Café bau bau and new publications
Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig
Karl-Tauchnitz-Straße 9-11
D-04107 Leipzig
Germany
The Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig (GfZK) is pleased to present its newly designed café and its latest publications.
Céline Condorelli: bau bau
Produced by Lars Bergmann and Michael Hahn
Ever since the Museum of Contemporary Art was founded, the museum café has been redesigned by artists at regular intervals. bau bau is the name of the new café created by London-based artist Céline Condorelli. bau bau brings together a sequence of historical and mythological narratives in the form of pieces of furniture, china, lights, and interior architecture. Each narrative element talks about how objects are determined by the way in which they are used, owned, displayed, treated, and classified. bau bau was imagined and performed as part of the School for Design Fiction project by James Langdon.
Book: James Langdon: The School for Design Fiction
The School for Design Fiction is an itinerant school, which employs the curious genre of ‘design fiction’ to assert storytelling as the primary function of design, assuming that every artifact has the potential to express the character of the culture that produced it. The publication documents and expands on the founding of the school at GfZK Leipzig through a series of imagined scenarios. These include a drama at the printer for architect Augustus Pugin in 1836, the history of the universe as observed on an English hillside in 1937, the first human trial of split brain surgery in California in 1961, and a Scottish speech synthesis studio in 2013.
Edited by Franciska Zólyom, Concept/Text/Graphic Design by James Langdon, Published by Spector Books, 136 pp., German/English.
Book: Kateřina Šedá and BATEŽO MIKILU: Zastávka
In collaboration with six teenagers czech artist Kateřina Šedá created a walk-in model of their home town Zastávka (CZ) in the GfZK Gallery. The exhibition was a result of their long-lasting collective research focused on the place where there “is nothing interesting.” The wish to improve the living conditions of the people and their self-identification with their surrounding resulted in the series of interactive actions. The book reveals the questions that were asked, the knowledge that was gained in the process, and the different interactions. Thus, it shows the process of how the individuals’ perception of their environment changes. Art plays the role of a socially engaged practice and serves as the activator of change. The book is not only a document of the exhibition but also a tourist guide for the village of Zastávka.
Edited by Julia Schäfer. Design by Radim Peško. Published by Spector Books, 167 pp., German/English/Czech.
Book: Art in Times of Grey Democracy (upcoming)
The arts are generally seen as having the capacity to portray things in their complexity, making associations between the views and interests of individuals and the general discourse in such a way that conflicts are not avoided, but recognized in their social significance and channeled to function in a productive way. Based on the series “Performative Democracy” conceived by Joanna Warsza for GfZK, the publication Art in Times of Grey Democracy asks how art can sharpen our critical perception and the forming of our opinions and how it can contribute towards implementing social and political power of action while incorporating our own involvement. With contributions by Ulf Aminde, Pablo Helguera, Lenka Kukurova, Julia Kurz, Elzbieta Matynia, Alexandra Pirici, Joanna Warsza, and Franciska Zólyom.
Edited by Julia Kurz, Joanna Warsza, and Franciska Zólyom. Design by Leila Tabassomi. Published by Spector Books, 64 pp., German/English.
All projects are part of the series Responsive Subjects – On the Design of Collective Actions. Responsive Subjects is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation, the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony, The German-Czech Future Fund, the British Council, and the Friends of the Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig.
