium, the Bayerische Staatsschauspiel, Dance 2004, the Filmmuseum München and the Münchner Kammerspiele.

Kommentare:

Was ist das denn für ein prätentiöser Wahnsinn: "The Utopia Station will contribute to that effort to re-program the space by letting the catalyst Utopia loose there." Katalysator "utopia" verschmilzt Faschismus mit was??

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