The production of (CCA) space

by ccasingapore

Public talk: The production of (CCA) space: Apolonija Šušteršič and Jesko Fezer

Tuesday 28 January 2014, 7.30 – 9pm
CCA – NTU Centre for Contemporary Art
Block 43, Malan Road, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 109443
+65-66840998

Jesko Fezer, Exhibition design for Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin: The Whole Earth Kooperative für Darstellungspolitik, 2013

CCA – NTU Centre for Contemporary Art is a new institution positioning itself as a contemporary art research centre as well as active exhibition space. CCA has overlapping positions as a research centre, exhibition space and artist in residence/research fellowship programme. How do we physically realise these various functions? How do we build an institution and space which marries our different functions the forward thinking and ambition of what the CCA will become with the historical site it is based on Gillman Barracks? Looking at two practitioners Apolonija Šušteršič and Jesko Fezer whose work have used ideas of spatial and social transformation in their practice, this talk will look at the role of designing spaces that aim to contribute and challenge sites of knowledge production.

SOCIAL WEAVER

SOCIAL WEAVER is like a species of bird…with the most spectacular structures built as their nests. However in the case of her presentation at CCA, Apolonija Šušteršič will talk about the role of the artist and art institution as a “social weaver” as somebody that creates and enables a place for critical reflection, communication, and discussion on urgent subjects that are often dismissed and overlooked in the rest of the society. She will be presenting the process of the “social weaving” through her own practice situated in-between architecture and design, sociology and urban studies. An emphasis on personal involvement and subjective observations which utilise and transform methods from these disciplines along with new inventions are strategies used to build a specific situation for a specific context.

Robustness and Openness for Negotiations and Conflicts in Design

Jesko Fezer will discuss and present several projects created for cultural institutions in diverse cooperations. These projects are based on the assumption that design is not able to produce any homogenizing, settling, durable, optimal or even just satisfying solutions. Design is not able to solve problems produced by political and social misrelations of desires, practices and actualities. Perhaps a more interesting dimension of design is its potential to articulate and transform these conflicts. Architecture, planning and design – even or especially in the cultural field – have the capacity to enable social-spatial negotiations. The talk will argue that vague openness as well as explicit robustness can support this.

Apolonija Šušteršič is an architect and visual artist. She usually makes extensive researches into specific situations found on location, which she uses as a starting point of her project. She pursues new possibilities and makes proposals from a hybrid point of view that ranges beyond art and architecture, making socially committed works naturally taking the form of everyday life activity. Her practice is embedded within interdisciplinary discourse and usually includes collaborations with other professionals such as architects, urban planners, curators, sociologists, and local population. Together with architect and a professor, Meike Schalk she formed an operative unit, which occasionally produces research, projects, actions and discussions. Apolonija Šušteršič has a PhD from University of Lund, Malmö Art Academy, Sweden; and runs her own art / architecture studio practice in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and in Ljubljana, Slovenia. As a former professor at Royal University College of Fine Arts she established a Department of Permanent Transformation; a mobile unit; a parasite that could be plugged into any institution that performs an educational function. Apolonija Šušteršič participated in a number of exhibitions within and beyond the international contemporary art institutions including Berlin Biennale; 12th Architecture Biennale, Venice; Artes Mundi 5, among others.

Jesko Fezer works as Designer and Author. In cooperation with ifau he realized several architecture projects, he co-founded the thematic bookshop Pro qm and he participates in the exhibition design studio Kooperative für Darstellungspolitik. Jesko Fezer is professor for experimental design at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg. His latest publication is: Civic City Cahier 6: Design in and Against the Neoliberal City, London 2013.