Supersuit: Poetic Interventions in Urban Spaces

113 Pages·2017·28.582 MB·English

by  Daniel Aschwanden, Michael Wallraff

Supersuit
Edition Angewandte
Book Series of the
University of Applied Arts Vienna
Edited by Gerald Bast, Rector
DANIEL ASCHWANDEN / MICHAEL WALLRAFF (Eds.)
S u p e r s u i t
Poetic Interventions
in Urban Spaces
Birkhäuser
Basel

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Daniel Aschwanden / PERFORMANCE DIARY
Michael Wallraff
Editors’ Foreword 7
1 VIENNA 72
Brigitte Felderer
Person in the Crowd: Conny Zenk
Stories of Supersuit 8 Projection as Mirror
of the City 88
Michael Wallraff
The City a Stage 15 2 ADDIS ABABA 90
Daniel Aschwanden Solweig Kieser
Performing the City, Condominium in Lideta:
Performing the Space: Lawns, Castaways, and Art 95
Touching the Invisible 16
Berhanu Ashagrie Deribew
Making Sense of
FIRST TEST SETUP 34 Confined Urban Realities 96
Discussion of the Performance
SECOND TEST SETUP 44 on Mexico Square
in Addis Ababa 100
Manora Auersperg
To Suit the Super 50 3 WU HAN 106
Mu Bo
DEVELOPMENT OF Supersuit & Gold Field 108
THE STRUCTURE 54
Biographies 110
Arne Hofmann
Dynamics in Equilibrium 58 Project Credits / Colophon 112
6
EDITORS’ FOREWORD DANIEL ASCHWANDEN /
MICHAEL WALLRAFF
Supersuit is pure idealism: a self- initi- and the collective from a very unusual per-
ated, self-financed, and c ompletely spective—that of a spontaneous producer
autonomously conducted art project of space, of an on-site designer. With it, the
in public space, impossible to classify, intention is to provide food for thought re-
somewhere between performative archi- garding how to deal with real p ublic space
tecture and spatial performance. in an era of turbo-capitalism and general
Supersuit is a prototype of a spatial enve- retreat into digital social networks.
lope that can be altered interactively in One thing is clear: such questions cannot
combination with a human body. Numerous be answered unambiguously or definitively,
studies, models, and spatial experiments as but can perhaps repeatedly be illuminated
well as a series of concrete p erformances poetically, in part playfully, in part inquiring-
were produced in collaboration between ly, from various sides. Further considera-
dancers, architects, artists, and engineers. tions and examinations will follow.
Supersuit was tested locally at very d iverse We thank everyone who worked on our
locations in Vienna, Austria, Addis Ababa, project with their unpaid, but priceless
Ethiopia, and Wuhan, China, and s ituated engagement and idealism. We also
in the respective social fabric. thank the Universität für Angewandte
This small volume provides a documentation Kunst Wien (University of Applied Arts
of our experiments of the past three years Vienna), which provided financial support
and brief reflections on performative archi- for the realization of this publication.
tectures in public space. It poses questions
regarding the boundaries between the pub-
lic and the private, between the i ndividual Vienna, March 2017
7
PERSON IN THE CROWD: BRIGITTE FELDERER
STORIES OF SUPERSUIT
In 1976, the fashion designer Rudi Gernreich and girded themselves in a world defined by
was asked to develop designs for a fashion a concentration of media and predictions
of the future. The designer, who grew up in a regarding technology. Nevertheless, if this
politically active family in the “Red Vienna” fashion idea were to be thought through to
of the nineteen-twenties, emigrated to Los a pragmatic end, it would most likely result
Angeles and, from there, became famous in a suburban nightmare that promises pro-
around the world with his quite scandalous tected privacy, but, simultaneously and near-
ideas for clothing for an equitable and demo- ly inevitably, generates a notion of city that
cratic society. He criticized fashion as the disintegrates into armed isolation. For the
privilege of an affluent upper class, which, in architectural group Archigram, in the nine-
this way, represented its status and showed teen-sixties, a use of city that looked forward,
and created differences. According to Gern- into the future, was not hermetic privacy in
reich, the society of the future would instead public space. Urban space arises as a result
use its clothing as a medium to take a visible of networks that quickly expand, and con-
