Design Dispersed: Forms of Migration and Flight 9783839447055

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
Design Dispersed. Forms of Migration and Flight. An Introduction
DESIGN DISPERSED. FORMS OF MIGRATION
Between the Ship and the House: Traveling Light with the Bauhaus
Forms of Migration, Migration of Forms: Sigmund Freud in Exile and the Dispersion of Things
The Tracksuit on the Street. On the Construction of “Migrant Chic“
On Global Flight and Migration in Fashion and Fashion Theory: Cultural Performances and Political Frameworks on the European Catwalks (F/W 2016/17)
Mobile Worlds
DESIGN DISPERSED. DESIGN FOR AND ABOUT MIGRATION
Humanitarian, Social and Participative – A New Design Culture in Times of Migration and Flight?
Flight Design and Migratory City Planning. The Architecture of the Refugee Pavilions of Western Sahara and of Germany at the Venice Biennial of Architecture 2016
Design Objects as Tools for Reflecting on Migration and Flight: Works by Studio Formafantasma and Superflex
Heimat ‘to Go’. Migration in the Fashion Design of Hussein Chalayan
DESIGN DISPERSED. DESIGNERS AND ARTISTS AS CULTURAL AGENTS AND BROKERS
‘Ethno Fashion’ in Modernist Mexico. Transfer Processes between Anachronistic Recourse, Individual Identity, and Transnational Conceptions of Modernism
Erwin Broner’s Exile in Ibiza. The Transformation from Vernacular to Avant-garde in Architecture
A Return to the Motherland: Afro-Brazilians’ Architecture and Societal Aims in Colonial West Africa
Local, Global, Émigré, Immigrant. A Discursive Inquiry on the Power of Adjectives in Architecture History Writing
Author Biographies
Image Credits

Citation preview

DESIGN DISPERSED FORMS OF MIGRATION AND FLIGHT

Burcu Dogramaci, Kerstin Pinther (eds.)

DE S I G N DI S P E R S ED FORMS OF M I G R AT I O N A N D FLIGHT

Design

CONTENTS

8

BURCU DOGRAMACI, KERSTIN PINTHER



Design Dispersed. Forms of Migration and Flight.



An Introduction



DE S IGN DIS P E RS E D F O R M S O F M I G R AT I O N

20

REGINA BITTNER



Between the Ship and the House:



Traveling Light with the Bauhaus

36

BURCU DOGRAMACI



Forms of Migration, Migration of Forms:



Sigmund Freud in Exile and the Dispersion of Things

58

ALEXANDRA KARENTZOS



The Tracksuit on the Street.



On the Construction of “Migrant Chic“

80

ELKE GAUGELE



On Global Flight and Migration in Fashion



and Fashion Theory: Cultural Performances and Political



Frameworks on the European Catwalks (F/W 2016/17)

101

SOPHIA PRINZ, ROGER M. BUERGEL



Mobile Worlds



5





D ES IGN DIS P E RS E D D E S I G N F O R A N D A B O U T M I G R AT I O N

110

ALEXANDRA WEIGAND



Humanitarian, Social and Participative –



A New Design Culture in Times of Migration and Flight?

128

BIRGIT MERSMANN



Flight Design and Migratory City Planning.



The Architecture of the Refugee Pavilions of



Western Sahara and of Germany at the Venice Biennial



of Architecture 2016

150

KERSTIN PINTHER



Design Objects as Tools for Reflecting on Migration



and Flight: Works by Studio Formafantasma and Superflex

172

HANNI GEIGER



Heimat ‘to Go’. Migration in the Fashion Design



of Hussein Chalayan

6





DE S IGN DIS P E RS E D DESIGNERS AND ARTISTS AS C U LT U R A L A G E N T S A N D B R O K E R S

190

MIRIAM OESTERREICH



‘Ethno Fashion’ in Modernist Mexico.



Transfer Processes between Anachronistic Recourse,



Individual Identity, and Transnational Conceptions



of Modernism

212

EDUARD KÖGEL



Erwin Broner’s Exile in Ibiza. The Transformation



from Vernacular to Avant-garde in Architecture

232

ADEDOYIN TERIBA



A Return to the Motherland: Afro-Brazilians’



Architecture and Societal Aims in Colonial West Africa

248

ELKE KRASNY



Local, Global, Émigré, Immigrant.



A Discursive Inquiry on the Power of Adjectives



in Architecture History Writing

265

Author Biographies

270

Image Credits

7

DESIGN DISPERSED. FORMS OF MIGRATION AND FLIGHT. An Introduction

BURCU DOGRAMACI, KERSTIN PINTHER

At first glance Dana Douiev’s set of kitchenware utensils for the preparation of injera – a typical dish of Ethiopia and Eritrea – has hardly any connection with a design dispersed – a design linked to migration, exile and flight, sometimes characterized by its transculturality (fig. 1). However, on closer look the objects reference mobility and the ways food and its preparation are closely linked to feelings of home. Douiev’s minimalistic collection consists of an injera skillet, a dough mixing bowl with ventilation holes for overnight fermenting and a bowl with a spout for pouring the injera onto the flat skillet. Injera, the flatbread with the sponge-like texture made out of fermented teff flour, is the national dish of Ethiopia and Eritrea. Dana Douiev, a former design student at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, Israel, created Injera as her final project under the guidance of Ido Bruno and after research trips to Ethiopia and among Ethiopian Jewish immigrants living in Israel (e.g., Schwarz 2001). Against this background the project can be seen as a design for a though growing yet still minoritized group of people, whose cultural and identitarian concerns tend to be neglected in a ‘mainstream design’: “Through these utensils a ‘new ceremony’ takes place, in which cultural elements that have been lost during the cultural migration from village to city, and from inside Ethiopia to foreign countries, are renewed,” says Douiev 1. Similar to her Injera collection there exist other initiatives by designers who rethink everyday design in the context of migration movements and diasporic living: The Àga Concept, founded by Lagos-based architect Moyo 1

http://www.designindaba.com/articles/creative-work/ancient-african-culinary-ceremony-



modern-kitchen. Accessed 30 November 2018.

INTRODUCTION

9

Fig. 1: Dana Douiev, Injera Collection, 2015

Ogunseinde and the designer Olubunmi Adeyemi, is one of the first initiatives in Nigeria to take ‘traditional’ kitchen utensils, and update them (fig. 2). The collection includes cooking spoons, cutting boards, mortars and pestles, and bowls, made from local wood in Nigeria, a color system referring to an older Yoruba color scheme. Similar to the Injera collection, the cooking utensils by the Àga Concept serve not only people in Nigeria, but also address the Nigerian Diaspora, where food and its preparation imparts a feeling of home (see Pinther/Weigand 2018, 80). In their exhibition Küche der Erinnerung. Essen & Exil the curators Veronika Zwerger and Ursula Seeber underline the meaning of food and cooking for (e)migrants: “In many fictional and autobiographical works of exile, cooking and eating are described as identity-defining and stabilizing factors. They symbolize belonging to a specific group – political, religious, social, geographical, familial” 2 (Zwerger/Seeber 2018, 7). The exhibition demonstrated that recipes, dishes and even whole cafés or restaurants migrated globally during the time of National Socialism and the Second World

10

2

The German original version reads as follows: “In vielen fiktionalen und autobiografischen



Werken des Exils werden Kochen und Essen als identitätsstiftende und stabilisierende



Momente beschrieben. Sie symbolisieren die Zugehörigkeit zu einer bestimmten Gruppe –



politisch, religiös, sozial, geografisch, familiär.“ Own translation.

BURCU DOGRAMACI, KERSTIN PINTHER

Fig. 2: Àga Concept, Afro-Minima, 2017

War. The preparation of food en route demanded cooking utensils that were brought with the emigrants or had to be found or produced at their new living places. On the one hand, the meals and recipes kept stable certain aspects of cultural identification, but on the other hand, they changed under the impact of local traditions in their target cities and countries. The above-mentioned examples of a design dispersed lead to the question of how everyday practice changes in the context of migration and likewise of how designers respond to the challenge of people, ideas and objects moving: How does design react to forms of migration, flight and displacement? The volume Design Dispersed 3 attempts to face these challenges for design theory and design history by taking a broader (historical) perspective on the relationship of design, movement and the displacement of people. In regard to the contemporary and presumable future challenges caused by massive migration movements and flight, the rethinking of design practices is and will continue to be an urgent task: Worldwide migration increased from 173 million in the year 2000 to 244 million in the year 2015, with two

3

This volume brings together presentations from a conference organized by the authors at the



Institut für Kunstgeschichte (Department of Art History) at the Ludwig Maximilian University



of Munich and at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich in the fall of 2017.

INTRODUCTION

11

thirds of the migrant population living in only twenty nations, e.g., in the U.S. (47 million), followed by Germany and Russia (each of them with 12 million) and Saudi Arabia (10 million) (International Migrant Report 2015, 5). In particular, the number of refugees increased from 1975 (2.5 million) to an estimated 66 million today – with an upward tendency. Uprooted by war, persecution and ecological crises or relocating in search of economic opportunity, most of them are refugees within their own countries.4 According to these numbers it is obvious that migration and forced displacements are not an exception, but a central part of being human and of societies all over the world – causing not only social change, but also affecting cultural practices and art and design production. This is exactly where our book starts, examining the complex and heterogenous entanglements between design, migration and flight. Among others, its spectrum ranges from (fashion) designers like Hussein Chalayan, who in his collection Afterwords (2000) tackles the issues of migration and displacement by transforming furniture into mobile garments, to Walé Oyéjidé’s fashion collection After Migration (2016) and Lucy Orta’s Refuge Wear – Habitent (1992–93). The book includes (critical) analyses of historical emergency shelter projects, and the flight and exile of Bauhaus architects and designers during the National Socialist regime as well as current participatory design projects for and with refugees. Although questions of art production and theory have meanwhile repeatedly been made a subject of discussion within the context of global migration (e.g., Dogramaci/Mersmann 2019), a fundamental and comparative historical engagement, in particular, with design and migration is only in its infancy. A special issue of the Journal of Design History edited by Henning Engelke and Tobias Hochscherf (2015) focused on architects, artists and designers who fled National Socialist oppression and persecution. Aiming at a reconsideration of émigrés and design between avant-garde and commercialism, the editors followed Flusser’s claim about the productivity of exile; it became clear how ideas and design practices were changed in transcultural contexts. In a similar approach, Alison J. Clarke’s and Elana Shapira’s vol-

12

4

The UNHCR numbered 65.6 million refugees in 2016, including 40.3 million internal refugees.



See http://www.unhcr.org/dach/de/services/statistiken. Accessed 12 July 2018.

BURCU DOGRAMACI, KERSTIN PINTHER

ume Émigré Cultures in Design and Architecture (2017) addressed the issue of whether and how the migrated designers’ ‘other’ view resulted in alternative design languages in order to tackle unfamiliar (migratory) experiences. Apart from these publications mainly based on broader research projects by the contributors and editors, recent decades saw the emergence of platforms and exhibitions dealing with questions of migration, flight and design practices. Initiatives like “What Design Can Do” (WDCD), founded in the year 2000 by the graphic designer Richard van der Laken, “Better Shelter Org” as a partnership with the IKEA Foundation and UNHCR (see Pinther 2017) as well as exhibitions such as Architecture of Displacement by the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2017) and conferences 5 testify to the virulence of the topic. Far from exhaustingly covering this intermingled field, the book is divided into three thematically intersecting chapters, where objects and design practices are discussed within the context of migration, exile and flight, dealing with different aspects of design dispersed. Design Dispersed – Forms of Migration asks how experiences of migration, flight and exile are mirrored in the objects designers create. The chapter focuses on artifacts that make these specific social and political dimensions tangible. How are these processes inscribed in an object’s history – and how do they become part of the product experience? How does the notion of ‘home’ or ‘homeland’ materialize in objects? What role does the materiality of the object play in this context? Following the global turn in design history (Adamson et al. 2011) we also focus on (historic) designs in which transculturality is reflected as a double figure of cosmopolitanism and locality. Object itineraries in the context of the émigré movements in the 1930s and 1940s within and from the European continent are traced in two contributions by Regina Bittner and Burcu Dogramaci. Their essays link forms of migration and the migration of forms, tackling conceptual,

5

See for instance the Annual Parsons/Cooper Hewitt Graduate Student Symposium on the



History of Design conference entitled Design and Displacement from April 2017, http://adht.



parsons.edu/blog/design-displacement-26th-annual-parsonscooper-hewitt-graduate-



student-symposium/. Accessed 30 November 2018.

INTRODUCTION

13

textual and material mixtures as outcomes of the traveling object. Alexandra Karentzos and Elke Gaugele take these questions to the present day, examining contemporary styles and fashion design as the expression of and reflection on recent migratory movements. Here, it becomes clear that it is more and more imperative for globally acting fashion companies to react on the issues of migration and flight, even in the sense that certain styles such as ‘migrant chic’ are constructed from outside. Since Elke Gaugele’s approach is to understand contemporary fashion design as a means to negotiate migration and flight, her text already leads to the next chapter. In the context of the millions of people fleeing from war, conflict and persecution, the topic of design and society has developed a particular (renewed) relevance, sometimes relying on former design developments. Design Dispersed: Design for and about Migration thus on the one hand brings together contributions on the historical design for refugees and migrants. Alexandra Weigand’s essay “Humanitarian, Social and Participative – A New Design Culture in Times of Migration and Flight?” sheds light on possible forerunners of a specific design for refugees in the social design approaches of the late 1990s and 2000s. On the other hand, this chapter focuses on migrants and refugees as creators of indispensable objects. In her essay “Flight Design and Migratory City Planning”, Birgit Mersmann takes into consideration manifestations of design and architectural production by migrants. Kerstin Pinther and Hanni Geiger focus on the ways (fashion) designers and artists like Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin from Studio Formafantasma, Superflex and Hussein Chalayan translate trade and flight routes, mobility of people and forms into objects to critically think with. In particular, Studio Formafantasma seems to literally apply the suggestion of Arjun Appadurai (2006) to tie the fate of objects together with the movement of people. The third chapter, Design Dispersed: Designers and Artists as Cultural Agents and Brokers, starts from the idea of a cultural intermediary – a concept that is closely linked with travel and migration, and with the notion of diaspora as a condition of being both ‘here’ and ‘there,’ meaning abundance rather than privation. The media philosopher Vilém Flusser understood the logic of exile as “hovering above permanent loca-

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BURCU DOGRAMACI, KERSTIN PINTHER

tions” (“Schweben über den Standorten”) (see Flusser 1994, 15; Dogramaci 2013, 7), and Achille Mbembe (2007, 26–29) considers mobility between different places, along with digital mobility and visibility, an essential part of the Afropolitan cultural experience. He points out the special ability to move and mediate between places and cultures, and the multilingualism this involves. Here “translation as a cultural technique for dealing with cultural difference” (Bachmann-Medick 2015, 6) comes to the fore. In the single essays of this chapter the migration of architects and artists under the conditions of exile, and the local adaptations of their creations are made a subject of discussion as well as re-migrations of designers and architects. What kinds of new topographies and networks emerge in the field of design and collaboration from this change in location? Miriam Oesterreich writes on the fashion and self-fashioning of the artist Frida Kahlo under the focus on “‘Ethno Fashion’ in Modernist Mexico,” and Adedoyin Teriba discusses the eclectic architecture and handicrafts of the Afrobrazilian returnees to West Africa, in particular to Nigeria. Eduard Kögel takes the perspective of the artist and architect Erwin Broner, who acted as a mediator between cultures and artists, between Germany and Ibiza, the U.S. and back to Ibiza. The final essay, by Elke Krasny, is a critical contribution to wordings and projections: She discusses the use of adjectives like local, global or migrant as categories of inclusion and exclusion and suggests alternative approaches. The three chapters are visually and conceptually complemented by a contribution from bitte umdrehen: Sophia Prinz and Roger M. Buergel, the curators of the exhibition Mobile Worlds. Or the Museum of our Transcultural Present, which was on display at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, Germany.6 Searching the museum’s collection of applied arts for objects that speak many languages, they brought together objects that bear the traces of cultural exchange and traveling. Their contribution is the result of another transfer, namely the attempt to translate the exhibition display into the two-dimensionality of three double pages of our book.

6

The exhibition was on display at the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Hamburg, Germany from



13 April 2018 to 18 October 2018. See https://www.mkg-hamburg.de/en/exhibitions/archive/



6076/mobile-worlds.html. Accessed 12 December 2018.

INTRODUCTION

15

Fig. 3: Cheese Maker by Studio Makkink & Bey. Image: Ilse Leander.

Referring back to the beginning of this introduction we’ll close our preliminary remarks with a brief discussion of the Cheese Maker (fig. 3), a design by the Rotterdam-based Studio Makkink & Bey. Like the above-mentioned kitchen utensils by Dana Douiev and Àga Concept, it once more underlines the importance of food production in the context of migration and flight. As the outcome of an intercultural cooperation by the architect Rianne Makkink and the designer Jurgen Bey with a local trade school in Jaipur, India, the object itself literally incorporated transculturality: “The Cheese Maker is a stack of handmade objects, to make homemade cheese

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BURCU DOGRAMACI, KERSTIN PINTHER

with. The tower consists of a juicer, a milk jug, a spoon, a colander, a pan, a cutting board, a bowl, a cheesecloth and a press. Each product is handmade of different materials such as wood, ceramics (blue pottery), metal, copper, cotton, soapstone and marble. Similarities between the Netherlands and India are the basis for the design. The designers were inspired by the long tradition in cheese making, the history in craftsmanship such as ceramics, and the population density which resulted in a tradition of stacking houses and goods in both countries.”7 The Cheese Maker thus literally merges different forms and materials into an eclectic design.

