Shelving systems from Mobilrot for the new headquarters of Fischer Factory

Curators: Henriette Pleiger and Wolfger Stumpfe
Architecture and exhibition design: Studio Miessen, Berlin
Exhibition graphics: Studio Mahr, Berlin

“It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” Mark Fisher

Capitalism is more than just an economic system. It is a social order that has shaped our thinking, feeling, and existence for centuries. From a cultural-historical perspective, the exhibition examines the fundamental properties of capitalism: rationalization, individualization, accumulation, money and investment, as well as typical capitalist dynamics such as uncontrolled growth and creative crises.

Figuratively speaking, this “DNA of capitalism” has long since become part of our DNA: how does capitalism shape our identity and history, for example in terms of individuality, sense of time, and material property? And can we – or do we want to – change anything about it?
With objects from art, history and everyday culture, the exhibition allows an approach to a complex topic of high social relevance – and a close relationship to the lives of all of us.

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DESIGN CONCEPT

The current systemic design presents a clear and systematic exhibition architecture that removes hierarchical references from the objects covered. The overall aesthetic of the exhibition is based on multinational logistics companies and data centers. The architecture tries to create a link between the curatorial approach and the visual concept: “from the archive to the wall”.

All objects are shown to the public on standardized industrial shelves that, due to their flexibility, are able to accommodate all types of displays, including showcases. A handbook serves as a graphic and content-based guide, with the help of which visitors establish a personal relationship with the exhibits and groups related to the content.
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SPACE

Today nothing stands for appropriation, acquisition, and transnational corporate processes like Amazon’s logistics center. As Liam Young recently wrote, today many of the most important architectural spaces are those in which almost no people move. He is referring to the architecture of warehouses and server rooms, warehouses, distribution and data centers, and free trade zones. The spaces that Keller Easterling describes in “Extrastatecraft” as the operating system of the modern world. It is these spaces that shape most of our everyday reality from the invisibility of a logistical hyperreality and describe a post-anthropogene: a collection of references referring to man-made objects in times of post-human indexing.

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This aesthetic of rationalization and optimization reveals the processes of geopolitical reality in the microcosm of an architecture: as a physical spatialization of our virtual reality, in which every object is hierarchized, indexed and made distributable. Here capitalism is exposed in its purest form: in a spatialized and accelerated technocracy.

ROUTE

In order to enter the exhibition space, it is necessary to move through the “backend” of the exhibition reality, specifically in the infrastructure that allowed the exhibition objects to travel to the art gallery. All the boxes and packing materials used to transport the exhibits are systematically lined up and presented here. Leaving this archive area, one moves clockwise through a “donut” for the exhibition (Chapters 1 – 15) with two additional rooms, namely Chapters 5 and 6 and the white cube CapitalICHmus.

The systemic design of the exhibition in collaboration with the Italian company Mobilrot allows for heterogeneous design of individual shelves, some of which are very long, so that all exhibition objects receive a customized solution and visibility.

The views in the exhibition are from: Laurin Schmid / BILDKRAFTWERK
© Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany GmbHrte

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