With the launch of the online catalogue of the exhibition cycle Alternatives for Living. Blueprints for Haus Lange Haus Esters, an extraordinary experimental project finds an equally exceptional format. On https://anders-wohnen.online the publication will remain freely accessible on a permanent basis. As Museum Director Katia Baudin underlines: “Throughout the year 2019, fourteen artists, designers and architects realized visionary site-specific works and installations. For all the participants as well as for the Kunstmuseen Krefeld, this project, which marked the centennial of the Bauhaus, was an outstanding and challenging experiment.” The crucial themes of utopia, mobility and dystopia along with the modern architecture by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe were reflected anew, reexamined and reinterpreted.
The artists, designers and architects demonstrated with their new works and installations just how complex and inconclusive the answers to questions concerning life and living in the future are. Utopian and dystopian thoughts are consequently often very close to each other. Seeing the future as a better, socially just, aesthetically pervaded and thus positive utopia is frequently fractured. Doubts seem to have fundamentally called a brave new idyllic future world into question; almost all the works also encompass dystopian aspects.
Alternatives for Living
Blueprints for Haus Lange Haus Esters Krefeld
March 17, 2019–January 26, 2020
artists, designers, architects
Banz & Bowinkel, BLESS, Franck Bragigand, Dunne & Raby, Edition of X in collaboration with Michal Helfman, Didier Fiúza Faustino, Olaf Holzapfel, Christopher Kulendran Thomas in collaboration with Annika Kuhlmann, Laura Lima, raumlaborberlin, Andreas Schmitten, Slavs and Tatars, Apolonija Šušteršič, Andrea Zittel
Curators
Katia Baudin, Magdalena Holzhey, Sylvia Martin
The Alternatives for Living exhibition cycle was funded by
Kunststiftung NRW, Sparkassen-Kulturstiftung Krefeld, Sparkassen-Kulturstiftung Rheinland