7

Quoted after the description on the homepage. http://www.studiomakkinkbey.nl. Accessed



12 December 2018. The Cheese Maker was presented at the 2014 Milan Design Week.

INTRODUCTION

17

REFERENCES – Adamson, Glenn, et al., editors. Global Design History. Routledge 2011. – Appadurai, Arjun. Fear of Small Numbers. An Essay on the Geography of Anger, Duke University Press, 2006. – Bachmann-Medick, Doris. “Transnational und translational: Zur Übersetzungsfunktion der Area Studies.” CAS Working Paper Series, vol. 1, 2015. – Clarke, Alison D., and Elana Shapira, editors. Émigré Cultures in Design and Architecture, Bloomsbury, 2017. – Dogramaci, Burcu. Fotografieren und Forschen. Wissenschaftliche Expeditionen mit der Kamera im türkischen Exil nach 1933. Jonas Verlag, 2013. – Dogramaci, Burcu, and Birgit Mersmann, editors. Handbook of Art and Global Migration. Theories, Practices, and Challenges. De Gruyter, 2019. – Engelke, Henning, and Tobias Hochscherf, editors. Journal of Design History. Special Issue: Between Avant-Garde and Commercialism: Reconsidering Émigrés and Design, Oxford University Press, vol. 28, no. 1, 2015. – Flusser, Vilém. “Wohnung beziehen in der Heimatlosigkeit.” Von der Freiheit des Migranten. Einsprüche gegen den Nationalismus, edited by Vilém Flusser, Bollmann Verlag, 1994, pp. 15–30. – International Migration Report 2015, edited by Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations, New York, 2016. – Mbembe, Achille. “Afropolitanism.” Africa Remix: Contemporary Art of a Continent, edited by Simon Njami, Jacana, 2007, pp. 26–29. – Pinther, Kerstin. “Konzepte und Ästhetiken der Passage: Design im Kontext von Flucht und Migration.” Passagen des Exils / Passages of Exile (Jahrbuch Exilforschung, 35), edited by Burcu Dogramaci and Elizabeth Otto, edition text + kritik, 2017, pp. 315–333. – Pinther, Kerstin, and Alexandra Weigand. “Flow of Forms / Forms of Flow. Design Histories between Africa and Europe.“ Flow of Forms / Forms of Flow. Design Histories between Africa and Europe, edited by Kerstin Pinther and Alexandra Weigand, transcript 2018, pp. 4–25 (95). – Schwarz, Tanya. Ethiopian Jewish Immigrants in Israel: The Homeland Postponed. Routledge, 2001. – Zwerger, Veronika, and Ursula Seeber. “Küche der Erinnerung. Vorwort.” Küche der Erinnerung. Essen & Exil, edited by Veronika Zwerger and Ursula Seeber, exh.-cat. Österreichische Exilbibliothek, Vienna, new academic press, 2018, pp. 6–16.

DE S I G N DI S P E R S ED FORMS OF MIGRATION

BETWEEN THE SHIP AND THE HOUSE: Traveling Light with the Bauhaus 1

REGINA BITTNER

To mark the opening of the Bauhaus building on 4 December 1926 in Dessau, a filmstrip by Marcel Breuer was published in the avant-garde school’s first magazine: “From the African chair to the column of air.” It brought together the multiple and controversial modes of the Bauhaus objects, ranging from the ‘primitive’ craft piece to a patented prototype for industry to a preposterous non-thing. “It gets better and better every year. in the end one sits on a column of air,” is the ironic commentary Breuer gave as a caption to this visualization, half-advertisement, half-film script (Breuer 1926, 3). It is not without reason that the lessons about the object the Bauhaus members learned during their excursions to the cultural tropics of the ethnographical collections were then extrapolated in the transformations of the chair. And while the furniture with which Breuer then conquered the universe of design classics and has reigned supreme to the present day is assigned only an intermediate status on the way to the air column, this visualization is in fact akin to a program for a new object culture. Two years later – in the journal Das Neue Frankfurt – Breuer sketched the idea for his metal furniture in terms of a new spatiality and dwelling culture. Metal furniture, so goes the thrust of the argument, fits into every kind of space, whether a public theatre, auditorium or a private living room. We are approaching furnishings, spaces and buildings which, to the greatest possible extent, are alterable, mobile and accessible to vari1

The essay results from research conducted in the context of the international Bauhaus Lab



2016 “Desk in Exile”.

BETWEEN THE SHIP AND THE HOUSE

21

ous combinations. Items of furniture, even the walls of the space, are no longer massive, monumental, apparently permanently rooted, or in fact permanently installed. They are much more injected with air, drawn, so to speak, in space, it hinders neither the movement nor the view through space. (Breuer 1928/1994, 453) What unifies the arguments for a new dwelling culture in the 1920s is the idea of a mobile, nomadic society. The lightness of the new way of life needs to be supported by lightweight furnishings. Cushioned in velvet and plush, the “etui-man” (Walter Benjamin) of past epochs, when home was constructed as a private refuge of the bourgeois middle-class in interaction with a rising consumer society, was now placed under general suspicion (Benjamin 1991, 213). Liberated living, also propagated by the Bauhaus, promised not only hygiene and health, but also a new mobile lifestyle for the ‘modern urban nomads of the big cities,’ who were considered ‘homeless’ in a positive sense. A universal and internationally comprehensible language of style used in product design, architecture and typography was to give expression to this age of speed, of networking and connecting and of being always on the move. The accelerated pace of everyday life in the large metropolises was only the visible expression of a world-spanning transportation and communications network that was gaining momentum. The Bauhaus was one of the cultural responses to the advent of globalization. At the same time, this ‘universal language’ pursued a political agenda: Emphasizing the international was a reaction to having experienced the destructive forces of the old nationalism unleashed in the First World War. Whereas the filmstrip asserts a chronological development that suggests preceding object statuses have been overcome, the Dessau Bauhaus building, which the magazine promotes, surprises us with its unusual neighbors: In the director’s office, Breuer’s metal furniture makes for a more eclectic interior, brought together with the desk that Gropius had designed in 1923 as a complete ensemble for his office in the school building in Weimar designed by Henry van de Velde. As a room in a room, a total work of art, the Weimar office was composed of tapestries made by the weaving workshop, an opulent sofa and

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REGINA BITTNER

armchairs, shelves and carpets. The desk was the centerpiece: a representative piece of furniture made of massive cherry wood with attached glass shelves and a meandering band. The office design was part of the first major Bauhaus exhibition, presented virtually as a showroom parallel to the exhibition International Architecture and a display of items produced in the school’s workshops. Nineteen twenty-three is not only the year of inflation in Germany, characterized by scarcity and crises stemming from the war, but also a year of heated internal controversies. What has gone down as the “Bauhaus dispute” in the historiography of the Bauhaus also found expression in the contrasting material creations (Wagner 2009, 100ff.). With the motto “Art and Technology: A New Unity,” Gropius had marked out a horizon that was to provide the factions embroiled in conflict of the early years with an orientation. The founders of the Bauhaus were united by the harrowing experience of war, knowledge of the destructive forces inherent to mechanical rationality and a profound skepticism that was suspicious of the seeming obviousness of direct experience and existing knowledge. The school was to be a place where ‘unlearning’ was to be encouraged, where conventional knowledge was to be dispensed with. The school was to foster instead a readiness to open up to pre-linguistic, non-Western, intuitive and childlike approaches, and from this new realm experiment with materials, color, geometry and form. Oskar Schlemmer described this situation in the manifesto that accompanied the Bauhaus exhibition of 1923: The Staatliches Bauhaus, founded after the catastrophe of the war, in the chaos of revolution and in the era of the flowering of an emotion-laden explosive art, becomes the rallying point of all those who, with belief in the future and with sky-storming enthusiasm, wish to build the cathedral of Socialism. […] The misery of the time was also a spiritual anguish. A cult of the unconscious and of the unexplainable, a propensity for mysticism and sectarianism, originated in the quest for those highest things which are in danger of being deprived of their meaning in a world full of doubt and disruption. (Schlemmer 1923, 79) The longing for an organic culture and community on the one hand; a fascination with the progress, technology and modern lifestyle promised by

BETWEEN THE SHIP AND THE HOUSE

23

America on the other: This was the complex situation within which the Bauhaus sought to find a set of culturally relevant articulations. Had the move to Dessau not resolved the confusion of the blurred battle lines? Placed in the Dessau office, the representative desk, designed for exhibition purposes, was integrated into a standardized modern office environment (fig. 1). Standardized filing cabinets from the firm ODA, which complied with the introduced DIN standards, and an exhibition shelf dividing the room, which presented selected products of the school as if in a display window, were the desk was now placed in. With its workshops and the resulting collaborations with companies, the Bauhaus in Dessau was working towards a practicable and purposeful organizational design for modern life. The housing estates in Törten were prime examples of ‘liberated living.’ It was from this desk that the founding director Walter Gropius guided the Bauhaus until 1928, when he handed over the position of director to his successor Hannes Meyer, which enabled him to work in Berlin as a private architect.

LONDON: DWELLING IN THE ʻSUITCASE AGEʼ

In October 1934 Jack Pritchard met Walter Gropius and his wife at Victoria Station in London. The couple had been in Rome, where Gropius had given a lecture. Instead of embarking on the return journey to Germany they changed tickets and headed for London, traveling with very little luggage. Their furniture, including the Bauhaus desk, was still in Berlin. The decision to move to Britain was preceded by intensive correspondence between Gropius and Morton Shand, whom he knew from the CIAM, Jack Pritchard, whom he had gotten to know in June of that year while giving a lecture at the Royal Institute of British Architects, and Maxwell Frey, who planned to establish a bureau with Gropius. Jack Pritchard, the founder of Isokon Ltd, was heavily involved through the 1930s in helping not only prominent figures like the Gropiuses to flee but also supported less prominent emigrants in their efforts to settle in Britain (Hammel 2006, 28).

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REGINA BITTNER

Fig. 1: Walter Obschonka, Portrait of Walter Gropius in the director`s office in the Bauhaus Dessau, 1926

The story behind the founding of Isokon Ltd goes back to the early interest shown by Jack Pritchard and his wife Rosemary (Molly) in lightweight and functional furniture. Together with the architect Wells Coates, they founded a company specializing in standardizable, industrially produced furnishings. In December 1931 this company was given the name Isokon Ltd (Freise 2009, 37). The business partners’ main aim was to create a dwelling culture serving the requirements of modern large-scale housing, ranging from furniture items to standard flats which could be produced industrially. These ambitions find their expression in the Isokon building on Lawn Road, a multistoried, serviced block of flats designed by Wells Coates (fig. 2).

BETWEEN THE SHIP AND THE HOUSE

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Fig. 2: Edith Tudor-Hart, Lawn Road Flats (Isokon Building) on the day of its opening, 1934

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With the artist colony of Hampstead close by, the Lawn Road Flats became a preferred destination and temporary place to stay for artists and intellectuals from Europe, a kind of ‘arrival city.’ On 12 July 1934, shortly after the opening of the Isokon building, the journalist Gerald Barry wrote that “these flats are built for the suitcase age.” Barry reads the Lawn Road building as a sign of the future: “We are witnessing the disintegration of one kind of world and the painful emergence of another […]. This is the suitcase age […]. Here today and gone tomorrow – and back again next day. […] Mobility is the catchword. Nowadays we travel light literally and metaphorically.” (Barry 1934). At the opening of the modern serviced building on 9 July 1934, two women – Rosemary Pritchard, a director of Isokon Ltd, and Thelma Cazalet, a member of British Parliament – cast a bottle of beer against the protruding bow of the entrance arcade, a ceremony very much in the tradition of christening a ship – and a symbol for the new mobile and carefree dwelling culture associated with the Isokon building. Possible crew members for the stylish and partly furnished studio flats, comparable to cabins on an ocean liner, were single men and women, mobile and economically independent, who were looking to partake in an urban lifestyle in the metropolis of London characterized by mainstream culture and consumerism (Freise 2009, 82). In fact, the first occupants of the flats in the Isokon building were in part prominent emigrants. Walter and Ise Gropius were among the first residents in flat 15, a two-room studio measuring 33 m², where a curtain could be drawn to separate the living and sleeping areas. Marcel Breuer moved into one of the smallest units, a 25 m² flat (ibid., 87). Whereas Breuer created a new icon of lightness for Isokon with the pliable plywood chaise longue, it proved much more difficult for Gropius to find his feet professionally. The family lived here for almost three years before Gropius accepted a position at Harvard. Isokon with its cosmopolitan residents had also become a place of transit for those forced into emigration. In the farewell speech he gave in London in 1937, Walter Gropius describes his initial time in Britain as a “state of bewilderment and uncertainty,” before ending with the lines: “My stamp is definitely German and

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to Germany I owe the whole of my education and the possibility of building up a world of my own. The greater part of my life has been spent there and very often I feel rather homesick. But in different stages of my life I always found it impossible to tackle new problems with the head turning back.” (Gropius 1937) This speech is a confusing document: Did the Bauhaus figures, the protagonists of a new design culture, who were aware that leaving behind traditions and old ties was an opportunity for a new way of life, in fact experience firsthand here in London the heaviness of the ‘homelessness of modern man’? Were their convictions of a universal architecture and design vocabulary proven to be misguided in the face of the professional difficulties they had to endure in London? Did life in the Lawn Road flats, traveling light with little luggage, comparable to a journey on an ocean liner, actually foster a longing for arrival and settling down? Just one year later, in the United States, Gropius built a private home where he would spend the longest time of his life.

LINCOLN: A TRANSLATION ATTEMPT?

The American domicile of the Gropius family is located in a rural region of New England, in Lincoln: The American philanthropist Helen Storrow had generously made the plot of land available to help the prominent emigrants from Germany (Kraft, 1997, 39). Completed in 1938, the two-storied timber frame house with a flat roof, which for cost concerns alone employed standardized building elements, incorporated the vernacular New England architecture into its design. The building materials and parts of the house such as the porch and the diagonally positioned entryway reference typical local constructions. Often talked about in public and the media by the Gropius family, the house was soon considered an example of a ‘New Regionalism’ in modern architecture (ibid., 62). The media’s interest in the house was in part kindled by the boom in the house-building industry triggered by the New Deal; in 1934, as part of a series of measures to overcome the Great Depression, the Federal Housing Administration had initiated a program for supporting

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private homebuilders. Together with the building industry, magazines and exhibitions met the needs of a ‘house hungry nation’ (Smiley 2007, 286). The house in Lincoln represents an attempt to merge the European design ideas of Neues Bauen with the local building culture in New England while taking into consideration the commercial interests of the building industry. This fusion was also meant to express the willingness to be integrated into the host country. The 1938 exhibition devoted to the Bauhaus in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, organized by Walter Gropius and Herbert Bayer, was also motivated by the effort to gain cultural acceptance in the United States. The exhibition was held at a time when political and economic conditions were extremely difficult, with America deeply divided: The political climate was greatly influenced by labor strikes on the one hand and right-wing populist and anti-Semitic propagandists on the other (Koehler 2002, 296). Moreover, the exhibition took place at a key historical juncture – modernist ideas in architecture and design had arrived in everyday life. Already six years before, Modern Architecture. International Exhibition had presented to the American public the achievements of Neues Bauen, including those of the Bauhaus. In the catalogue the curators – Alfred Barr, Alfred Hitchcock and Philip Johnson – had then distilled from the overview of the architectures formal characteristics of an international style, a reading of European modernism that then left its mark on several subsequent exhibitions (Thöner 2003, 123). Against the background of the tense political climate, the exhibition organizers Gropius and Bayer exercised a kind of self-censorship from the very outset. Neither the history of the workers’ art council, nor the specific political circumstances surrounding the formation of the Bauhaus in the broader context of the founding of the Weimar Republic or the role played by Hannes Meyer were mentioned. The exhibition design, which Herbert Bayer deliberately borrowed from the streamlined curvature designs that had just become popular in America, created a framework for the exhibits that was decoupled from time and space: “By transplanting the Bauhaus objects into a jazzy American context, the museum display in 1938 turned what were intended to be socially embedded products of artistic labor into art world objects.” (ibid., 304)

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Did Bayer’s exhibition display thus confirm the reading of modernism already put forward by Barr, Johnson and Hitchcock, reducing it to stylistic characteristics? Paradoxically, the efforts to present a strictly unpolitical profile of the Bauhaus to the public provoked almost diametrically opposite reactions. This is unsurprising given that news of the closure of the Bauhaus in 1932 by the Nazis had attracted international attention. Ultimately, neither adapting the design language popular in the United States nor the desperate effort to present the Bauhaus as a universal idea, decontextualized from its historical and political circumstances, helped the show to be appreciated by the public. The exhibition of 1938, Bauhaus 1919-1928, and the home built in the same year are testimony to a specific historical situation informed by uncertainty and misunderstandings: Ultimately, the Bauhaus figures, although prominent and able to call on an extensive network of supporters, were also emigrants, unfamiliar with the cultural customs, interpretation systems and norms of the host country. In their considerations on “émigré culture in design and architecture,” Alison J. Clarke and Elana Shapira draw on Walter Benjamin’s category of translation (Clarke/Shapira 2017, 9). For Benjamin, in essence translation is not the rendering of an original in a different language; instead, translation involves constant movement and variation between the two languages, so that something new is permanently arising (Benjamin 1972, 13). Adopting this perspective, the 1938 exhibition in the MoMA may be interpreted as an attempt to translate the Bauhaus into the context of American design culture. The misunderstandings the show evoked are thus not necessarily the expression of a failure, but rather snapshots of the deviations, changes and contradictions inherent to the translation process. Giving consideration to the strategies initiated by the Gropius family to gain public attention, the house in Lincoln, then, is an expression of the effort to gain acceptance and feel included in a new cultural context. The modernist house in a neighborhood characterized by traditional structures is served by a design vocabulary that translates European Neues Bauen into the housebuilding culture of America. The Bauhaus furniture transported from Europe eventually found its place in Lincoln. It was a family refuge, and not only pieces from Wei-

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Fig. 3: Paul Davis, The children’s room in the Gropius House in Lincoln, Massachusetts, 1938

mar, Dessau and Berlin came together here, but the Isokon chair designed by Marcel Breuer in London also moved in – most probably the lightest piece of furniture. Given a prominent place in the living room, it was perhaps the object that most likely fitted in with the prevailing taste of the time and its preference for curved and sweeping lines. According to Ise Gropius’ diary, when the furniture arrived both the meandering band and the glass shelves were broken (Gropius 1996, 19). The massive cherry wood furniture was simply not made for transportation. But that the desk then found a place in the room of the Gropiuses’ adopted daughter (fig. 3) may well be due to the fact that – now in a new context – it was ‘displaced’ and could no longer be read.

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SUMMARY

In awe, visitors today enter the director’s office in the Bauhaus building in Dessau. After all, Walter Gropius’ desk is closely intertwined with the history of the Bauhaus. But the desk on show at the Bauhaus Dessau, meanwhile a UNESCO world heritage site, is – like all the fittings and furnishings – a replica. Since 1938 the original is to be found in Lincoln, Massachusetts, in the onetime children’s room of the American domicile of the Gropius family. In contrast to the ageless and polished replicas in Weimar and Dessau, the desk in the idyllic surroundings of New England testifies to the several moves it has gone through: The glass shelves are missing, watermarks and color blotches have left traces on the grain of the cherry wood, and knobs have replaced the lost keys to open the drawers. More so than any other object, the desk and its transcontinental journey tell the moving story of forced emigration and exile. And what is more: Forced to go ‘on the road,’ this piece, massive and cumbersome, built to be stationary and not for traveling, embodies the contradictions inherent to how the Bauhaus sought to deal with the conditions of ‘modern homelessness.’ Light, mobile pieces, designed to overcome the state of thingness and to be used on an everyday basis, an attempt to frame a modern form of settling down under the conditions of increasing globality – this was Marcel Breuer’s vision of a ‘modern home’ in 1926, one he shared with many other Bauhaus figures. The representative desk made of cherry wood, once the property of Walter Gropius, does not, however, fit in easily with this image of the unburdened, light and liberated interior of modernism and its claims to universality. The desk was heavy baggage, its sheer materiality resisting the demands of travel and making it scarcely translatable into new contexts. Its history as an object can be considered a prime example for a historiography of design that moves away from understanding design cultures as something completed and closed; instead, the gestating and forming of these cultures needs to be approached as a constant and creative process of transcultural interchange and translation. Whereas the Bauhaus emigration history is often described either as an unhindered triumph towards an International Style shaped by conditions at the time in America or – in the sense

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of ‘influences’ – as a simple adoption of ideas and conceptions in the United States, the ‘desk in exile’ reveals the misunderstandings, resistances and hindrances in the migration process of design. The desk points us towards the predicaments, collisions and distresses of enforced journeys: From behind a desk it would be possible to narrate – from the perspective of our present day characterized by flight and migration – how the hazardous and difficult navigating between ‘home’ and ‘ship’ has become the cultural leitmotif of modern human beings (Neef 2009, 23). The supposedly light luggage with which the Bauhaus figures embarked was – and is – a day-to-day challenge when there is no solid ground underfoot. Translation: Paul Bowman.