stand against differences between social stantly change. Mass media technology is
classes as well as against conservative gen- the medium for new urbanization; an Instant
der stereotypes. The spirit of the time was City no longer comes and goes. “Education,
defined by a vision of technical progress that entertainment, and ‘play-and-know-yourself’
left earthly social realities far behind, but did facilities”1 bring big city qualities to every
not necessarily remove them from the world. urban concentration, however remote from
Gernreich reacted to this request with suits of one another they might be. Architecture is
armor for surviving in a world characterized pop, is ephemeral, denotes a free city, but
by anonymity and alienness. The armoring never oppressive suburbs, is public sphere
protected and enveloped the vulnerable body and not private enclave. Cities are no longer
and simultaneously created an in- between constructed, they are flexible and expand-
space for “public privacy” in unfriendly sur- able, float, contract, and remain mobile. They
roundings. For a “private privacy,” protected at do not endure, but instead always only strive
home, Gernreich envisioned clothed naked- for present, and not for an intergenerational
ness: body makeup that reacted to differenc- perpetuity that disavows current needs.
es in temperature and lightweight bands of City is a second skin for us, just as it is sec-
chiffon that promised private feelings of free- ond nature. It can be put on, but not actually
dom in all seclusion. Gernreich’s urban war- taken off anymore. Archigram offered alter-
riors in their unisex suits of armor concealed native proposals for urban life in the Cushicle
8
WALTER PICHLER, SMALL SPACE
(KLEINER RAUM), PROTOTYPE IV,
3-PART, 1967
or the Suitaloon, which was then developed
from it. From the perspective of the group
of architects, all-embracing urbanism and
global mobility established the foundation
and prerequisites for an enlightened society.
These artificial skins are not armors for de-
fense, they instead serve as social hinges Prototypes remain individual approaches
and make use of new technologies so as to that are not intended to signify any alterna-
link habitation as a portable and comfortable tive forms of existence of urban quality of
structure with the body and with other urban life. Pichler c reated, quasi, a technological
users and inhabitants and their needs. Body future for Walter Benjamin’s “The Man of the
and technology enter into a s ymbiosis that Crowd” and envisioned, in a quite cynical way,
is supposed to facilitate freedom in the col- the d ialectic of the production of space de-
lective. The Cushicle is a vehicle that makes scribed by Benjamin, which arises when stroll-
it possible to carry an entire residential cell ing, for the individual as well as for the crowd.
on one’s back, a “nomadic unit”2 that offers “Dialectic of flânerie: on one side, the man
a high standard of habitation and unfolds— who feels himself viewed by all and sundry
where and as desired—equipped with nour- as a true suspect and, on the other side, the
ishment, water supplies, radio, television, and man who is utterly undiscoverable, the hid-
heating. The Suitaloon develops the vehicle den man. Presumably, it is this dialectic that
further and unites all these functions in one is developed in ‘the man of the crowd.’”4
suit, transported and supplied with e ner gy The flâneur as a medium for urban, male-
by the Cushicle. The link between body and defined structures, between architecture
habitation becomes closer, dwelling and and crowds of people, no longer finds a
suit merge into one unit. The Suitaloon then place in an environment driven by technolo-
also has interfaces to bigger service nodes gy. If people become functional urban units
providing urban services. The vision is not that join together as needed, if city is con-
a self-contained monad, but instead resi- ducive to optimizing and enlightening its in-
dential cells that can be connected to urban habitants and users, there is no longer any
systems in a quite small space, unlike the space for the decadent flâneur who loses
Minimal Environment3 or Small Space as himself in the city. Random glances, the per-
conceived and designed in these years by the ceiving of details, courteously stepping to
artist Walter Pichler. His, as he called them, the side, the city as an aesthetic reference
9