After successful completion of the course, students are able to develop exhibition spaces conceived by circulating materials, spaces and discourses; to curate mixed media situations and to shape its mediation means; to conceive, design, and publish audiovisual trailers.

Blockkurs vom 17. bis 29. Februar 2020

A world moved by invisible networks, transnational private interests, algorithmic intelligence and ever-increasing inequalities through the unique lens of Palermo – a crossroads of three continents in the heart of the Mediterranean. Throughout history, the City of Palermo has been a laboratory for diversity and cross-pollination, shaped by continuous migration. In the 1875 painting by Francesco Lojacono, «View of Palermo», nothing was indigenous. Olive trees came from Asia, aspen from the Middle East and eucalyptus from Australia. Citrus trees – the symbol of Sicily – were introduced under Arab sovereignty. The botanical garden of Palermo was founded in 1789 as a laboratory to nurture, test, mix and gather diverse species. The idea of the «garden», exploring its capacity to aggregate difference and to compose life out of movement and migration. Gardens allow for cross-pollination based on encounter. In 1997, French Botanist Gilles Clément described the world as a «planetary garden» with humanity in charge of being its gardener. Twenty years later, the metaphor of the «garden» is not as a space for humans to take control, but rather a site where «gardeners» recognize their dependency on other species, and respond to climate, time, or an array of social factors, in a shared responsibility. This film features Leoluca Orlando as gardener of Palermo. Being native to the universe, he connects mobility in thought and physics to digital competences. The film cites an index of Orlando beings, partly becoming alive in the publication «A QUANTUM CITY» by Vera Bühlmann and Ludger Hovestadt, which Martin Burr handed to the mayor of Palermo for this occasion. So the film features how to become a city and gardener in this and that universe. 

See the film feature The Cities in the Planetary Garden. A Film Feature with the Mayor of Palermo (by Martin Burr), for the Sophistication Conference 2018, here.

«We are all nomads
native to the universe.
This is a stage play,
a narrative about us on the planet.
About how we relate to each other
and to the Great Masters among us.
Welcome to The City.»

(from «A Quantum City» by Ludger Hovestadt et al., Birkhäuser 2015)

Within the studio «planetary gardening - planting generics» we will build sets of discourse spaces circulating through comedies and poetries. Each set consists of 

• a concept for an exhibition,
• a curated program with protagonists related to the stated concept,
• an audiovisual trailer positioning the exhibition in its contexts,
• a documentation about the process and its outcomes. 

Somewhere between nature and culture, these sets respond to needs of our days - such as carbon sequestration, grid-scale energy storage, universal flu vaccine, dementia treatment, ocean clean-up, energy-efficient desalination, safe driverless cars, embodied AI, earthquake prediction, brain decoding and system-wide metamorphosis.   The studio takes two weeks and focuses on realizing all practical aspects of the set. Each student develops a collection of comedies and poetries responding to one or more challenges. There will be a real space to translate those aspects into, which will be the same for all sets. Within a following-up summer course, the findings of the studio will be realized on the spot.
Along the studio, students will be able to follow lectures by Martin Burr about:

• histories of comedies and poetries
• curating and more ways of navigating
• planetary gardening - plant and harvest
• architectures of discourse

Each step of the follow-up is rated differently:

• the concept is rated upon its connectivity to our days challenges
• the curated program is rated on articulation of the chosen concept
• the audiovisual trailer is rated considering aspects of montage
• the documentation is rated through taking positions within given contexts

 References:
«Cities in the planetary gardens» by Leoluca Orlando
«A Quantum City» by Ludger Hovestadt and Vera Bühlmann
«Ways of curating» by Hans Ulrich Obrist
«Le livre d’image» by Jean-Luc Godard
«Palaver» by Florian Dombois

There will be obligatory presence during lectures and discussions of this blocked course. Only candidates visiting all lectures and discussions are eligible getting a score. At the end of the studio, all elements must be fulfilled. So each student gets four rates for the studio resulting in one final score.
Each step of the follow-up is rated differently:

• the concept is rated upon its connectivity to our days challenges
• the curated program is rated on articulation of the chosen concept
• the audiovisual trailer is rated considering aspects of montage
• the documentation is rated through taking positions within given context