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REFERENCES – Barry, Gerald. “Design for Living.” The New Chronicle, 12.7.1934. Pritchard Papers University of East Anglia, NW/PP/2/67. – Benjamin, Walter. “Erfahrung und Armut.” Ibid. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2, Suhrkamp, 1991, pp. 213–219. – Benjamin, Walter. “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers.” Ibid. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. IV/1, Suhrkamp, 1972, pp. 9–21. – Breuer, Marcel. “Ein Bauhausfilm.” bauhaus. zeitschrift für gestaltung, vol. 1, no. 1, 1926, p. 3. – Breuer, Marcel. “Metal furniture and modern spatiality.” (1928) The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, edited by Anton Kaes, et al., Berkeley University Press, 1994, p. 453. – Clarke, Alison D., and Elana Shapira. “Introduction.” Émigré Cultures in Design and Architecture, edited by idem, Bloomsbury, 2017, pp. 1–26. – Freise, Aventura Florentine. Asketischer Komfort. Das Londoner Servicehaus Isokon. ATHENA, 2009. – Gropius, Walter. Speech at the Farewell Dinner at Trocadero, London, March 9, 1937. Houghton Manuscript Library, G MS Ger 208/11. – Gropius, Ise. Gropius House. A History. Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1996. – Hammel, Andrea. “Jack Pritchard, refugees from Nazism and Isokon Design.” Exile and Patronage. Cross-cultural Negotiations beyond the Third Reich, edited by Andrew Chandler, et al., LIT, 2006, pp. 23–32. – Koehler, Karen. “The Bauhaus, 1919–1928: Gropius in Exile and the Museum of Modern Art, N.Y., 1938.” Art, Culture and Media under the Third Reich, edited by – Richard Etlin, University of Chicago Press, 2002, pp. 287–315. – Kraft, Sabine. Gropius baut privat. Seine Wohnhäuser in Dessau (1925/26) und Lincoln/ Mass (1938). Jonas, 1997. – Neef, Sonja, editor. An Bord der Bauhaus. Zur Heimatlosigkeit der Moderne. Transcript, 2009. – Schlemmer, Oskar. “Das Staatliche Bauhaus in Weimar. Manifest aus dem Werbeblatt ‘Die erste Bauhaus- Ausstellung’ in Weimar Juli bis September 1923.” Das Bauhaus: 1919 – 1933. Weimar, Dessau, Berlin und die Nachfolge in Chicago seit 1937, edited by Hans M. Wingler, DuMont, 2009, pp. 79–80. – Smiley, David. “Making the modified modern.” Housing and Dwelling. Perspectives on Modern Domestic Architecture, edited by Barbara Miller-Lane, Routledge, 2007, pp. 285–296. – Thöner, Wolfgang. “Austreibung des Funktionalismus oder Ankunft im Stil.” Bauhausstil zwischen International Style und Lifestyle, exh.-cat. Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, edited by Regina Bittner, Jovis, 2003, pp. 108–130. – Wagner, Christoph. “Streit am Bauhaus? Walter Gropius und Johannes Itten.” Streit ums Bauhaus, exh.-cat. Kunsthalle Erfurt, edited by Ute Ackermann, et al., Glaub Jena, 2009, pp. 100–109.

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FORMS OF MIGRATION, MIGRATION OF FORMS: Sigmund Freud in Exile and the Dispersion of Things 1

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After the so-called ‘Anschluss’ of Austria to the Third Reich in March 1938, Viennese Jews were forced out of their homes. Pogroms, ‘residential Aryanization’ and the accompanying relocation to ‘collective residences’ were integral components in the National Socialist practices of humiliation, disenfranchisement and persecution (Hecht et al. 2015; Marinelli 2003). Many of those dispossessed and ousted were later murdered in the concentration camps, some of them succeeded in emigrating. In most cases, it is archival materials, but also objects the Jews left behind or took with them, that tell of how they lived and resided in the Austrian capital during the interwar years. It was rarely permitted to document in detail or photograph homes and apartments still in an intact state. The residents forced out of their homes were not only robbed of their personal possessions, furniture, household effects and clothes, or in other words “a part of their social and cultural identity,” (Hecht 2015, 43) but along with this, knowledge on Jewish living culture in Vienna was also lost that cannot be reconstructed through single objects. The interior as an ensemble and its dramaturgy, social and cultural functions, and the actions carried out in/on the interior are part of a material culture that still remains to be researched (see, for example, Dudley 2012, 4).

1

This text was made possible by the ERC Consolidator Grant “Relocating Modernism: Global Metropolises, Modern Art and Exile (METROMOD)”. The research project (2017–2022) looks at six global arrival cities for artists and intellectuals forced to flee in the first half of the twentieth century. London is one of these cities, and the home of Sigmund Freud is considered both as an exile location and a contact zone.

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One of the apartments documented almost entirely in photographs, whose residents were forced to move out in 1938 for ‘racial reasons,’ was that of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and his family in Berggasse 19. The decision to emigrate was finally made as the hostility and defamation increased, culminating in Freud’s daughter Anna being interrogated by the Gestapo on March 22, 1938, (Gay 1988, 625f.). The plan to emigrate went hand in hand with efforts to transfer the collection, library and furniture of the family abroad. At the same time, provisions were made to document the ensemble of the furniture, above all in the study and consulting room, with a view to reconstructing it later. The shots taken by the photographer Edmund Engelman were reference points for reconstructing Freud’s study in his London exile. Engelman’s photographs were also an important reference point for the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna, located in precisely those rooms Freud’s family was forced to leave decades earlier. Moreover, the photographs of the Vienna apartment have acted as a reference for contemporary artistic explorations concerned with collections, traumata and repression. The works of the Freud collection are themselves dispersed artefacts possessing their own trajectories and have changed locations on several occasions. Besides the objects, the items of furniture (and their creators) also have their own emigration story: The desk chair in Freud’s study was designed under the primary responsibility of the architect Felix Augenfeld.2 The piece accompanied Freud into exile in England, while its designer emigrated to the United States. The photographer Edmund Engelman, who completed the cycle of Freud photographs without being granted official permission by the Nazi authorities, also emigrated to America. Freud’s home in London became a reference place for other emigrants staying in Britain, for example the writer Stefan Zweig, who visited Freud in the company of the painter Salvador Dalí. Proceeding from these complex emigration movements, which encompass objects and persons alike, Sigmund Freud’s home in Vienna can be understood as the starting point of a powerful displacement, as the nucleus 2

Thanks to Ruth Hanisch for her advice on the desk chair and Felix Augenfeld. Thanks also to the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna for its helpfulness.

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of a swirling history. The ‘return’ to the place of origin, now the Sigmund Freud Museum, cannot be seen as a ‘homecoming’ because Freud’s home no longer existed or exists. Reconstructions and reminiscences, invocations and visitations, which are also articulated in contemporary graphic representations, mark out the possibilities and impossibilities of providing a historical narrative of this displacement.

BEFORE EXILE: FREUD’S HOME, HIS DESK CHAIR, AND THE ANTIQUITIES COLLECTION

In 1930, the Viennese architects Felix Augenfeld and Karl Hofmann designed a desk chair for the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud that, thanks to its unusual forms, gives the impression of being a living object. The piece was created in response to Freud’s reading habits: It was about 1930, perhaps earlier, that I was approached by Mrs. Mathilde Hollitscher, Freud’s oldest daughter, with the request to make a special design for a desk chair that would fill her father’s special requirements. She explained to me that S.F. had a habit of reading in a very peculiar and uncomfortable body position. He was leaning in this chair, in some sort of diagonal position, one of his legs slung over the arm of the chair, the book held high and his head unsupported. The rather bizarre form of the chair I designed is to be explained as an attempt to maintain this habitual posture and to make it more comfortable. The arms are upholstered in leather and the back rest, also upholstered, is made high enough to furnish a support for the head, possibly for several alternative diagonal body positions.3

3

Felix Augenfeld to Hans Lobner, 15.10.1974. Trudy Jeremias Family Collection (Leo Baeck Institute), AR 25354, box 2, folder 5, http://digital.cjh.org//exlibris/dtl/d3_1/apache_media/ L2V4bGlicmlzL2R0bC9kM18xL2FwYWNoZV9tZWRpYS8xMjQzMTgy.pdf. Accessed 14 June 2018. See also Molnar 1994, 252. See also Hanisch 2017, 159–161.

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Fig. 1: Felix Augenfeld and Karl Hofmann, Chair for Sigmund Freud, around 1930, drawing. Sigmund Freud Museum, Vienna

The chair met these requirements (fig. 1): Like an echo of the form of the head, the backrest supports the sitter, while the expansive upholstered armrests offer comfort for the arms and legs. The relevant literature reveals different interpretative approaches towards the chair. It is variously seen as an alter ego of Freud, an intellectual companion, a frame for the therapeutic engagement with the patients, or a reference to the care provided by mothers, or specifically Freud’s mother (see Ward 2006, 28–32).

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Up until now, however, the other pieces in the room have yet to be considered as reference objects for the chair. Freud’s collection of casts, antiquities, sculptures, engravings and paintings also includes objects that show analogies to the chair’s particular form. There are statues with expansive arm movements, for instance a female Cypriot figure (Marinelli 1998a, 110), or others sitting (a seated Imhotep or a Toth figure as a baboon (see ibid., 10f.)). Above all, a small clay sculpture (Bernhard-Walcher 1998, 154), in Freud’s possession until 1934, shows formal parallels to the desk chair: The mother ape sits upright and holds her child in an embrace, while her head has an oval form. The body forms abstracted from nature resonate in the rounded shapes of the chair, while the moment of seeking and giving protection is evident in both sculpture and chair. The architecture historian Ruth Hanisch has described the chair as follows: “The brown upholstery and the rounded forms fitted in with the dignified furnishings of the study. The form of the chair is ‘anthropomorphic,’ the upholstered armrests embraced the analyst with a motherly gesture.” (Hanisch 1995, 227) The protective gesture can also be interpreted as echoing the gestural repertoire of the antiquities. It is thus conceivable that the architect developed his design in dialogue with both the figures as well as their owner, above all because some of the antiquities were placed on the desk. With its anthropomorphic form, the desk chair, even without Freud sitting in it, appears to be the animated counterpart to the statues. It is clear that the antiquities not only had an important function for the analyst’s practical work and thinking process.4 The furniture specially created for Freud was designed to fit the location, its owner and the immediate surrounds of his collection. It is worth remarking that Augenfeld and the chair he designed for Sigmund Freud were both forced into exile and both – at least for a time – were in the same metropolis.5 In June 1938, a large part of the household of the Freud family was transferred to London. And in the same month, Felix Au-

4

The interaction between Freud and the sculptures of his collection is mentioned in the literature (Rice 2007, 37–54).

5

The second originator of the chair was the architect Karl Hofmann, who may have been exiled in Australia. See http://www.architektenlexikon.at/de/235.htm. Accessed 12 July 2018.

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genfeld emigrated to the British capital. Already living and working there was his former fellow student, the architect Ernst L. Freud, a son of Sigmund, through whom Augenfeld presumably had gained the commission to create the desk chair (Hanisch 2017, 159). Augenfeld then subsequently moved on to New York in 1939 (Hanisch 1995, 239–247). Not only furniture and books arrived in London with Sigmund Freud, but thanks to a network of helpers, it proved possible to also transfer the antiquities collection (Forrester 1998, 21). On October 8, 1938, Freud writes to a onetime patient: “All the Egyptians, Chinese and Greeks have arrived, have stood up to the journey with very little damage, and look more impressive here than in Berggasse.”6 Freud’s characterization of his sculptures indicates indirectly that the some 3,000 pieces7 had already changed location before emigration; namely, removed from their original contexts, they have passed through the hands of several owners and presumably been subject to varying degrees of appreciation. Freud had acquired them from Viennese antiquities dealers, bought them while traveling or was given them as gifts (Davies 1998, 95–101; Gamwell 1989, 21–32). Freud’s collection was not a museum, but a private compilation put together on the basis of his likes and preferences; as such he did not have to follow a public mandate to collect and preserve, and pieces found a home which presumably would not have necessarily been included in the holdings of public institutions (Marinelli 1998b, 10). Despite this, the dislocation and transfer movements they were subjected to reveal parallels to how objects are museified. Removed from their original contexts, Freud’s antiquities, irrespective of their specific definition as cult objects, as religious artefacts, as art or everyday objects, underwent a reinterpretation into collection pieces, assembled on the basis of personal inclinations and preferences. James Clifford has extensively described the transformation process (non-European) things are subjected to while they are integrated into (Eu-

6

Sigmund Freud to Jeanne Lampl-de Groot, 8.10.1938 (Freud et al. 1976, 313).

7

In texts dealing with Freud’s collection the number of antiquities varies between 2,000 and 3,000 – presumably because the inventory, compiled by Freud himself, is lost. Lydia Marinelli estimates the number to be some 3,000 pieces (Marinelli 1998b, 9)

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Fig. 2: Edmund Engelman, Berggasse 19, 1938

ropean) collections, structuring them around categories such as culture/ art, artefact/masterpiece or inauthentic/authentic (Clifford 1988, 224). Once they become the property of Freud, the antiquities turn into things serving as objects for contemplation or display, objects that could inspire, affect or daunt – depending on who saw them. The assembly of antique objects in Freud’s consulting room and study meant that the works entered (spatial) constellations that assigned them new meanings (fig. 2). Incoming and outgoing pieces – Freud regularly sold pieces (Marinelli 1998b, 10) – constantly created new arrangements. Thus, what Hilke Doering has described for museum collecting pertains similarly to Freud’s collection: “Carrying out specific activities brings forth objects for exhibition, or – viewed from the perspective of the objects – pieces are turned into museum objects by practices performed on them.” (Doering 2000, 264). Like a custodian or curator, Freud determined the composition, combination and location of his collected pieces. He placed some of his antiquities on the desk with the bodies and faces towards him, a positioning that allowed them to act as dialogue partners and inspiration for his reflections. The desk had several functions: Here Freud worked on his manuscripts and conducted the first interviews with patients. In addition, the desk was also a piece of exhibition furniture: Just as the bourgeois and the museum presentation form overlapped in the glass

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Fig. 3: Sigmund Freud in his treatment room, 20 Maresfield Gardens, London, around 1939. Unknown photographer. Freud Museum London

display cabinet, so the desk was at once pedestal, display and a place of “Präsenthaltung” (“keeping present”) for the antiquities (Seitter 2011, 20).8 Objects were brought together on the desk surface from diverse historical and geographical contexts: Roman, Greek, Umbrian, Egyptian or Asian sculptures, or indeed a Jewish Chanukah menorah, which was not regarded as a ritual object but as part of the collection. In the context of Freud’s collection, these diverse objects now entered new complexes of possible meaning and can be read in terms of juxtaposing sculptures (groups) as well as in relation to Freud’s analytical and literary work (Marinelli 1998b, 10). After emigration and the further displacements of these sculptures, the setting remained generally intact because Freud’s family took care to reconstruct the study in British exile. After arriving in London, the Freuds first 8

Measuring 80 × 180 × 80 cm, Freud’s desk has also been interpreted as a stage and cabinet of curiosities (Wood 2006, 6f.).

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lived in the suburb of Primrose Hill, at 39 Elsworthy Road. In July 1938, Freud’s family purchased the house at 20 Maresfield Gardens for ₤ 6,500. Minor building alterations followed, such as the installation of an elevator and the merging of two rooms into a single study and consultation room. At the end of September 1938, Sigmund Freud and his family then moved into the house in Hampstead (Freud 1996, 437, 441, 443f.). Responsible for the conception, or more specifically the reconstruction, of the interior in this new space (fig. 3) were Freud’s son, Ernst L. Freud, the longstanding housekeeper Paula Fichtl, and the Freud follower and fellow emigrant Ernst Kris (see Gay 1988, 635; Morra 2018, 37; Welter 2012, 154–156). While, in contrast to Vienna, the study and treatment room were now merged so that the spheres of desk and couch were no longer separate (Ward 2006, 32), the sculptures and the old furniture nevertheless maintained their customary relationship.

RECONSTRUCTIONS AND PHOTOGRAPHY: FREUD’S LONDON HOME AND THE FREUD MUSEUMS

Shortly before Freud left his home in Berggasse 19 and his native Vienna on June 4, 1938, a friend of the family hired Edmund Engelman to compile a photographic documentation (Engelman 2016, 90).9 Although a trained engineer, Engelman had opened a photographic studio in Vienna in 1932 (Werner 2002, 446). For the assignment Engelman used equipment that allowed him to photograph close up, although indoors. He arrived at Berggasse 19 with a Leica, a Rolleiflex, a 50-mm lens and 28-mm wide-angle lens (Engelman 2016, 91). The photographer took both exterior and interior shots. His photographs show the footpath, right up to the door of the building with the swastika. Via the staircase he arrived at the front door of Freud’s apartment with the nameplate “Prof. Dr. Freud.” Now the main living and working rooms were photographed; here the photographs, providing an overview 9

A host of subsequent academic texts on Freud’s apartment have drawn on Engelman’s recollection of his photo assignment for the Freud family, among them Fuss 2004, 71–105.

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Fig. 4: Edmund Engelman, Berggasse 19, 1938

of the spatial situations, alternate with detail shots of display cases, framed pictures and furnishings (fig. 4). Engelman captured these rooms in detail, including the front door, and the study with the extensive collection. The photographer and the client were not interested in the everyday situation in the apartment, for this was mostly shot while uninhabited. The focus was more on creating a portrait of the home, one that captured in detail the various constellations, conveyed ideas about cultivated domestic living and showed Freud’s personal preferences, his immediate environment and working world with its “plethora of objects” (Gay 1977, 9). No further photographs could be added to the cycle later, for once the Freuds moved out the location changed irretrievably. Engelman’s photographic cycle of Sigmund Freud’s Vienna apartment with its total of 106 shots (76 taken with the Leica, 30 with the Rolleiflex (see Werner 2002, 447)), is thus a self-contained tour that contributes to preserving memories. This is devoted to remembering both the Jewish Vienna of the interwar years as well as recording the history of psychoanalysis and one of its most important exponents. At the same time, questions of taste are inevitably also touched on, while insights are provided into middle-class Viennese culture and its collections.

