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