Urban now

Haus der Vorstellung, P2 residence, 2008 © raumlaborberlin



For the P2 residency, Raumlabor mapped the Haus der Vorstellung, a typical mass produced flat in Berlin and overlapped it with a "government-controlled" type of living space (Plattenbau, P2). While the first type of flat was delimited using white masking tape, the second was constructed in 3D using a collection of discarded doors re-cycled into furniture.

© raumlaborberlin

The political transcending of an alienating environment meets a poetic mise-en-abime : playing with conventional architecture by accumulating spaces that mirror each other, making the subversive contrast. Creating space for poetry challenges common urban practices and rethink the concept of housing estates.
The floor mapping strangely echoes archeological plans in its highlighting of superposed rites - when mapping superposition retraces different eras and practices.
The project investigates the Present political context in the way the Situationists used to - the "derive" and escapist wish put in practice here recalls Guy Debord's psychogeographical relief.






White spots, Munich
2006 © Raumlaborberlin

White spots also disrupted the normality of a residential area of Munich. During that playful performance, a group of thirty three cars drew unforeseen white lines along the sides of deserted streets. The awareness created by the transformation of a daily perception, the boring repetitiveness of urban ghettos, provoked conflicts between the artists and the locals.

Thanks to Heike Pauketat

The way out of the Situationists was not to wait for a distant revolution but to reinvent everyday life here and now. To transform the perception of the world and to change the structure of society is the same thing. (...) They therefore tried to construct situations which disrupt the ordinary and normal in order to jolt people out of their customary ways of thinking and acting.
Demanding the impossible, A history of Anarchism, Peter Marshall, 1992, Fontana Press [p.551-53].