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Engelman’s photographs were to act as a memory bank and enable a reconstruction as a museum (Pessler 2016, 15). Moreover, Freud could take his collection, furniture and books with him to London. The study and consultation room of the London house were preserved for decades in their state at the time of Freud’s death on September 23, 1939. His daughter Anna Freud also lived and worked in Maresfield Gardens. Before her death, she arranged for a Freud Museum to be established, which then opened its doors in 1986. The physical items of the psychoanalyst’s estate are to be seen in the London Freud Museum, as are personal objects like his address book, coat and shoes in a display cabinet. The exhibits also include the centerpiece of his psychoanalytic practice, the couch, as well as his desk, the desk chair and the antiquities. Following Tilmann Habermas, these things can also be understood as “beloved objects”10 the owner held near and dear, objects charged with memories and preserving the traces of a life – pieces of furniture, objects of daily use and even clothing.

10 “What are personal objects? One could describe them as beloved things, as treasured or cherished and cared for possessions. They are objects particularly dear to a person, objects that are loved and with which an intimate connection is felt.” (Habermas 1999, 9).

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In contrast, the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna moved into the authentic rooms of the onetime apartment, but here the ‘original’ objects are missing, Freud having taken them with him into exile. As Marinelli and Traska write, what remained is a “materially gutted place” (Marinelli/Traska 2002). The apartment was lived in by others for decades after the Freuds had moved out. First off, a ‘Sammelwohnung’ (‘collection residence’) was set up here, housing mostly elderly Jews who had scarcely any prospects of ever being able to emigrate – 16 of them were to become Shoah victims (Raggam-Blesch 2015, 401). The Jewish residents, forced to live there, were then followed by ‘racially’ unobjectionable tenants. Living in Freud’s practice until 1968, and in his private apartment in the same building until 1987, were the same tenants since 1942 (Marinelli 2003b, 33). It was not until 1953 that a plaque was mounted on the frontage of the building in Berggasse and drew attention to the famous onetime resident. In 1968 the Sigmund Freud Gesellschaft was founded and with public funds its first president, Frederick J. Hacker, was able to purchase Freud’s former apartment in which the psychoanalyst had practiced (Morra 2018, 234). The opening of the museum on June 15, 1971 coincided with the first Congress of the International Psychoanalytic Association to be held in Vienna since Austria’s ‘Anschluss’ in 1938 (Uhl 2003, 98). Used as museum exhibits to show what the setting was once like, Engelman’s photographs were (and are) enlarged. Positioned in a glass wall cabinet, photographs and written documents relate important aspects of Sigmund Freud’s life and the theory and practice of psychoanalysis (Morra 2018, 236). Anna Freud, who was involved in the planning, gifted to the Vienna Museum the furnishings of the former waiting room as well as a small selection of antiquities and books from her father’s library. Attending the opening was the first – and last – time that she had been in the Austrian capital since emigration (Uhl 2003, 99). The Vienna and London Freud museums are thus two museums focused on a person which in fact only genuinely translate the complex life and work of Freud, marked by a number of breaks and turning points, into an exhibition setting when taken together.11 In her analysis of the Freud museums, Joanne Morra emphasizes that, with its personal objects brought along into exile, the London Freud Museum is committed to a hagiographic model

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and thus follows the classical logic of a museum devoted to a person; in contrast, the ‘empty’ Sigmund Freud Museum is more conceptual, pointing to the absence of objects and the emptiness of the apartment (Morra 2018, 237; see also Forrester 1997, 132). Both museums illustrate in their own right how impossible it is to reconstruct the past, to ‘heal’ caesura, and to remember. The house in London was a private and intellectual home for Freud only at the end of his life and for the short period of a year, and indeed it was itself a reconstructed, transferred setting that can only be understood in relation to the vacated Vienna home. The dramaturgy of the interior, the objects displayed, the desk chair and desk of Freud were themselves already products of the work of memory, and thus also inscribed with the difference from what had been left behind – for example through the combining of the rooms or the neighboring buildings of Hampstead from the late nineteenth century, which was greatly different from the residential district in Vienna. In turn, the transfer into a museum conserved this remembered interior. Not only the personal objects and collection of Freud were museified, but the act of remembering itself. The Vienna museum offers the stable setting of the apartment, the witness of Freud’s forced exile and the lives of the residents who followed him. Here the emptiness of the apartment and the photographs of Edmund Engelman point to what is long past and have the character of a re-telling, one, however, that is hardly capable of evoking a re-experiencing. It is striking that Engelman’s photographs were/ are featured in both Freud museums as exhibits (Uhl 2003, 89). Whereas in Vienna, the starting point of emigration, they refer to loss, Engelman’s photographs in London are a sign of emigration and a life left behind.

11 David Newlands, first director of the Freud Museum in London, wrote: “The existence of two museums devoted to Freud, one in Vienna and one in London, is a physical reminder of the historical events which forced the Freud family to flee Austria for sanctuary in England. […] Freud in London should not be a copy of Freud in Vienna; Freud’s legacy is woven into the cloth of time and the history of the Western World.” (Newlands 1988, 297f.). 12 In this section I focus on works of art demonstrating an explicit relationship to Engelman’s photographs. For the prolific interest shown by contemporary artists in Freud, his consulting room and his writings, see, for example, Wiener Divan 1989. A photographic homage to the London Freud Museum is to be found in Leibovitz 2011, 54–56.

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Fig. 5: Robert Longo, Untitled [Freud’s Desk and Chair, Study Room, 1938], 2002, charcoal on mounted paper, 68 × 93 inches (ca. 173 × 236 cm). Wolfgang Beck, Munich

ENGELMAN’S PHOTOGRAPHS AND THEIR AFTERLIFE IN CONTEMPORARY ART

For decades Edmund Engelman’s photographs were a reference point for contemporary artistic engagement with Freud’s apartment, the things that surrounded him and his/their exile.12 Between 2000 and 2002 the American artist Robert Longo completed a series of large-format lead and charcoal drawings, based primarily on the Vienna photographs (fig. 5). Longo accentuated details, for instance isolating the house number of 19, and immersed the sheet into a vast darkness. While retracing Engelman’s steps, he took the liberty of emphasizing some aspects in the photographs and neglecting others. To mention one example: Longo tore the front door, barricaded

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from inside, out of the spatial continuum. He accentuated the blackness of the bars against the whiteness of the door and thus created a metaphor for – despite all the precautions taken – inevitable catastrophe: persecution and expulsion from home and the home city of Vienna. The larger than lifesized dimensions of the drawing (224 × 152 centimeters), dwarfing those of the photographs, monumentalizes the subject, gives weight to what is drawn, and refuses intimacy in favor of a powerful presence. Here Longo is simultaneously referring to Engelman’s assignment. His photographs also went far beyond mementos taken for the family; they were and became the expression of a collective remembrance. Already inherent to the smaller photographs, this function of the epochal witness is translated into a large scale in Longo’s work. His large-format drawings may thus be read on the one hand as a double underlining, where all that is evident in Engelman’s cycle is emphasized, exposed, concentrated. Moreover, thanks to the technique of drawing, they are also personal, subjective observations made by the artist Longo, who, equipped with graphite and charcoal, dared to advance into the depths of the Freudian universe, or specifically the interiors unmistakably arranged by him. In Longo’s work, black is a means of overwriting and overlaying: “This blackness pervades rooms, furniture and objects like a solar eclipse” (Spies 2002, 39), writes Werner Spies in an essay on Longo’s Freud cycle. And Rainer Metzger discerns in Longo’s drawings an “aesthetic program of disappearance” or the “presence of absence” (Metzger 2002, 77). At the same time, black is also the basic prerequisite for helping images become visible at all, functioning here much like the ‘black box’ in cinema. It is only against a backdrop of or immersed in darkness that it is possible to give a shadowy formulation of the places forcibly abandoned, the forgotten and repressed things (in Longo’s cycle the pillows piled on the couch, the desk chair and desk), people and narratives. The traumatic images of a violent epoch, characterized by persecution and emigration, recur. Whereas Longo treats Freud’s antiquities collection in just the same way as other objects in the psychoanalyst’s household, Ania Soliman concentrates on the arrangement of the sculptures on the desk (fig. 6). Here again Edmund Engelman’s photographs are the starting point for a set of explorative drawings. Soliman’s artistic research circles around the translocation of non-West-

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Fig. 6: Ania Soliman, Freud’s Desk, 2013, pencil and encaustic on paper, 88 × 65.2 cm

ern artefacts in European collections, including the collection of the Surrealist André Breton and the antiquities of Sigmund Freud. Her drawings based on Engelman’s photographs from 1938 trace the forms and constellations of the sculptures on Freud’s desk. Working with outlines, in some drawings she creates shading with diagonal lines, the objects now emerging only vaguely and forced to assert themselves against the textures on the paper. Nevertheless, the composition with desk, lamp, letter opener and antiquities remains recognizable. Soliman repeats these drawings – three versions of Freud’s desk exist in different formats – so as to be able to approach the object anew, to try and understand it and transport it into the present graphically.13 Drawing is a way of physically approaching the past, a dialogical interaction with 13 Soliman, Ania. “Re: Question, Freud’s desk.” Received by Burcu Dogramaci, 31 May 2018.

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both the collection (and its history) as well as the collected sculptures. Aspects of the representation are taken up and addressed, while the theoretical constructs in Freud’s œuvre are thematized – for instance his exploration of the unconscious and mechanisms of repression. In this sense Soliman’s works are not graphical copies of preexisting photographs; rather, she adds layers to what she has glimpsed and these complicate the obvious to the point that the many visible and hidden narratives behind the photographs and/or Freud’s collection become apparent. Formally, Soliman’s drawings recall palimpsests, where the traces of the past appear only in ‘residues’ and can only be deciphered in painstaking reconstruction.

LIVING, DISPERSION, FORGETTING – AND REMEMBERING

A European emigration story takes shape in Freud’s residences and their furnishings as well as their photographic ‘transmission’, a story that deals with living, dispersion and forgetting. After all, not all of Freud’s personal things landed in British exile. Because Freud could only take a part of his books with him, he was forced to sort through them and eventually gave more than 1,000 of them to a Vienna antiquarian bookstore. Many of these books were then purchased by the New York State Psychiatric Institute, where they arrived at the end of 1939 (Timms 1988, 65). While the Vienna apartment was emptied and followed by the forced move, once in London exile Freud moved into a new living environment. This transfer was more than a mere relocation. Objects that had already left their places of origin once again changed location – and remained foreign in a new foreign surrounding. Then, much later, Freud’s private collection and “cabinet of curiosities” (Pelz 2011, 66–68) was in fact turned into a museum. In the family’s emigration story, Freud’s furniture offered a setting that conveyed a sense of continuity, much like the stage setting in a theater. The adapting of the interior gave expression to a desire to keep the effects of the forced relocation to a minimum. And connected to the emigration story of Freud’s things and the inhabitants of the London house were the

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exile experiences of others: the emigration of one of the creators of the desk, Felix Augenfeld, and the photographer Edmund Engelman, which, after the November pogrom, led him via a labyrinthine path through France and Italy to New York (Werner 2002, 450). The negatives of the photographs of the Vienna apartment also came via detours to Freud’s London house, where Anna Freud then returned them to Engelman after the war (Engelman 1977, 62f.). These photographs are returning in the artistic drawings of the present, for which they act as a reference. Via Engelman’s photographs, contemporary artists are stepping closer to Freud’s household and interior from 1938. And in works by Robert Longo and Ania Soliman, Freud’s furnishings, collections and personal things look at their viewers of the present and future, like portents. Forms of migration – diaspora, exile, emigration, displacement – overlap with the migration of forms, which in Soliman’s work find shape in the unclear and yet simultaneously forceful contours. The reconstruction of a Freud interior was not only undertaken in 20 Maresfield Gardens, London. Anna Freud was able to relocate her historical furniture of rural-alpine origins from the summer farmhouse near Vienna, Hochrotherd, to her new English summer residence in Suffolk (FreudMarlé 2006, 264). Later, the nine pieces of furniture were exhibited in the dining room of the London Freud House (Johler 2015, 5ff.). In the context of exile, reconstruction is a work of remembrance encompassing many facets. Lutz Winckler has characterized the “memory of exile” as a reconstructive remembering (Winckler 2010, IX). But the things themselves – the furniture, collection pieces and everyday objects – can also become actors in the work of recollecting, remembering and reconstructing. Translation: Paul Bowman.

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REFERENCES – Bernhard-Walcher, Alfred. “Ein Stück aus Freuds Sammlung im Kunsthistorischen Museum Wien.” “Meine ... alten und dreckigen Götter”. Aus Sigmund Freuds Sammlung, edited by Lydia Marinelli, exh.-cat. Sigmund Freud-Museum, Vienna, Stroemfeld, 1998, pp. 154–155. – Clifford, James. The Predicament of Culture. Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Harvard University Press, 1988. – Davies, Erica. “Eine Welt wie im Traum. Freuds Antikensammlung.” “Meine ... alten und dreckigen Götter”. Aus Sigmund Freuds Sammlung, edited by Lydia Marinelli, exh.-cat. Sigmund Freud-Museum, Vienna, Stroemfeld, 1998, pp. 95–101. – Doering, Hilke. “Dingkarrieren: Sammelstück, Lagerstück, Werkstück, Ausstellungsobjekt. Zur Konstruktion musealer Wirklichkeit.” Geschichtskultur in der Zweiten Moderne, edited by Rosmarie Beier, Campus, 2000, pp. 263–278. – Dudley, Sandra H. “Encountering a Chinese horse. Engaging with the thingness of things.” Museum Objects. Experiencing the Properties of Things, edited by Sandra H. Dudley, Routledge, 2012, pp. 1–15. – Engelman, Edmund. “Rückblick.” Edmund Engelman. Berggasse 19. Das Wiener Domizil Sigmund Freuds. Belser, 1977, pp. 51–64. – Engelman, Edmund. “Ein Rückblick.” Edmund Engelman. Sigmund Freud. Wien IX. Berggasse 19. 3rd edition, Brandstätter, 2016, pp. 85–101. – Forrester, John. Dispatches from the Freud Wars. Psychoanalysis and Its Passions. Harvard University Press, 1997. – Forrester, John. “Freudsches Sammeln.” “Meine ... alten und dreckigen Götter”. Aus Sigmund Freuds Sammlung, edited by Lydia Marinelli, exh.-cat. Sigmund Freud-Museum, Vienna, Stroemfeld 1998, pp. 21–35. – Freud, Ernst, et al., editors. Sigmund Freud. Sein Leben in Bildern und Texten. Suhrkamp, 1976. – Freud, Sigmund. Tagebuch 1929–1939. Kürzeste Chronik, edited by Michael Molnar and Freud Museum London. Stroemfeld, 1996. – Freud-Marlé, Lilly. Mein Onkel Sigmund Freud. Erinnerungen an eine große Familie, edited by Christfried Tögel, Aufbau, 2006. – Fuss, Diana. The Sense of an Interior. Four Writers and the Rooms That Shaped Them. Routledge, 2004, pp. 71–105. – Gamwell, Lynn. “The Origins of Freud’s Antiquities Collection.” Sigmund Freud and Art. His Personal Collection of Antiquities, edited by Lynn Gamwell and Richard Wells, Thames and Hudson, 1989, pp. 21–32. – Gay, Peter. “Zum Gedenken an Sigmund Freud.” Edmund Engelman. Berggasse 19. Das Wiener Domizil Sigmund Freuds. Belser, 1977, pp. 5–49. – Gay, Peter. Freud. A Life for Our Time. W.W. Norton & Co., 1988. – Habermas, Tilmann. Geliebte Objekte. Symbole und Instrumente der Identitätsbildung. Suhrkamp, 1999.

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– Hanisch, Ruth. “Die unsichtbare Raumkunst des Felix Augenfeld.” Visionäre & Vertriebene. Österreichische Spuren in der modernen amerikanischen Architektur, edited by Matthias Boeckl, exh.-cat. Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Ernst, 1995, pp. 227–247. – Hanisch, Ruth. “Felix Augenfeld: Modern Architecture, Psychoanalysis, and Antifascism.” Émigré cultures in design and architecture, edited by Alison J. Clarke and Elana Shapira, Bloomsbury, 2017, pp. 159–171. – Hecht, Dieter J., et al., editors. Topographie der Shoah. Gedächtnisorte des zerstörten jüdischen Wien. Mandelbaum, 2015. – Hecht, Dieter. “Der große Raubzug. ‘Arisierungen’ entlang der Ringstraße.” Topographie der Shoah. Gedächtnisorte des zerstörten jüdischen Wien, edited by Dieter J. Hecht, et al., Mandelbaum, 2015, pp. 42–81. – Johler, Birgit. Freud’s Dining Room. Möbel bewegen Erinnerung. Furniture moves memory, exh.-cat. Österreichisches Museum für Volkskunde, Vienna, 2015. – Leibovitz, Annie. Pilgrimage. Pilgerreisen zu Kultorten. Schirmer/Mosel, 2011. – Marinelli, Lydia, editor. “Meine ... alten und dreckigen Götter”. Aus Sigmund Freuds Sammlung, exh.-cat. Sigmund Freud-Museum, Vienna, Stroemfeld, 1998a. – Marinelli, Lydia. “‘Meine ... alten und dreckigen Götter’. Aus Sigmund Freuds Sammlung.” “Meine ... alten und dreckigen Götter”. Aus Sigmund Freuds Sammlung, edited by Lydia Marinelli, exh.-cat. Sigmund Freud-Museum, Vienna, Stroemfeld 1998b, pp. 9–19. – Marinelli, Lydia, and Georg Traska. “Besuch einer Wohnung. Zur Architektur des Sigmund Freud-Museums.” Architektur des Sigmund Freud-Museums, edited by Sigmund Freud-Museum, Wien 2002, unnumbered. – Marinelli, Lydia, editor. Freuds verschwundene Nachbarn, exh.-cat. Sigmund Freud-Museum, Vienna, Turia + Kant, 2003a. – Marinelli, Lydia. “Mehrfach bewohnt. Gedächtniszonen im Wohnhaus Berggasse 19.” Freuds verschwundene Nachbarn, edited by Lydia Marinelli, exh.-cat. Sigmund Freud-Museum, Vienna, Turia + Kant, 2003b, pp. 29–37. – Metzger, Rainer. “The Presence of Absence.” Robert Longo. The Freud Drawings, edited by Martin Hentschel and Klaus Albrecht Schröder, exh.-cat. Museen Haus Lange/ Haus Esters, Krefeld, Kerber, 2002, pp. 74–79. – Molnar, Michael. “The Bizarre Chair: A Slant on Freud’s Light Reading in the 1930s.” Reading Freud’s Reading, edited by Sander L. Gilman, et al., New York University Press, 1994, pp. 252–265. – Morra, Joanne. Inside the Freud Museums. History, Memory and Site-Responsive Art. I.B. Tauris, 2018. – Newlands, David. “The Significance of the Freud Museum.” Freud in Exile. Psychoanalysis and Its Vicissitudes, edited by Edward Timms and Naomi Segal, Yale University Press, 1988, pp. 65–79. – Pelz, Annegret. “Aufstellungen. Freuds Schreibtisch.” Freud und die Antike, edited by Claudia Benthien, et al., Wallstein, 2011, pp. 51–68.

