Geert Lovink on Sun, 20 Apr 1997 21:37:37 +0200 (MET DST) |
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Syndicate: a workspace during documenta x/ kassel |
Hybrid WorkSpace a temporary laboratory for the Orangerie a project by Eike Becker and Geert Lovink/Pit Schultz, Micz Flor, Thorsten Schilling, Heike Foell, Thomax Kaulmann, the dX team and many others intitiated by Catherine David (documenta X), Klaus Biesenbach, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Nancy Spector (Berlin Biennial) The Orangerie will be transformed into an open media studio to collect, select, connect, record, and distribute information and content. It will deal with current social, political and cultural issues. In the Hybrid WorkSpace there will be possibilities to comment, interview, discuss and present the resulting data and forge connections with material brought in from outside. Distribution beyond the Orangerie will be realised via selected zones on the Internet as well as through print media and radio broadcasting. A subsequent publication will allow the content flow produced throughout the documenta X to be widely accessible. The Hybrid WorkSpace can best be described as a temporary laboratory that produces its own type of content. It also condenses the viewpoints and positions brought to Kassel by the '100 days - 100 guests' program into streams of subjective approaches, represented in digital data. Most importantly, it allows remote participants direct access to the developments and debates in the Orangerie. This includes input from external areas into the physical setting of the Orangerie. The architecture itself reflects a non-hierarchical perception of the different functions, zones, images and situations. Similar to icons on a screen, the different elements of the set can be decomposed and rearranged. Projection columns, pedestals, and tables create an interface between the real and the virtual. The polymorphous and movable architectural elements precipitate a playful dialogue between themselves, including the hosts and the guests. Furthermore the chosen interior appears useful as a laboratory and workshop for programmed and sponteneous interactions and presentations. Multifunctional video and audio facilities are included in movable columns that structure and serve the space. Maintaining flexibility, the Orangerie can be darkened or lightened, full or empty; it can host images or sound, and might be noisy or completely silent. The Hybrid WorkSpace is an ambient space and document store; it is a pin-board and global newspaper; and it is both local and world wide radio channel. Out of this heterogeneity, the project constitutes itself professionally improvised as a media laboratory involving both transparent and opaque fields of activities. In this way, it becomes simultaneously a dynamic system - open and closed, private and public. The Hybrid WorkSpace mixes old and new media, connecting data streams of different sources. The polymorphous structure allows spontaneous rearrangements to suit the demands imposed on the space by discourse, presentations, events, and guests working in the Orangerie. This could be interviews, dialogues, group discussions and informal gatherings. It is a zone of critical thought and productive conflict, a social space to manufacture consent, initialise dissent, a place where distribution, reception and production compress and expand. Within the social context the relation between senders and receivers make things happen. Meanwhile traditional broadcasting media like radio, video or journals become technical metaphors to put information onto the Internet. The organisation of time, the scheduling, and the architecture of a collaborative archive as an arena of memory will be modeled in space as in software. We encourage collaborations with radio producers, virtual communities, video makers, magazines, etc. to provide the technical facilities to easily produce vivid net content. In addition to the co-ordinators of the space there will be temporary teams of 2 to 4 editors who will be in Kassel for a 10-14 days period. After the preparation and realisation in Kassel, the WorkSpace will be transferred to Berlin as a part of the first Berlin Biennial for the first time scheduled for summer 1998 in various locations throughout the city. http://www.documenta.de/workspace e-mail: workspace@documenta.de the current address: ----------------------------------- - Berlin Biennale - - - - fuer zeitgenoessische Kunst - ----------------------------------- Auguststrasse 69 - 10117 Berlin berlin.biennale@kunst.b.shuttle.de tel: +49.30.285 99148 fax: +49.30.285 99150