Künstlerhaus Stuttgart/2nd floor, 4pm

“The Nightmare of Participation/Spatial Enabling”
Markus Miessen & Adnan Yıldız in conversation
(in English)

Welcome to Harmonistan! Over the last decade, the term “participation” has become increasingly overused. When everyone has been turned into a participant, the often uncritical, innocent, and romantic use of the term has become frightening. Supported by a repeatedly nostalgic veneer of worthiness, phony solidarity, and political correctness, participation has become the default of politicians withdrawing from responsibility.
Markus Miessen calls for a format of conflictual participation – no longer a process by which others are invited “in”, but a means of acting without mandate, as uninvited irritant: a forced entry into the fields of knowledge that arguably benefit from exterior thinking. Sometimes, democracy has to be avoided at all costs.

Markus Miessen (*1978) is an architect, spatial consultant and writer migrating between Berlin, London, and the Middle East. He studied architecture and urbanism in Glasgow and London. In 2002, he set up Studio Miessen, a collaborative agency for spatial practice and cultural analysis, and in 2007 was founding partner of the Berlin-based architectural practice nOffice.

yvsl, founded in 2009 by Yıldız Aslandoğan and Lukas Hofer, is pushing the limits of classical architecture and art by formulating a radical contemporary practice. yvsl is currently working on projects in New York, Istanbul, Tiflis, Belgium, Berlin, and Stuttgart.

“Let’s get physical” is an open research proposal and development project starting with a series of talks, events and diskussions conducted by yvsl within the framework of Künstlerhaus’s summer show “Stuttgart, how are you doing?”. With a specific focus on the current and possible spatial conditions of Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, “Let’s get physical” aims at developing a future vision for the institution’s architectural realities and its connection with the city.