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– Pessler, Monika. “Wien, Berggasse 19. Eine Annäherung zur Mitte.” Edmund Engelman. Sigmund Freud. Wien IX. Berggasse 19. 3rd edition. Brandstätter, 2016, pp. 7–18. – Raggam-Blesch, Michaela. “Alsergrund und Leopoldstadt: ‘Sammelwohnungen’ als Zwischenstation.” Topographie der Shoah. Gedächtnisorte des zerstörten jüdischen Wien, edited by Dieter J. Hecht, et al., Mandelbaum, 2015, pp. 395–409. – Rice, Charles. The Emergence of the Interior. Architecture, Modernity, Domesticity. 2nd edition. Routledge, 2007, pp. 37–54. – Seitter, Walter. “Möbel als Medien: Prothesen, Passformen, Menschenbildner. Zur theoretischen Relevanz Alter Medien.” Möbel als Medien. Beiträge zu einer Kulturgeschichte der Dinge, edited by Sebastian Hackenschmidt and Klaus Engelhorn, transcript, 2011, pp. 19–32. – Spies, Werner. “The Freud Cycle.” Robert Longo. The Freud Drawings, edited by Martin Hentschel and Klaus Albrecht Schröder, exh.-cat. Museen Haus Lange/Haus Esters, Krefeld, Kerber, 2002, pp. 36–39. – Timms, Edward. “Freud’s Library and His Private Reading.” Freud in Exile. Psychoanalysis and Its Vicissitudes, edited by Edward Timms and Naomi Segal, Yale University Press, 1988, pp. 65–79. – Uhl, Heidemarie. “Berggasse 19. Lesarten eines vielschichtigen Gedächtnisortes.” Freuds verschwundene Nachbarn, edited by Lydia Marinelli, exh.-cat. Sigmund Freud-Museum, Vienna, Turia + Kant, 2003, pp. 89–103. – Ward, Ivan. “Freud’s Chair and Desk.” Freud’s Sculpture, exh.-cat. Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, 2006, pp. 28–36. – Welter, Volker M. Ernst L. Freud, Architect. The Case of the Modern Bourgeois Home. Berghahn, 2012. – Werner, Arnold. “Edmund Engelman. Photographer of Sigmund Freud’s Home and Offices.” The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, vol. 83, no. 2, 2002, pp. 445–451. – Wiener Diwan – Sigmund Freud – heute, exh.-cat. Museum des 20. Jahrhunderts, Vienna, Ritter, 1989. – Winckler, Lutz. “Gedächtnis des Exils: Erinnerung als Rekonstruktion.” Gedächtnis des Exils. Formen der Erinnerung (Jahrbuch Exilforschung, 28), edited by Claus-Dieter Krohn and Lutz Winckler, edition text + kritik, 2010, pp. IX–XVI. – Wood, Jon. “Re-Staging Freud’s Sculpture.” Freud’s Sculpture, exh.-cat. Henry Moore Institute, Leeds 2006, pp. 6–17.

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THE TRACKSUIT ON THE STREET. On the Construction of “Migrant Chic“

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KANYE WEST’S “MIGRANT CHIC”

In April 2016, Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of American Vogue, uses the term “migrant chic”1 to describe the fashion show of Kanye West where the hip-hop star presented both his clothing line for the Adidas Yeezy Season 3 and his new album Life of Pablo (fig. 1). The attribute of “migrant” obviously refers to the ‘used look’ of street-style clothing, for, as Elke Gaugele has noted, this used look anticipates “in an unsettling way the status of old clothes” (Gaugele 2016a, 12). Wintour’s remark became the subject of critical discussion on social media,2 demonstrating that the term “migrant chic” is associated with a wide variety of sentiments and judgements: Here the exclusion, rejection or degradation of migrants can play a role, but so too – in the form of ‘ghetto fashion’ – the self-empowerment or self-awareness of marginalized groups. Directed by the performance artist Vanessa Beecroft, West’s show relates to the latter, sending only black models down the catwalk. With respect to the venue, Madison Square Garden, Beecroft recalls: “I was actually surprised on how small MSG was compared to what I expected. I found an ‘outdoor’ inspiration image from a Rwandan genocide refugee camp that didn’t have any physical limitation. We tried to fill all the space there was with people” (Luk 2016) – a candid admission that appears to be outright cynical given the horrendous conditions refugees are forced to endure in such camps. Some of

1

Anna Wintour at the U.S. TV talk show Late Night with Seth Meyers on 13 April 2016, see Wintour 2016.

2

For a critique of Wintour’s apology, see Rawlinson 2016.

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Fig. 1: Kanye West in collaboration with Adidas, Yeezy Season 3, New York Fashion Week, Madison Square Garden, Fall/Winter 2016, Foto: Kevin Mazur

the models stand on two large cubes covered with cloth, purportedly recalling barracks. The choreography here evokes Beecroft’s well-known performances, where naked or almost naked models loosely stand together to form tableaux vivants. In contrast, the models beneath them are pressed together into a heaving mass, triggering associations with refugee camps. Conventionally, fashion shows give prominence to parading and exhibiting, so that the models can be seen from all sides and while in motion, and of course as ‘individuals’ showing off the respective design. West’s and Beecroft’s show rejects this aspiration tied to fashion and evokes stereotypical media images instead, which in the context of migration debates represent the refugees as an amorphous mass to illustrate the supposed ‘refugee problem.’ The invitation to the show carries this reference to the extreme by using a photograph of a refugee camp in Rwanda, mentioned by Beecroft in the quote above (fig. 3). The analogy created between the show and the refugee camp is very clear and visible in details such as the colors of the clothes,

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Fig. 2: Kanye West, Yeezy 3–4, photo: Jackie Nickerson Fig. 3: Invitation to Kanye West‘s Fashion Show Yeezy Season 3, New York Fashion Week, Madison Square Garden, Fall/Winter 2016 featuring Paul Lowe’s photography from the Rwandan Genocide in Kibeho camp (originally taken in 1995)

which pick up the earthy tones of the photograph. The show even restages the plumes of smoke from the camp with fake fog. Over the two hours of the show, the effort demanded of the models visibly takes its toll, forcing some of them to finally sit down, sweating profusely, a shift in emphasis towards corporeality. The physical presence is emphasized on the one hand, while on the other reminiscences of exhausted persons fleeing are suggested.

TROPES OF BLACKNESS: SPORTS AND HIP-HOP

The political charging of the event through these references to refugees and migration is augmented by the quoting of an influential symbol of the Black

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Power movement, namely the raised clenched fist. Also highly symbolic is the choice of Madison Square Garden as the venue for what was billed as the “Fight of the Century,” the heavyweight bout between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in 1971. Ali was regarded as a pioneer of the Black Power movement. In sports itself, the raised clenched fist attained iconic status through the protest by Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the medals ceremony for the men’s 200 meters at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. The athletic black body represented colonial myths and projections of black power, but also self-empowerment. In his study The Black Migrant Athlete, Munene Franjo Mwaniki has described his own experience as follows: “Sport and the explosion of hip-hop and rap culture offered ways of living, however constrained and forced by limited options, my blackness and masculinity. They offered something cool and youthful that I could build an identity on.” (Mwaniki 2017, 9f.) Both of these tropes of blackness are merged in West’s show, and his collection for the sport brand Adidas is presented in conjunction with his rap album. This show is a particularly significant example of how the discourses on fleeing refugees and migration are taken up in fashion and popular culture: The signs become polyvalent and circulate between commercial marketing, aesthetic enhancement, sports and political referencing, between the poles of imposed and self-ascriptions. In the following I aim to expand on the various ascriptions which are densely interwoven with sport fashion like that of West’s Adidas collection, focusing on the tracksuit.

FROM STREETWEAR TO HIGH FASHION: TOPOI OF MIGRATION AND POVERTY

The staging of Black Power at West’s show is also compared to Beyoncé’s iconic performance at another mega sports event, the Super Bowl of 2016, which took place shortly before West’s dual premiere (see Barnes 2016). In her video clip to the song Formation, which she had first performed at the Super Bowl, Beyoncé refers to the discrimination suffered

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Fig. 4: Trayvon Martin’s hooded sweatshirt with the bullet hole serves as evidence in the court case against George Zimmerman, July 2013, photo: Pool

by African Americans in the U.S. One scene alludes to the case of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old youth shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer in 2012 (see Curry 2013; Stöcker 2012). The case triggered nationwide protests against racial discrimination and police violence. On the night of the shooting, Martin was wearing a hoodie and it became the symbol of the protest, leading to the Million Hoodie March, where a photo of the victim was used to promote the march and protestors pointedly wore hoodies. That prejudices are associated with the hoodie is evidenced by remarks made by a prominent television host, who blamed Martin’s wearing of a hoodie for his death: “You’re gonna be a gangsta wannabe? Well, people are going to perceive you as a menace. That’s what happens. It is an instant reflexive action” (Rivera 2012), claimed Geraldo Rivera on the talk show Fox & Friends. He advised parents not to let their children walk the streets wearing hoodies. This problematic rhetoric, which gives the victim a share of the blame, recalls the debates about how women dress, with

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somewhat revealing attire allegedly an invitation to sex and thus legitimating rape.3 The hoodie with the bullet hole served as evidence in the trial against the neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman (fig. 4). The photo of the hoodie being presented at the trial was widely used in the media. Showing it in a glass frame with spread sleeves lent the hoodie a sacral character, not least because in this context the bullet hole recalls the wound of Christ. The Netflix series on the invulnerable black superhero Luke Cage (2016) quotes this hoodie and even installs it as a “signature piece”: Cage’s hoodie is riddled with bullet holes (see MaGee 2016). The tattered clothing is analogized to the lacerated body. West’s staging of his show also quotes the ‘ghetto style,’ employing sportswear, tracksuits with hoodies and sweatpants. But tattered clothes are also part of West’s collection. Thus, the ‘ghetto style’ cultivated by rappers and clothes tattered during the refugee ordeal are merged, quoting in this form the haute couture of the 1980s, for instance Comme des Garçons’ “aesthetics of poverty” (Koda 1985, 7). The oversized look and tatty clothes riddled with holes were conceived as an antithesis to the perfection of women’s fashion in haute couture. Due to the impression of destruction and survival they conveyed, Comme des Garçons’ collections from 1981 and the following years were even linked to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan and war in general, as Julia Rohrmann has shown, with scores of direct references made in this direction, including “post-Hiroshima bag lady fashion,” “the Japanese answer to the atomic bomb,” “a shot in the arm for fashion,” “WW3 survivors,” clothes “shredded in a bomb attack,” (Rohrmann 2008, 25) and so on. The staging in West’s show takes up the associations of destruction and war when Beecroft has the models pose against a background recalling a refugee camp. At the same time, West’s line also takes up and commercially exploits the DIY look of the subcultural punk movement, which, otherwise fostering a ‘poor look,’ rebels against bourgeois rules for a smart appearance. 3

For instance, U.S. News ran with the headline “Is the Hoodie the New Miniskirt?”, see Milligan 2013.

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West places the torn and tattered, used look in the context of numerous political messages. As expressive and telling these connections between this fashion and political issues may seem, caution needs to be exercised, for on the other hand these connections are also encoded by fashion principles. Georg Simmel had already pointed out, in 1904, how fashion, obeying its own logic, drains subject matter of any kind of import: “The complete indifference of fashion to the material standards of life is illustrated by the arbitrary manner in which it recommends something appropriate in one instance, something abstruse in another, and something materially and aesthetically quite indifferent in a third.” (Simmel 1997, 190) Simmel identifies an “abstraction of fashion” that “as ‘estranged from reality’ bestows a certain aesthetic cachet of modernity itself upon quite non-aesthetic areas.”4 (Simmel in Frisby’s translation: Frisby 2013, 97) Simmel emphasizes that politics (he mentions socialism) can be neutralized and rendered indifferent in fashion. This aspect can thus ultimately be related to the problematic of socio-political references in West’s show. Following this logic, fleeing refugees and migration are turned into mere fashion signs. West’s Yeezy Season 3 collection exemplifies how topoi of migration, poverty and fleeing refugees are approached and discussed in current-day fashion as street style. In the various niches of street style the particular kind of tracksuit worn is of great importance, an aspect I shall discuss in the following. The tracksuit pants can be seen as a rough diverging from bourgeois conventions, for instance, when youths wear them in everyday situations. When the tracksuit pants are associated with leisure time and, outside of sporting activities, with apparel worn at home, then wearing them on the street demonstrates how porous the boundary between public and private space 4

Frisby’s translation is close to Simmel’s German wording: “Abstraktheit der Mode”, die “als ‘Realitätsfremdheit’ ein gewisses ästhetisches Cachet dem Modernen selbst auf ganz außerästhetischen Gebieten verleiht,” see Simmel 1986, here 183. The 1957 English translation of Simmel’s text is somewhat freer: “The absolute indifference of fashion to the material standards of life is well illustrated by the way in which it recommends something appropriate in one instance, something abstruse in another, and something materially and aesthetically quite indifferent in a third.” (Simmel 1957, 544).

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has become. The photographers Tobias Zielony and Jens Haaning have explored different manifestations of this tension among migrant youths. Shifts are initiated as fashion signs circulate through society and examples of this will be analyzed, with care and sensitivity given to the specifics of a respective context. My thesis is that, in the various examples of recontextualizing training wear, cultural boundaries prove to be porous on the one hand and yet remain remarkably stable on the other: the tracksuit transgresses demarcation lines conventionally used to mark out the categories of race, class, gender and age. The tracksuit has become a global sign, but one that is ambiguous, for the tracksuit is not only uniforming, as it were, but is also embedded in an interplay of different ascriptions. This is particularly evident when we consider the prices demanded for the Yeezy collection by Adidas, with a boundary clearly drawn between the wealthy and those not so well off. A “pullover in distressed look” costs 1,469 euros,5 for instance, a price that puts it firmly in the luxury segment. Moreover, the quoting of the training gear is staged with pointers as to how it should be understood and not be confused with other uses: A video of the show features the dancing Jenner family among the audience – the family of Kim Kardashian, West’s wife.6 The seemingly tattered clothes are tight-fitting and combined with glittering tops and high heels, as the backstage photos show.7 What counts is the overall combination – the subtle distinctions. This is also clear, for instance, in an article on the InStyle homepage entitled “6 Style Lessons by Gigi Hadid – How to Wear Sweatpants Out in Public” (Cheng 2015). In minute detail and illustrated with pho5

This was the price quoted in the website STYLEBOB.com, “YEEZY. Pullover im Distressed-Look.” STYLEBOP.com, www.stylebop.com/de-de/men/distressed-pullover-with-wool-256497.html. Accessed 03 September 2018.

6

Video of Kanye West’s album and fashion collection release at Madison Square Garden, see The Guardian 2016.

7

Numerous photos from the backstage area illustrate the article by Caitlin O’Toole: “His muse! Kanye West dresses post-baby bombshell Kim Kardashian in frock with extreme cleavage… and styles the rest of her family too”, see O’Toole 2016.

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tos featuring models, the article emphasizes that there is only one way tracksuit pants can be worn in public: slinky and tight-fitting in combination with high heels, glamorous high fashion accessories and a smartly groomed look, and, naturally enough, only if you have a slender body. This suggests a lurking danger – that not to match and combine in this way could result in being mistaken for someone “who’s lost control of their life.” (Markus 2015, 310) This much-quoted view, attributed to Karl Lagerfeld, shows how tracksuits are associated with a lack of control and indeed sanity, and hence are compatible with popular images of the underclasses. The distinction from these wearers of training gear must be maintained at all costs. A number of comedians and series quote the cliché of the underclass, for instance, Matt Lucas in Little Britain as the fictional, grotesque character Vicky Pollard plays a so-called “chav,” a poor, uneducated, vulgar, young and underprivileged person who wears tracksuits and is overweight. Even the model Kate Moss joined in a sketch for a cameo appearance as Vicky Pollard’s sister Katie, “mocking the tracksuitand-bling-style among working class people” (Jones 2001, 138; Markus 2015, 309f.). In the German context, clichés of underclass and migration intertwine in the cabaret artist İdil Baydar as the 18-year-old Kreuzberg Turkish teenager Jilet Ayşe, who prefers Adidas tracksuits. As the figures of both Vicky Pollard and Jilet Ayşe do not conform to the conventional ideal of the body, the tight-fitting tracksuits are themselves already a parodying gesture. Lagerfeld himself has returned to the training gear trend and presented a pink tracksuit in the so-called ‘distressed look,’ which however – as with Gigi Hadid – sets a distinguishing marker by including high-fashion elements.8 Featured on 3sat, a broadcaster with a culture program tailored for the educated middle class, the fictional character of Jilet Ayşe is presented as a “ghetto bride” with an “awful taste in clothes” (Baydar 2016), and thus highlights the brand consciousness that functions as a status symbol particularly in migrant youth cultures, where logos are flaunted. 8

Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel, Autumn/Winter 2014/15, Ready-to-wear.

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GHETTO IMAGES AND STATUS SYMBOLS: THE TRACKSUIT AS A GLOBAL SIGN OF YOUTH CULTURES

The photographer Jens Haaning has taken up the connection of poverty, migration and status symbols in a series that shows young refugees in Copenhagen mostly in streetwear while listing how much each item of clothing had cost (2010, fig. 5).9 Revealing the prices of the brand-name clothes adjacent to the portraits of the refugees is politically and socially explosive, a source of ambivalence that becomes problematic when it is used to serve prejudices, for instance, the one that claims refugees receive preferential treatment and can ‘afford’ to dress like this. The poses of coolness and superiority adopted by the people portrayed are borrowed from the repertoire of the ghetto style oriented on hip-hop culture and can be seen as a sign of self-empowerment.10 In their analysis of the “cool pose,” Richard Majors and Janet Mancini Billson have shown that coolness and ‘cool’ clothes are a means for disenfranchised, marginalized individuals to strengthen and enhance their sense of self-respect: Poses and posturing are used “to communicate power, toughness, detachment, and style self” (Majors/Mancini Billson 1993, 8). The ‘cool’ attitude is part of a practice that marks the status of the wearer and stresses the importance of fashion objects. (Lewis 2010; Friedrich/ Klein 2003, 43–44, 191–198)

Fig. 5: Jens Haaning, DENIZ (2000) – Track suit trousers by Adidas 200 DKK. Sweat shirt by Benetton bought in Turkey for the equivalent of 80 DKK. White T-shirt 20 DKK. Shoes by Fila 600 DKK. Nylon belt purse, present. Socks by Adidas 30 DKK. Underwear 30 DKK at Føtex. Photograph of a first generation refugee living in Copenhagen

9

For further photographic works by Jens Haaning, see Haaning/Pécoil 2003.

