Drama, design, democracy - a mezzanine project

See map below, no 1: One of my stongest memories from the early days of K3 is a seminar with Bruno Latour on the mezzanine in Studio 1. I was pretty new in the game and did not really grasp the importance of moment, and the fact that here we were, a handfull of artists, engineers and design researchers of different kinds together with one of the most influencial intellectuals of our time. We presented "To Be Located," a project that we were about to start up, a project dealing with young people's use of and interaction with urban space. My colleagues both had a background in theatre studies, so we presented our ideas in the form of a play including mobile phones. It wasn't very well rehearsed, rather quite improvised, and our ideas were still quite blurred. Latour however, was enthusiastic, developing an entire philosophy about "drama, design and democracy." I tend to think it had to do not so much with our presentation, naive as it were, but with the situation as such, with the way in which we all were located, architecturally, societally, historically, at that time - on the intermediary mezzanine, in itself a result of non-finalized passage of negotiation....
Maria Hellström

Large map with numbers

"(Re-) searching a Digital Bauhaus" - outline of a K3 psycho-geography

Our contribution to the "(Re-) searching a Digital Bauhaus" book project will consist of collaborative psychogeographical mapping of the K3 environment as it has unfolded over the years. Through a web-log based dialogue, we hope to mark out traces of situations and artefacts, of projects and presentations, of persons and constallations, of conflicts, successes and failures, all of which be believe still remain somehow, ubiquitously present, in the nooks and corners of the tangible environment.

The drawing that appears below - a plan of the different studios and the social spaces surrounding them - will serve as the starting point for the discussion. As a present or former actor in this environment, you are invited to contribute with all the detailed input needed in order to produce a comprehensive psycho-geography of the space. This, we hope, will enable and sustain a more composite and dynamic navigation through the different topoí, or conceptual fields of ideas and arguments, hovering between the walls.

No associations are unimportant, no recollections insignificant. What we are asking for is no less than a thorough archeology of the place, an unveiling of its layers of interaction. Where did the coffee breaks take place and where did the dishes end up? What do the odd remnants signify and what calamities do they uncover? Who put the mark on the wall and who decided the changes? What was that long gone artefact really used for and where did it end up? Where did you spend your time or in how many locations?

Eventually, the blog will form a multilayered and diverse spatial narrative, an outline of the Digital Bauhaus plot as an open-ended and interactive psycho-geography.