10 In his paintings the artist Kehinde Wiley, for example, uses a ‘neo-baroque’ staging for the tracksuits of the hip-hop scene – in contemporary streetwear with the brand logos visible, his protagonists adopt the classical ruler pose of European portrait painting against ornamental, African-inspired backgrounds (Krause-Wahl 2013, 49-50), representing very strong gestures of self-empowerment.

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What emerges here is that style needs to be understood as a performative practice – in so far as it is not only about the choice of clothes but also how the style or look itself has to be performed (Dorestal 2012, 38). Dick Hebdige has emphasized that style is always bound to a social and economic context and is a primary form of articulation in youth cultures opposing mainstream middle-class society (Hebdige 1979; for a critique of this view, see Marchart 2008, 126). The term style thus marks a potential for resistance that is for Hebdige inscribed in the semiology of race relations and migrant history (Hebdige 1979, 31; Gaugele 2016b, 194). In this way, style becomes a stage for alternative identities, in particular for socially marginalized groups (Dorestal 2012, 33). The levels of style and race are interlocked in the ghetto image of the black rapper: “If the ghetto is the mythical place of hip-hop, then the black male hip-hopper is the main mythical figure,” (Friedrich/Klein 2003, 24) is how Gabriele Klein and Malte Friedrich have put it. The ghetto is the main image space of hip-hop; at the same time social advancement out of the ghetto also always resonates as a promise in hip-hop. Distinguishing markers are, however, very much in evidence within hiphop – brand-name clothes augmented with a lot of bling-bling and gold as status symbols. This image of ‘gangsta’ rappers in tracksuit pants with gold chains and fur coats is prominent in the backstage photos of West’s show, where, however, they almost seem ironic. Just how strongly the tracksuit worn by men is connected with the ‘gangsta’ image11 is shown by the wannabe-‘gangsta’ Ali G, played by the comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, who in a parody of suburban, privileged white youth speaks almost exclusively in slang, is provocative and vulgar and wears precisely such bright yellow or shiny hip-hop tracksuits emblazoned with large letters (in this case a kind of fictitious brand name). The brands represent the dream of social advancement – this not only applies for hip-hop, but also in the context of the refugees photographed by

11 The velour tracksuit in the U.S. series The Sopranos, worn by James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano, for example, is set in connection with gangsters of the Italian-American mafia. The poverty, “immigration and assimilation of Italians to America is a primary topic on the show” (Mastracci 2017).

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von Haaning. In the hip-hop scene of the 1990s it was Ralph Lauren’s polo shirt, for instance, that was very much ‘in.’ Hip-hop fans were certainly not the prime target group of the label, but they appropriated the clothing, seen as representing the “flair of a carefree privileged upper-class life.” (Kedves 2016) Kanye West and Jay-Z eulogize Gucci and Louis Vuitton in their hit Niggas in Paris (2011), while A$AP Rocky lists the luxury labels Balenciaga, Dior and Prada in his single Fashion Killa (2013) and in the accompanying video clip graces an upscale boutique with Rihanna (ibid.). The surface aesthetics of shine and “bling-bling” is embedded in a visual economy, “a shared system of value that circulates across geographic boundaries.” (Thompson 2015, 91) Hip-hop had its beginnings in the ghettos of the Bronx in New York in the 1970s, a district where Afro-Americans were overwhelmingly in the majority. As Klein and Friedrich have emphasized, down to the present day there is no other culture that more acutely expresses the attitude towards life of the abandoned and forgotten youth than hip-hop (Friedrich/Klein 2003, 9). They describe hip-hop itself as having developed into a “hybrid culture,” for with the globalization of youth culture, youths from ethnic minorities have embraced rap as a mouthpiece.12 (Friedrich/Klein 2003, 80ff.) The tracksuit has thus concomitantly advanced to a global sign of youth minority cultures, a sign closely connected to a global consumer culture. Still clinging to the tracksuit is the ghetto image and “social stigma” (Markus 2015, 310). This is particularly evident on the fringes of large cities. The label ‘ghetto’ fits in with an image of the dynamics of spatial segregation and social stigmatization, frequently used synonymously with any area exhibiting a high rate or concentration of poverty (Wacquant 2008, 49). Quarters on the periphery of French cities are often presented as “immigrant ghettos” by politics and the media, as Loïc Wacquant (ibid., 281) has shown; in reality they are by no means so homogenous. Besides the general stigmatization, the banlieue discourse is also ethnicized: “In the public media the crises plaguing the periphery are often traced back to the ethnic background or religion of the inhabitants and related problematic situations, so that the social is now seemingly inseparably linked to the ethnic stigma.” (Gnade 2013) 12 For the context of hip-hop, street style and Islamic youth culture in Europe, see Herding 2013, 96.

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This impression of the ghetto, reinforced by media reports like those regarding the banlieues in Paris, is shown, for example, in an article in The New Yorker that, moreover, forges a connection between immigration and terrorism. The headline asks: “THE OTHER FRANCE. Are the suburbs of Paris incubators of terrorism?” (Packer 2015) The article is illustrated with a photograph by Arnau Bach that shows young people in tracksuits in front of the characteristically uniform concrete residential blocks.13 The caption reads “Immigrant communities outside Paris,” marking those in the photo as migrants. Somewhat more subtle is the resonance of ‘outside’ – they are ‘outsiders’ in the double sense, geographically and socially. In his analysis of the riots that broke out in the banlieues in the summer of 2005, Étienne Balibar traces how racism is articulated in spatialized class relations, writing: Some banlieues thus appear as veritable designated living areas for a new proletariat whose insecurity is maximal and faces a choice only between insecure work and unemployment. Imprisonment in an ethnic genealogy (a past of domination) is thus combined with being prevented from leaving a space of relegation (to build a real future). It is this double knot that is truly explosive, that is ‘too much.’ (Balibar 2007, 58) According to Balibar, being a migrant has itself become a “monstrous social category” (ibid.). The photographer Tobias Zielony has broached precisely this discussion about mechanisms of exclusion, spatial segregation and the ghettoization taking place on the fringes of cities in numerous series. Behind the Block shows photos of youths from global urban peripheries of cities like Birmingham, Halle/Neustadt, Marseille and Los Angeles (fig. 6). 13 In his work Hallal (2004) the artist Kader Attia turned a gallery in the exclusive Parisian district of Saint-Germain-des-Prés into a boutique selling street style clothing, envisioning the banlieues as a productive place: Graffiti above the hoodies hung up on display for sale shows a group of young men in hoodies against the backdrop of banlieue architecture. The gallerist Kamel Mennour has emphasized that Attia’s new label explores the status the clothing has for the identity of the young inhabitants of the periphery. “The ‘creativity of the banlieue,’ expressing itself in rap, break dance and graffiti, confronts the stigmatizing discourse.” (Pinther 2006, 392).

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Fig. 6: Tobias Zielony, Groupe 7, 2003, from the series Quartiers Nord, Marseille, France C-Print, 46 × 69 cm

Drab grey apartment blocks, prefabricated high-rises and oversized housing complexes are shown along with the youths, who live literally ‘on the edge.’ They hang out in car parks, building entrances and at gas stations. Julia Reuter and Nora Warrach have pointed out that the “urban outcasts of today are the prototypes of a new logic of social polarization and differentiation, embodying the ever-tightening intertwinement between symbolic, social and territorial space.”14 (Reuter/Warrach 2015, 178) This is particularly evident in Zielony’s photos. The youths embody precisely this space. The surrounds are desolately bleak, an impression underscored by the angle of the lighting and the stark contrasts. The youths are frequently shown in semi- or complete darkness. Zielony describes the effect as follows: “The darkness reinforces the isolation from the rest of the housing estate and the people who live in the buildings and apartments. 14 For further information on that case, see Wacquant 2008.

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During the night these kids are the only ones present in public space. Here they are amongst themselves, and the darkness is at once a refuge and a secret” (Zielony 2003, 32). Employing the structures of documentary photography, the series brings the processes of social marginalization into focus. As Reuter and Warrach have shown, these impact most dramatically on refugees and displaced persons: They become maximum aliens, the superfluous, who are kept at a distance through spatial separation. […] Whereas ethnic enclaves or colonies once possessed integration potential due to the numerous neighboring institutions, but also due to their partial social role as ‘workforce reservoirs,’ today there are the sidelined territories, socalled hyper-ghettos, in which those ostracized from society (homeless, refugees, migrants) live, in the main completely excluded from the rest of society. (Reuter/Warrach 2015, 178) They are literally “spatialized state borders” (ibid., 179). These kinds of mechanisms come under scrutiny in Zielony’s series. The youths’ choice of global clothing brands enables them to define their identity and gain social recognition; as Jutta von Zitzewitz has put it, “[y]oung people experience the loss in the importance of their immediate environment as their own marginalization, in the course of which consumption becomes their only way of participating in a globalized market that has no need of their labor” (von Zitzewitz 2007, 11). She furthermore notes that the “[h]oodies, knitted hats and baseball caps are the identifiable icons of a globalized youth culture that, like the standardized architecture of global […] companies, determines the esthetic analogies that link all the images in this series” (ibid., 13). With his photographs Zielony shows that these kinds of environments are “local variants of global codes” (ibid.). As in Haaning’s work, here too the poses of coolness are the signs of belonging to youth culture, in particular when they take place “in a life environment that allows fewer and fewer opportunities for identification” (ibid.). Coolly hanging out and a flaunted disinterest are the means for stating their distinction from bourgeois milieus.

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CONCLUSION: THE AMBIVALENCE OF GLOBALLY CIRCULATING STYLE

It is precisely the example of the tracksuit that shows that the alleged unity of globally circulating fashion elements and brand symbols disintegrates into a myriad of different referencing, each of which is context specific. As the example of West’s and Beecroft’s staging of streetwear in a refugee camp setting showed, the numerous political references to refugees and the civil rights movements of Black Power and #BlackLivesMatter prove to be nothing more than mere fashion signs. Resistance is staged and commercialized on a level of representation and style (Hebdige 1979, 18; Höller 1996, 58). As we have seen, the meanings attached to tracksuits alternate between self-empowered attributions and ascriptions imposed by others. Whereas the expression “migrant chic” is used disparagingly in the context of luxury fashion, the corresponding style can, however, stand for setting oneself apart from mainstream middle-class society. In hip-hop the tracksuit is a sign of coolness and thus also signals street credibility, not least because, as Klein and Friedrich point out, hip-hop is, qua tradition, street culture. The street – that is a synonym for real life, for the everyday struggle in the large city, for anonymity and social problems. Street credibility promises the gaining of respect. Someone has street credibility when he knows the codes and rules of the street, learning them through his own experience, which usually implies having firsthand experience of social marginalization. (Friedrich/Klein 2003, 42) Street credibility and the ghetto are closely interwoven. In this context, tracksuits, and in particular tracksuits with the logo of a renowned brand, can be a sign of self-empowerment and agency, turning those who wear them into actors; at the same time however, the subversion paradigm of “resistance through style” (Hebdige 1979, 18; see also Gaugele 2016b, 183– 207, especially 194) is thoroughly ambivalent in the case of the tracksuit.

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– Pinther, Kerstin. “Die Banlieue als Thema in der zeitgenössischen Kunst”, in: Black Paris. Kunst und Geschichte einer schwarzen Diaspora, edited by Tobias Wendl, Bettina von Lintig and Kerstin Pinther, Peter Hammer, 2006, pp. 391–395. – Rawlinson, Kevin. “Anna Wintour apologises for ‘migrant chic’ comments. Editor-in-chief of American Vogue used phrase to describe a Kanye West fashion show in New York.” The Guardian,

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migrant-chic-comments. Accessed 08 February 2017. – Reuter, Julia, and Nora Warrach. “Die Fremdheit der Migrant_innen. Migrationssoziologische Perspektiven im Anschluss an Georg Simmels und Alfred Schütz’ Analysen des Fremdseins.” Schlüsselwerke der Migrationsforschung. Pionierstudien und Referenztheorien, edited by Paul Mecheril and Julia Reuter, VS Springer Verlag, 2015, pp. 169– 189. – Rivera, Geraldo. “Trayvon Martin’s Hoodie Is as Much Responsible For His Death as George Zimmerman.” Fox News, uploaded by Fox & Friends, 23 March 2012, www.video. foxnews.com/v/1525652570001/?#sp=show-clips. – Rohrmann, Julia. Modedesign von Comme des Garçons, Issey Miyake und Yohji Yamamoto. Reaktionen der westlichen Modewelt auf ihre Entwürfe in den 1980er Jahren und die Beziehung Berliner Modedesigner zu Japan heute. Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee, 2008. – Simmel, Georg. “Die Mode.” (1904) Die Listen der Mode, edited by Silvia Bovenschen, Suhrkamp, 1986, pp. 179–207. – Simmel, Georg. “Fashion.” The American Journal of Sociology, vol. 62, no. 6., May 1957, pp. 541-558. – Simmel, Georg. “The Philosophy of Fashion.” Simmel on Culture: Selected Writings (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society), edited by Mike Featherstone and David Frisby, Sage Publications, 1997, pp. 187–206. – Stöcker, Christian. “Getöteter Teenager Trayvon Martin. Fox-Moderator empört mit Kapuzenpulli-Kommentar.”

Spiegel

Online,

www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/stre-

it-um-kapuzensweatshirts-hoodies-nach-toetung-von-trayvon-martin-a-823531.html. Accessed 27 August 2018. – STYLEBOP.com. “YEEZY. Pullover im Distressed-Look.” STYLEBOP.com, www.stylebop.com/de-de/men/distressed-pullover-with-wool-256497.html. Accessed 03 September 2018. – The Guardian. “Kanye West releases album and fashion collection at Madison Square Garden – video.” The Guardian, uploaded by The Guardian, 12 February 2016, www. theguardian.com/music/video/2016/feb/12/kanye-west-releases-album-and-fashioncollection-at-madison-square-garden-video. – Thompson, Krista A. Shine: The Visual Economy of Light in African Diasporic Aesthetic Practice. Duke University Press, 2015. – von Zitzewitz, Jutta. “I love America” The cast. I love America: von der Adaption der Wirklichkeit in den Fotografien von Tobias Zielony, edited by Tobias Zielony, Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2007, pp. 10–27.

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– Wacquant, Loïc. URBAN OUTCASTS. A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality. Polity Press, 2008. – Wintour, Anna. “Anna Wintour’s Adventures at Kanye West Fashion Shows.” YouTube, uploaded by Late Night with Seth Meyers, 13 April 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v= rl0bcytGWJM. – Zielony, Tobias. Silver & Gold. Klasse Rautert / Fotografie. Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst / Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig, edited by Wolfgang Schoppmann, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter König, 2003, pp. 32.

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ON GLOBAL FLIGHT AND MIGRATION IN FASHION AND FASHION THEORY: Cultural Performances and Political Frameworks on the European Catwalks (F/W 2016/17)

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Characterized by flight and forced migration, by legal and illegal labor migration, and beyond this by the geo-economic divisions of poverty and unemployment, the current globalization phase demands that research in fashion and fashion theory engage more intensively with the perspectives of migration research as well as with those of forced migration studies (Sassen 2007, 134 ff.; Stepputat/Nyberg 2014, 95). Arguing for a paradigm shift within postcolonial studies at the turn of the millennium, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak already pointed out that we are daily witnessing that the postcolonial migrant has become the norm (1999, 256). Each migration flow as well as the presence of postcolonial histories in European cities is produced by specific conditions in time and place (Sassen 2007, 130 ff.). In fact, even the cultural performances of the European fashion industry started to act on migration and specific migration histories after the UNHCR in 2015 registered the highest number ever of 65.3 million refugees and migrants worldwide and more than one million asylum seekers and immigrants had come to EU countries (UNHCR 2016, 2). Referencing the ‘global turn’ (Appadurai 1996) in design and material cultural research, the following chapter examines how the world’s largest movement of migrants and refugees in 2015/16 was represented in January 2016 on the catwalks in Milan, Florence and Paris. Methodologically the paper defines fashion shows as part of a chain of mediatizations – and thus discourses – that relate to visual references (Zborowska 2014, 237). It follows Michel Foucault (1995a, 156), who describes discourse as a set of linguistic performances constituted by

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a set of signs and statements belonging to the same formation system. According to Foucault (1995b, 123) discourses are always part of relations and interests of power as tactical elements or blocks in the field of power relations. Beyond that a ‘discourse’ (Hall 1997, 3) in the field of fashion can be understood as a system of representation that goes far beyond language, including images, objects, sound and many other cultural productions. With reference to Stuart Hall (1997), the paper adopts a discourse-analytical approach that focuses on the connections and the politics of representation: how discourses connect with power structures, to what extent they intend to direct behavior, or even reveal the construction of identities and subjectivities. Following Hall, it also emphasizes and sheds light on the specific historical situation of the respective regime of representation as well as its current social practice. From a postcolonial viewpoint on global fashion, this chapter will examine the following questions: Since January 2016, how has fashion addressed global flight and migration? What migration discourses have been activated, and what power structures have they been involved in? As Glenn Adamson, Giorgio Riello and Sarah Teasly emphasized in Global Design History (2011), the current phase of globalization, on the one hand, accelerated the flows of people, information, capital and goods crossing national and geographical borders, while on the other the movement of people and commodities was simultaneously blocked by immigration controls (Adamson et al. 2011, 1). Starting with Prada’s performances of their A/W 2016/17 collection, the following analysis further investigates Walé Oyéjidé’s collection After Migration, which was shown at the Florence fashion fair Pitti Immagine Uomo 89. Furthermore, it highlights collections shown in Paris by Riccardo Tisci for Givenchy, as well as by Walter Van Beirendonck and Comme des Garçons, who in their way had been strongly influenced by the terrorist attacks on the fashion capital in November 2015. Finally, these politics of representation will be examined in more detail: How and with what global power structures do fashion discourses on flight and migration connect?

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FADING OUT THE IMAGES OF MIGRATION HISTORIES

In January 2016 Miuccia Prada presented her A/W 2016/17 collection in the Fondazione Prada in Milan on a catwalk that was staged as an autodafé, recalling the religious trials of the Spanish, Portuguese and Mexican Inquisition with its religious executions, assassinations, wars and banishment that had been legitimized and caused by the Catholic Church. The installation of the Dutch design studio AMO – part of Rem Koolhaas’ firm OMA – transformed the catwalk into a secular ceremony. As the historical setting of the autodafé was transferred to the fashion show, the show’s visitors were seated on all four sides of a square catwalk, like the public that had once participated in the public trials of heretics, judging whether the victims would live or die. The fashion performance was designed to evoke the violent rituals of the Inquisition – the prisoners’ processions and public readings of their sentences before they were dragged out of town and burned at the stake (Howard 2016). The design of the display aimed at blurring the boundaries between audience and performers, between observers and executioners, between watching and killing, and between the historical past and the present. In doing so the display deconstructed the spectators and the observers of the fashion show as the actually active participants and actors of this violent spectacle. For more than one month, the installation was used for all three shows of the Prada F/W 2016/17 collection, following the same theatrical setting that eclectically blurred many historical layers of persecution, misery, flight and migration: from the Inquisition in Europe (and Latin America) at the end of the 15th century, via massive Italian emigration flows during the 19th and 20th centuries, to the contemporary passages of refugees and migrants from Syria and Middle Eastern and African countries to Europe in 2015. As sad, almost ghostly seafarers, the models walked along the catwalk wearing backpacks, sailor caps and collars, striped fisherman shirts and pants at half-mast as accessories to the collection. Motivated by the poetics of historical romantic escapism, the sepia tones of the clothes, as well as the fashion shots in the lookbook, recalled historical and contemporary passages of refugees across the Mediterranean in a polysemous way. Around one million refugees and migrants

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crossed the eastern Mediterranean in 2015, and the number of the drowned skyrocketed to more than 3,770 (UNHCR 2016, 32). In 2015, Italy registered its highest number of asylum seekers ever with 83,200 applications, of which 84 percent were from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq (ibid., 39). Prada superimposes images of past and present migration histories. The black-and-white photographs of the fashion show (fig. 1) seem to be a tribute to the deceased, immigrants and emigrants alike. Up to now the emigration of Italians to various countries in Europe and America was considered the largest mass migration in recent history. From 1876 until the First World War, about 14 million Italians left their home country, mostly by ship, for the United States. Between 1946 and the mid-1970s more than seven million Italians emigrated on the basis of bilateral agreements, triggered by the economic demands for labor in the host countries. Strategically, this expatriation was also steered by the Italian government as a counteraction to high unemployment and domestic social tensions. The resulting migrations into Western Europe occured in the context of direct recruitment and European regional dominance over the Mediterranean (Sassen 2007, 136). In this global context since the mid-1970s, Italy itself finally became an immigration country for male workers in agriculture and fishing, with the largest immigrant groups coming from Tunisia, Senegal and Morocco, so that during the late 1980s immigration in Italy started to be regulated (bpb 2012).

CELEBRATING IMMIGRATION FROM SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

The fact that Italy, in 2015, had the highest number of asylum seekers in its history to date also shaped the fashion presentation of the Pitti Immagine Uomo 89 in January 2016 in Florence. In contrast to Milan, where Prada as a global fashion company had presented its collection under the setting of flight and migration, Pitti Immagine Uomo 89’s ‘Generation Africa Show’ was part of the politics of global governance, using fashion as a medium to govern norms, rules, practices and principles. This show was initiated by

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Fig. 1: Backstage at Prada, AW 2016, Milan, 2016. Photo: Virginia Arcaro

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the UN Ethical Fashion Initiative (EFI) – a flagship program of the World Trade Organization and the United Nations – in cooperation with the Italian NGO Lai-momo, which had been involved in the Emilia Romagna refugee reception center. Working on various international and national levels of governance, the ‘Generation Africa Show’ became part of an international network of political stakeholders that in terms of forced migration studies can be referred to as the “refugee regime complex” (Betts 2014, 68): The global governance of forced migration is nested within a broader institutional context, overlapping significantly with human rights, migration, humanitarian, development, and security regimes, in ways that can sometimes be complementary and sometimes contradictory to the overall scope and purpose of the refugee regime (ibid.). As part of this transnational governmental agenda, three asylum seekers, Gittheh, Abdoulay and Madi, who had arrived in Italy via the Mediterranean Sea in May 2015, were displayed as models on the Pitti Immagine Uomo 89’s catwalk. With good reason, the ‘Generation Africa Show’ has been harshly criticized for this from the point of view of othering as well as of the ethics of class and race. In a questionable style, the runway appearance of three asylum seekers in the context of the NGO and UN migration regime seems to be a continuation of the colonial strategy of using Africa as a source of inspiration for fashion and textiles (Rovine 2009, 46), by transferring the precarious status of migrants from African countries onto the open stage. The NGO Lai-momo celebrated the three asylum seekers as part of an empowering international event and as actors of a creative Africa. Media communication for the show emphasized the fact that fashion can improve society by giving asylum seekers an opportunity to earn money as well as by drawing attention to migration (Pitti Immagine Uomo, 2016). Furthermore, it stressed the chance to raise public awareness about the common transcultural space between Africa and the Mediterranean. Walé Oyéjidé, the U.S.-Nigerian Philadelphia-based designer and lawyer, has pointed out that the asylum seekers represented the program of his label Ikiré Jones at its best, namely that fashion can promote the idea of

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equality between humans and foster the discussion of migration and borders (Affricot 2016). And Suzy Menkes (2016) stated in Vogue Online that even “catwalk pros” could not tell which of the models walking the runway at the ‘Generation Africa show’ in Florence were asylum seekers. In times of global migration Simone Cipriani, initiator of the ‘Generation Africa show’ and head of the UN Ethical Fashion Initiative (EFI), aimed to demonstrate that migrants are a ‘resource.’ The idea of ​​creating a training center for refugees and migrants in Italy, preparing them to work in the Italian fashion industry and teaching them to start their own business in the event of their return, marks a change in EFI’s development policy goals. With the aim of building a bridge between so-called development aid measures and the fashion industry, the EFI has pursued a new form of global governance since 2006. It uses fashion and textiles as a means of political and economic governance, as for example in the form of a developmentally promoted website platform for African designers, or by setting up textile manufacturing facilities for luxury brands in African countries (see Gaugele 2014, 216 ff.). With the presentations of the A/W collections of AKJP, U.Mi1, Ikiré Jones, Lukhanyo Mdingi and Nicholas Coutts at the ‘Generation Africa Show’ in Florence, the EFI aims at performing the ethics of the “refugee regime complex” (Betts 2014, 68) on the catwalk and at shaping perspectives on immigration to Italy and Europe through fashion performances. With the title of his After Migration collection, Oyéjidé gained the highest level of international media attention. The catwalk performance of Ikiré Jones’ men’s suits as well as the lookbook, which is dedicated to the previously unappreciated sub-Saharan immigrants to Western societies, claim to change how African migrants are perceived in Italy and across Europe. The lookbook shows Gitteh, Abdoulay and Madi, the three models and asylum seekers, through the lens of a tourist gaze, staged in the picturesque alleys of Florence. Neil Watson’s fashion photography shows elegantly dressed men (fig. 2) who are at first glance reminiscent of the sapeurs’ dandy styles, embodying an elegance that has historically developed as a style of colonial resistance. The style of the lookbook juxtaposes fashion photographs with the lines of a poem describing the escape, the migration routes and the precarious situation of the asylum seekers after their arrival in Italy:

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Fig. 2: Ikiré Jones, After Migration, FW 2016, Florence, 2016. Photo: Neil Watson

From the bellies of crowded cargo ships. // From the teetering edges of toppling rafts. // And from the jaws of hungry seas // that threatened to swallow us every inch of the way. // We traveled across the world to seek asylum. // Our hands may have been empty when we arrived. // But our hearts will always be full (Jones, 2016). Oyéjidé, who repeatedly emphasizes that storytelling is his declared claim, aestheticizes the asylum seekers’ precarious status, their fear for their lives, poverty and hopes. In the picturesque Florentine lanes, the figures of the tourists, pilgrims and refugees are intermingled in the persona of the

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‘sub-Saharan immigrant’ he designed. This is reminiscent of Arjun Appadurai’s concept of “ethnoscapes” (Appadurai 1996, 33), defined as a new confrontation of groups of people – tourists, immigrants, refugees, exiles, guest workers and other mobile groups and individuals – who for him are a characteristic of the current political, economic and social situation: “They constitute an essential feature of the works and appear to affect the politics of (and between) nations to a hitherto unprecedented degree.” (16) Oyéjidé’s storytelling as a fashion designer in the form of his dandyesque suits of colorful wax prints and monochrome black and white tribal patterns always recalls a specific Africanness that refers to decolonizing resistance and, in the words of James Clifford, “indigènitude” as a “vision of liberation and cultural difference” (Clifford 2013, 16). As decolonizing histories and shared narratives of an “aesthetic of the cool” (Thompson 1973; Tulloch 2016), the lookbook challenges “Eurocentric” constructions of histories as well as the ‘colonial global.’ As Clifford stated, “There is no longer a place from which to tell the whole story (there never was)” (Clifford 2013, 23). At the same time, the collection encompasses migration from a postcolonial view, focusing on the “myriad routes and connections, flows and tensions” of the African Diaspora styles shaped by those on the continent and the groups that followed the Atlantic slave trade, colonialism and imperialism (Tulloch 2016, 5).

POSTCOLONIAL MIGRATION, ENTANGLED HISTORIES AND BENJAMIN’S ‘WISH IMAGES’

Celebrating “perspectives of unheralded people of color,” Oyéjidé’s lookbook displays five silk prints – montages of 18th century tapestries – to “illustrate stories of far-flung myths and undiscovered histories” (Jones 2016). These silk cloth collector pieces consist of various montages replacing the faces of white aristocrats on 18th century European silk tapestries with those of people of color (fig. 2). This transformation creates new portraits of an imaginative black history of noble elegance as well as alternative histories of entangled

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European and African royalties, named The Courtship, The Nobleman, The Nobleman I-II, and The Creator Has a Master Plan (Jones 2016). Oyéjidé’s design ties together three narratives that according to Clifford (2013, 8) have been active in the last half-century: decolonization, globalization and indigenous becoming. Each of them represents distinct historical energies, scales of action and politics of the possible that construct, reinforce and perturb each other. Oyéjidé’s design builds upon these three narratives and, with the collages, activates historical images of black nobility and aristocratic elegance. Fashion and textiles become politics of appearance, mobilizing selected historical resources and imagining entangled histories for future designs. In this discursive linking of pasts and the future, they function as central elements for the new positioning of collective subjects (ibid. 23). Oyéjidé thereby builds upon the decolonizing textile and image practices of Nigerian indigo-dyed adire cotton textiles to disrupt and perturb a colonized history (Rice 2015, 174). In the 1930s, adire became part of a critical moment of juncture between British colonial power and Nigeria’s Yoruba people through the transformation of the symbol of the Silver Jubilee into oloba, an ornament meaning “the one with a king” (ibid., 172). In 1935, after the 25th anniversary of the coronation of King George V and Queen Mary, southwest Nigerian Yoruba women began to alter the Silver Jubilee ornament on the adire cotton textiles by using resist-dye painting or stenciling techniques. On many adire textiles, the British royal couple lost its European facial and sartorial style characteristics, becoming less recognizable through reproductions over time and often transforming into a black African royal couple. In some adire fabrics, the ornament of the king and queen was brought together with a buraq – the winged horse that according to legend carried the Islamic prophet Muhammad to heaven. English words were replaced with the Yoruba language alongside symbols suggestive of Yoruba royalty, including bird motifs, cowrie shells and “Oyo” referring to the great Oyo Empire of the Yoruba (ibid., 176). Consequently, the adire’s oloba pattern came to represent royalty or power in general (ibid., 172). Used as an expression of anti-colonialism, changes in the adire pattern’s appearances were called “devolution,” meaning the delegation of power to the regional level (ibid.). As catalysts for political action, which played a small part in bringing about independence,

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adire patterns became very popular in the 1960s and since then have been adopted by Nigerian artists (ibid.). Oyéjidé refers to the transformative power of adire oloba designs in the After Migration campaign, suggesting ways to create alternative histories, to represent black royalty in history and to invoke shifts in colonial power relations. As part of contemporary Afro-futuristic art and design and a new way of looking at both history and the future in a perspective that reflects upon the marginalization of African people as well as on the continent’s vast but often forgotten potential, recently Oyéjidés silk scarves found their way to dress King T’Challa of Wakanda (alias Chadwick Boseman) in Ryan Coogler’s movie version of the Afro-futuristic graphic novel Black Panther. Oyéjidé’s silk scarf is used in the seminal scene when the king gives an important speech at the UN in Vienna, declaring the intention to share the country’s knowledge and resources with the rest of the world for the first time. The film script for T’Challa’s UN speech can be interpreted as a response to Donald Trump’s anti-immigration policies, as it was written at a time when the U.S. president agitated for the construction of a massive U.S.-Mexico border wall. Since people are presently on the move, states Appadurai, realities and fantasies now take effect on a much larger scale, creating “imagined worlds” constituted by the historically situated imaginations of people and groups spread around the globe (Appadurai 1996, 33 f.). For Walter Benjamin, “the eternal, in any case, is a ruffle on a dress rather than some idea” (Benjamin 1999, 463), an idea expressed by Oyéjidé, with postcolonial histories of migration appearing in the form of a silk shoulder scarf. But for Benjamin, fashion illustrates a historical model, where the bourgeoisie keeps quoting its own prehistory and the revolutionary and emancipatory fashion aesthetics are captured within the economies of the ruling class: “Fashion has a flair for the topical, no matter where it stirs in the thickets of long ago; it is a tiger’s leap into the past. This jump, however, takes place in an arena where the ruling class gives the commands. The same leap in the open air of history is the dialectical one, which is how Marx understood the revolution” (Benjamin 2006, XIV, 395).

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It is as fashion for “Global Style Dandies” or for “Western African and International Dandies” that Afro-American lifestyle magazines and bloggers have described the style of the label Ikiré Jones (Jones 2015; Poundo 2013). Thus Oyéjidé’s design of Pan-African migration histories commodifies the narratives of decolonization, migration, globalization and “indigenous becoming.” Leslie Rabine (2002) describes how African fashion is born of both the postcolonial political pressures and the transnational market, as forms of globalization intensify demands for ethnic identity as well as the use of fashion as “canvasses upon which designers and consumers project dreams, a fragmented text that weaves ‘wish images’” (Rabine 2002, 13). But nevertheless, according to Benjamin, fashion reflects the dream and wish images: “[I]n them the collective seeks both to overcome and to transfigure the immaturity of the social product and the inadequacies in the social organization of production” (Benjamin 1999, 4). “In the dream in which each epoch entertains images of its successor,” he writes, “the latter appears wedded to elements of primal history (‘Urgeschichte’) – that is, to elements of a classless society” (ibid.). The experiences and the utopia of the classless society, “stored in the unconscious of the collective” as stated by Benjamin, “engender, through interpenetration with what is new, the utopia that has left its trace in a thousand configurations of life, from enduring edifices to passing fashions” (ibid.).

“STOP TERRORIZING OUR WORLD!”

At the same time as Oyéjidé in Florence, Riccardo Tisci in Paris also sought to show Givenchy’s subcultural styles across the continents. With heavy-metal fan-inspired menswear, in black suede boots and suede jackets, Tisci also intended to deconstruct Western stereotypes in relation to Africa. Through the selection and the styling of the runway models as a global multi-ethnic subcultural community he reconstructed the styles of

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the Botswana heavy-metal community and materials – such as leather, fur, metal studs and animal patterns that became symbols of a multi-ethnic, urban, club culture gang. While Riccardo Tisci’s Givenchy collection fits seamlessly into the ornamentation of the Parisian fashion community, the experiences and performances of many fashion designers on the catwalks had been troubled by terror, injury and dislocation. In Paris, unlike in the Italian fashion cities, the fashion stagings, rather than dealing with issues of flight and migration, were more strongly affected by the terrorist attacks on the city in November 2015. Adamson, Riello and Teasly have also pointed out that terrorism is an important issue in a global design history: “[G]lobal scares as terrorism […] remind us precisely how interconnected we have become” (Adamson et al. 2011, 3). Walter Van Beirendonck, too, staged his reaction to the terrorist attacks in November 2015 at the January shows of his men’s fashion for F/W 2016. WOEST (Dutch for wild, furious, enraged) was the title of his collection, in which he once again repeated the statement from his previous year’s collection: “Stop terrorizing our world!” (Lau 2015). The styling of the models includes facial makeups with ‘Arabic’ ornaments that oscillate between bullet hole and masquerade. The logo of the collection transforms chain saws into textile appliqués. The shows of Walter Van Beirendonck as well as Comme des Garçons both process violence, injury, vulnerability, terror, death and uprooting as a reaction to the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015. Wearing black, studded leather jackets, the Comme des Garçons models appeared onstage looking like warriors, only to be transformed into ambassadors of peace by wreaths of flowers on their heads. According to the label’s strategy of often reenacting iconic photographs and images in fashion performances, which are highly characterized by their media circulation and recognition by the mainstream, while also generating a great deal of emotion (Zborowska 2014, 234), the finale of the Comme des Garçons show culminated in a ceremony: Black-clad models carried lush flower bouquets in their arms and laid them down on the floor. Opulently, Comme des Garçons’ catwalk productions recalled gestures of the mourners in the media images after the massacre in November 2015, and thus staged images that doubled theatrical-cinematic gestures of war and peace, mourning and suffering. At the same time

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the fashion label’s performative strategies of reenacting iconic photographs were highly based on “mainstream recognition, wide media circulation and emotional impact” (ibid.).

CONCLUSION

From the overlapping images of historical and contemporary conditions of flight and migration to the celebration of sub-Saharan African immigrants, to postcolonial perspectives on migration that invoke entangled histories of Africa, Europe and the Americas, the work of fashion designers reflecting on the world’s largest movement of migrants and refugees in 2015/16 definitely challenges fashion theory to get more involved in the study of migration and forced migration studies. Fashion designers showcased the precarious state of refugees and forced migration in 2016 by emphasizing the entangled histories of Western and non-Western migration histories. These had been enacted and commoditized in fashion shows and lookbooks by blurring historical and contemporary layers of persecution and immigration (Prada), by reenacting iconic images that stir deep emotions of grief and being wounded (Comme des Garçons), and by generating postcolonial histories for shared decolonial experiences and the vision of the post-migrant elegant dandyesque subject (Ikiré Jones). The question as to how fashion discourses and their politics of representation are interlinked with structures of global power, and to what extent they aim at controlling behavior or the construction of identities, hereby became obvious on different levels. Fashion operates on the level of an “aesthetic politics” (Gaugele 2014) that creates ethical norms and values, and at the same time creates an “imagined world” (Appadurai 1996, 33). As “aesthetic metapolitics” described by Jacques Rancière (2006) for the relationship of art and politics, fashion produces fictions that strive for material rearrangements and create space for new forms of political subjectification (96). As such, fashion also aims at the performance of ethical norms and values. Given this aesthetic-political ca-

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pacity, fashion was taken up as a global governance tool by the EFI to act within the current “refugee regime complex” (Betts 2014, 68). The example of the ‘Generation Africa show’ highlighted the dynamics and networks of global governance and the role of fashion as a tool of global governance. It is precisely this exercise of political control by the demonstration and mediation of norms – as performed and disseminated by fashion shows – that is defined as the vertical level of forced migration governance within the study of global power relations: “On a vertical level, forced migration governance cannot be adequately understood without reflecting on the ways in which global norms are translated into practice at the national and local levels or diffuse spatially from one region to another.” (Betts 2014, 69) As a result of new economic structures within the global economy, the ethicality of fashion had become increasingly important for global fashion companies to legitimize their power by performances of corporate social responsibility (Gaugele 2014, 223). In this global context, Prada’s fashion show, described at the beginning of the chapter, blends historical with contemporary layers of persecution and immigration and draws attention to the intertwined stories of collectively shared migration, and the experiences of violence and flight. That new economic structures after the Global Compact established new alliances between private companies, the UNHCR and NGOs has also been highlighted in forced migration studies: Since the early 2000s, the role of the private sector has expanded massively. The initial assumption was that firms would contribute to UNHCR largely on the basis of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, wishing to be associated with a humanitarian brand, and sometimes working on particular projects. (Betts 2014, 69) The call to donate to UNHCR, based on a campaign of Imran Amed, founder and editor-in-chief of The Business of Fashion (BoF), to stand up against intolerance, against anti-immigration agitation and by supporting the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) also against the splitting of society, was part of the New York Fashion Week in February 2017 (Amed 2017). Similarly, by raising the banner “I’m an immigrant” (fig. 3) and designing a shirt with

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Fig. 3: Leyla Piedayesh, I’m an immigrant, Lala Berlin, AW 2017, Copenhagen Fashion Week, February 1, 2017. Photo: Helle Moos

the same wording, Leyla Piedayesh, founder and designer of the label Lala Berlin, demonstrated at the Copenhagen Fashion Week 2017 against U.S. President Donald Trump’s entry ban from seven countries in Africa and the Middle East, including Iran, into the United States (Schneider 2017). The German-Iranian designer, who has become known for her modification of Palestinian keffiyeh scarves, had to flee to Germany herself as a child together with her family in 1979, when Iran was transformed into an Islamic Republic. As part of a cultural industry between radical chic, celebrity marketing and corporate social responsibility, contemporary Fashion Weeks and designers have rediscovered the catwalk as a stage for civil society statements in protest against alt-right and anti-(im)migrant policies.1

1

This essay is based on a revision and translation of Elke Gaugele. “Globale Flucht und Migration als Diskursfelder der Mode.” Widerspenstiges Design: gestalterische Praxis und gesellschaftliche Verantwortung, edited by Friedrich Weltzien and Hans-Jörg Kapp, Reimer 2017, pp. 60–75.

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REFERENCES – Adamson, Glenn, et al. Global Design History. Routledge, 2011. – Affricot, Johanne. “Generation Africa. What the African designers from Pitti have to say.” Griot, 20 January 2016, http://griotmag.com/en/generation-africa-what-the-africandesigners-from-pitti-have-to-say/. Accessed 19 December 2018. – Amed, Imran. “Wear a White Bandana, Because We Are All #TiedTogether.” Businessoffashion, 8 Feb 2017, www.businessoffashion.com/articles/editors-letter/what-is-thewhite-bandana-tiedtogether. Accessed 19 December 2018. – Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. University of Minnesota Press, 1996. – Benjamin, Walter. The Arcade Project (1933). Translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin, Harvard University Press, 1999. – Benjamin, Walter. “On the Concept of History.” (1940) Walter Benjamin. Selected Writings, vol. 4, 1938–1940. Translated by Edmund Jephcott et al., edited by Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, Harvard University Press, 2006, pp. 389–411. – Betts, Alexander. “International Relations and Forced Migration.” The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, edited by Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh et al., Oxford University Press, Handbooks Online, 2014, pp. 60–73. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/ 9780199652433.001.0001. Accessed 22 April 2017. – Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung (bpb). “Historische Entwicklung der Migration. Auswanderung nach Übersee,” 2012, www.bpb.de/gesellschaft/migration/laenderprofile/ 145669/historische-entwicklung-der-migration. Accessed 19 December 2018. – Clifford, James. Returns. Becoming Indigenous in the Twenty-First Century. Harvard University Press, 2013. – Foucault, Michel. Archäologie des Wissens. Suhrkamp, 1995a. – Foucault, Michel. Sexualität und Wahrheit. Vol. 1: Der Wille zum Wissen. Suhrkamp, 1995b. – Gaugele, Elke. “On the Ethical Turn in Fashion. Policies of Governance and the Fashioning of Social Critique.” Aesthetic Politics in Fashion, edited by Elke Gaugele, Sternberg Press, 2014, pp. 204–227. – Hall, Stuart, editor. Representation. Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. Sage, 1997. – Howard, Dan. “AMO builds public penance theatre for Prada’s Autumn Winter 2016 fashion shows.” Dezeen, 18 January 2016, www.dezeen.com/2016/01/18/amo-pradaautumn-winter-2016-catwalk-show-wooden-theatre-milan-fashion-week. Accessed 12 December 2018. – Jones, Ikiré. After Migration. Look Book 2016, https://ikirejones.com/fw16-aftermigration/. Accessed 3 Jan 2019. – Jones, Layla A. “Philly Made. Ikiré Jones is adding Africa to the conversation.” philly.com,

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10 July 2014, www.philly.com/philly/blogs/style/Philly-Made-Ikire-Jones-is-addingAfrica-to-the-conversation.html. Accessed 20 April 2017. – Lau, Susie. “Walter Van Beirendonck AW15. Stop Terrorising Our World: Van Beirendonck’s boys stomp down the runway on day one of Paris in a provocative protest for visual and creative freedom.” dazeddigital.com, 22 January 2015, www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/ article/23322/1/walter-van-beirendonck-aw 2015. Accessed 20 April 2017. – Menkes, Suzy. “Generation Africa: Models Included.” VOGUE online, 18 January 2016, www.vogue.de/blogs/suzy-menkes/generation-africa-models-included. Accessed 20 April 2017. – Pitti Immagine Uomo. “Generation Africa: Pitti Uomo 89 shines the spotlight on talents from Africa.” Pittimmagine Website, 14 January 2016, http://www.pittimmagine.com/ en/corporate/fairs/uomo/events/2016/generationafrica.html. Accessed 20 April 2017. – Poundo. “Prêt-À-Poundo: Ikiré Jones for The Western African & International Dandy.” okayafrica.com, 10 May 2013,https://www.okayafrica.com/ikire-jones-fashion-trendsmenswear-west-african-prints/. Accessed 20 April 2017. – Rabine, Leslie W. The Global Circulation of African Dress, Berg, 2002. – Rancière, Jacques. “Die Politik der Ästhetik.” Archplus, no. 178, Juni 2006, pp. 94–98. – Rice, Erin. “Patterned Identity. Textiles and Traces of Modernity in Contemporary Nigerian Art.” Identitäten/Identities. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven, edited by Marlene Bainczyk-Crescentini et al., Heidelberg University Press, 2015, pp. 169–190. – Rovine, Victoria L. “Colonialism’s Clothing. Africa, France, and the Deployment of Fashion.” Design Issues, vol. 25, no. 3, 2009, pp. 44–61. – Sassen, Saskia. A Sociology of Globalization. W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. – Schneider, Hella. “Leyla Piedayesh: Wir waren viel zu lange unpolitisch.” Vogue.de, 7  February  2017,  www.vogue.de/mode/mode-news/die-lala-berlin-designerin-iminterview-leyla-piedayesh-wir-waren-viel-zu-lange-unpolitisch. Accessed 22 April 2017. – Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Harvard University Press, 1999. – Stepputat, Finn, and Ninna Nyberg Sørensen. “Sociology and Forced Migration.” The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, edited by Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh et al., Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 89–95. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/ 9780199652433.001.0001. Accessed 22 April 2017. – Thompson, Robert Farris. “An Aesthetic of the Cool.” African Arts, vol. 7, no. 1, 1973, pp. 40–43, 64–67, 89–91. – Tulloch, Carol. The Birth of Cool. Style Narratives of the African Diaspora. Bloomsbury, 2016. – United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), editor. “Global Trends. Forced Displacement in 2015.” UNHCR. The UN Refugee Agency, www.unhcr.org/statistics/ unhcrstats/576408cd7/unhcr-global-trends-2015.html. Accessed 19 December 2018. – Zborowska, Agata. “Uses and abuses of history: A case of a Comme des Garçons fashion show.” Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty, vol. 5, no. 2, 2014, pp. 233–252.

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DESIGN D I S P E R S ED DESIGN FOR AND ABOUT MIGRATION

HUMANITARIAN, SOCIAL AND PARTICIPATIVE – A New Design Culture in Times of Migration and Flight?

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At a first glance, Marie-Elsa Batteux Flahault’s graduation project On the Edge (fig. 1) at the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2013 is a stylish camouflage patterned jacket for urban people, but a closer look reveals its several hidden details: a visor and mask to protect eyes and the respiratory system, inflatable sections at the neck to prepare the wearer for flooded terrain, and the jacket’s lining housing precious food and clean water.1 To protect against the cold, thermal foil can be unwrapped from the hem to cover the legs, and bandages for first aid are stored in the back. This jacket could typify a paradigmatic ‘design for refugees’ when in 2015 the migration flows to Europe reached a preliminary peak2 and design took on the subject: That year, the Dutch platform What Design Can Do announced the international design competition Refugee Challenge, which registered more than 630 entries from 70 countries.3 The German design magazine Form reported on Refugee Design in their summer issue on Design and Ethics in 2015 (Sicking 2015) and the online platform Dezeen’s contributions to a “design for refugees” have increased rapidly since 2015.4 1

https://www.designacademy.nl/EVENTS/ArchiveEvents/Graduation13/Project.aspx? ProjectId=685. Accessed 11 May 2018.

2

See asylum applications 2006–2016, which in 2015 had more than doubled compared to the year before:

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Asylum_statistics/

de. Accessed 5 June 2018. 3

https://www.whatdesigncando.com/refugee-challenge/. Accessed 25 May 2018. Another initiative is the Danish NPO Index: Design to Improve Life, design for refugees, see https:// designtoimprovelife.dk/top-10-designs-to-improve-the-lives-of-refugees/; especially the Wearable Shelter project (INDEX: Award 2017 nominee) is representative for projects in fashion design. Accessed 28 May 2018.

4

https://www.dezeen.com/tag/design-for-refugees/. Accessed 11 May 2018.

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Fig. 1: Marie-Elsa Batteux Flahault, Jacket On the Edge, Graduation Project at Design Academy Eindhoven, 2013

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Design schools started to pay particular attention to the topic, linking it to social and humanitarian design approaches: Products were designed either for or with refugees and aimed at “developing inexpensive and/or smart solutions” in response to their needs or “to improve the temporary situations faced by refugees.”5 Graduates from fashion or product design programs design for refugees, regularly acting at the interface of clothing and shelter, while other initiatives (mainly in a social design context) started participatory design projects to empower refugees (also compare Pinther 2017 and Rawsthorn 2018).6 Exhibitions such as Solution or Utopia? Design for Refugees at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, which included results from the Refugee Challenge, or Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter at the Museum of Modern Art in New York have brought the discourse to an institutional level.7 The On the Edge jacket, however, while a perfect fit for the refugee issue in form and function, was not designed within the abovementioned trend. As Marie-Elsa Batteux Flahault refers to the ‘preppers’8 and their efforts to prepare for emergencies, it is representative of a wide range of projects and exhibitions that address and engage in the issue of (a nonvoluntary) displacement on a much larger scale, as “a form of social change caused by a number of factors”9 5

https://www.stedelijk.nl/en/exhibitions/solution-or-utopia-design-for-refugees. Accessed 25 May 2018.

6

For a design for refugees see for example: RCA students design wearable dwelling for Syrian refugees, https://www.dezeen.com/2016/01/27/royal-college-of-art-students-wearable-coat-tentdwelling-syrian-refugees/, for a design with refugees see for example the initiative Makers Unite which won the Refugee Challenge, see https://makersunite.eu/mu-story/. Accessed 15 June 2018.

7

Solution or Utopia? Design for Refugees was on show from 20 May–26 August 2017, see https:// www.stedelijk.nl/en/exhibitions/solution-or-utopia-design-for-refugees,

and

Insecurities:

Tracing Displacement and Shelter from 1 October 2016 – 22 January 2017, see https://www. moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1653. Both accessed 25 May 2018. 8

At that time, a primarily American movement that actively prepares for surviving emergencies, including economic or societal collapse or disruptions in the political order. Media attention was paid when the American reality television series Doomsday Preppers aired on the National Geographic Channel from 2011 to 2014, see: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/doomsdaypreppers/. Accessed 26 May 2018.

9

UNESCO’s definition of the term “Displaced Person/Displacement”; indicated factors are “armed conflict” as the most common as well as “[n]atural disasters, famine, development and economic changes”, see http://www.unesco.org/new/en/social-and-human-sciences/themes/ international-migration/glossary/displaced-person-displacement/. Accessed 10 June 2018.

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that also implies the effects of global warming: increasing environmental disasters and a climate driven mass displacement in the (near) future (Demos 2016). By taking design as a mirror and indicator of societal change and debate, this text will investigate design developments that set the atmosphere of European design weeks before 2015. Showcased in the context of galleries, design spaces, institutions and design weeks, these particular designs are characteristic of a new generation of independently operating designers that seek to challenge common attitudes and practices in design (compare Rawsthorn 2018). They touch the global issue of migration and flight in a more subliminal way, and what I am interested in is their role as visual and material artefacts that incorporate and negotiate an increasing uncertainty in Western society since the late 2000s, caused by a range of global challenges such as political and economic instability, the impacts of climate change, pandemics and natural disasters. Research conducted at design weeks in Milan (IT) and Eindhoven (NL) and international design exhibitions as well as personal experiences from practice-based design research projects will be part of this “material discourse analysis” of contemporary design (compare Mareis 2011, 176ff.).

DESIGN FOR THE REAL WORLD

At the end of the first decade of the 21st century two major exhibitions took place in New York: Design for the Other 90% at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum (2007)10 and Design and the Elastic Mind at the Museum 10 The exhibition took place from 4 May–23 September 2007. Although it was a rather small show in the museum’s outdoor grounds, its success developed over time: In 2010 the exhibition catalogue was in its fifth reprinting, see www.engineeringforchange.org/news/design-forthe-other-90-expands/. Accessed 25 May 2018, and in the context of the exhibition the largest network yet for social design activities was created, see Banz 2016, 19. For subsequent exhibitions the problematic title was altered to “Design with the other 90%,” see https://www. designother90.org/about/. Accessed 12 May 2018.

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of Modern Art (2008).11 Each of them represented a crucial topic: Design and the Elastic Mind highlighted the role of innovative technologies and their future potential and situated design as a mediator between science, technology and society, while Design for the Other 90% renewed a social and humanitarian approach to design – an aspect that had only played a marginal role in the past two or three decades, if any at all. With a focus “on design solutions that addressed the most basic needs of the 90% of the world’s population not traditionally served by professional designers,”12 the exhibition maker emphasized a design approach that was explicitly linked to the movements in the 1970s when Victor Papanek called for a “design for the real world” that should direct its practice towards social responsibility, focusing on sustainable and humanitarian design solutions (Papanek 1971). With the Katrina Furniture Project the exhibition also raised an issue on the climate driven displacement that happened to the United States in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina left tens of thousands of people in New Orleans homeless, with little access to food, shelter or basic necessities. As a collaboration of design schools and nongovernmental organizations with local communities, the project aimed to provide facilities, tools and expertise for reconstruction, new economic opportunities, as well as the partial recycling of the detritus (Palleroni 2007). The hurricane had displaced more than one million people and, when considering that the exhibition took place in the run-up to the financial crisis, the motto of the exhibition – to find “unique ways to address the basic challenges of survival”13 and to “design simple, functional, and potential open-source objects that will enable [the user] to become empowered, self-supporting […]” (Smith 2007, 6) – could be taken as a leitmotiv for the years to follow.

11 Design and the Elastic Mind was on show from 24 February–12 May 2008, see https://www. moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/58. Accessed 25 May 2018. Also, this exhibition marked a crucial shift: “After a generation of postmodern styling in which design seemed more related to the techniques of marketing than to the horizons of knowledge, this exhibition brings together a truly impressive range of current practices, reflecting a mutual interchange that is almost without precedent.” Antonelli 2008, 8. 12 https://www.designother90.org/about/ Accessed 25 May 2018. 13 http://archive.cooperhewitt.org/other90/other90.cooperhewitt.org/about/index.html/.   Accessed 25 May 2018.

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Fig. 2: Grow Green – Textile Aid, Project at the University of Applied Sciences Niederrhein, Mönchengladbach, 2010/2011, led by Alexandra Weigand, elaborated by Jennifer Elze and Henrike von Besser, illustration of the concept

My interest in design as an indicator of societal change at that time led me to experiment as a visiting lecturer with students in a series of student design research projects that were part of the BA “Textile and Clothing Management” at the University of Applied Sciences Niederrhein. In the Winter term 2010/2011 I initiated a research project with the aim to develop textiles for ‘humanitarian’ use by taking up tendencies noticeable in the aforementioned exhibition. Although three years had passed since the Design for the Other 90% exhibition, the phenomenon of social design was only about to manifest.14 In preparation for our project we researched new technologies, materials and production methods, investigated the impacts of climate change, researched environmental conditions according to geographical areas, and worked out supply problems in general and in particular in the aftermath of environmental catastrophes. The latter was an

14 In 2010 the first master program for Social Design was established at the Design Academy Eindhoven (NL), followed by the Angewandte in Vienna (AT) in 2012, and Eco-Social Design started in October 2015 at the Free University of Bolzano (IT).

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ongoing topic in 2010 with a severe earthquake in Haiti at the beginning of the year and massive flooding in Pakistan only a few months later. Our result was a textile called Grow Green – Textile Aid, developed to improve the situation in countries with problematic supply situations such as Pakistan where a food crisis followed the floods (fig. 2). It would allow the cultivation of plants without being dependent on soil properties and would hence be adaptable to various situations where land could not be cultivated. For its construction we decided to use a spacer fabric – a relatively new type of a 3D textile that could be produced with different heights and surfaces (which would also allow for a swimming version) and an airy space in-between where roots could gain hold. Fertilizer and minerals fixed to the fibers would provide the necessary nutrient supply. In order to meet sustainable requirements as well, the originally synthetic material of the fabric could be replaced by biodegradable alternatives or bio-based material. We conducted some basic experiments for growing plants on the fabric but the project was above all conceptual. Considering the developments at the time, Grow Green certainly had the potential to respond to a variety of current issues: It enabled self-supply in emergency camps, when ground was washed away, exhausted or contaminated (a topic gaining relevance with Fukushima at the beginning of 2011); and it could also open up new paths for the ‘green city,’ another trend gaining visibility at that time (see Reynolds 2009; Müller 2011; Hammersley 2012). So, what was the reaction to our textile? When it was presented at the conference for roof greening (10. Internationales FBB-Gründachsymposium, Ditzingen 2012), quite a number of companies were interested in testing the ‘product.’15 It was awarded the second prize in an international competition for future textiles and the third prize at a national competition for innovations in the field of textiles and fashion.16 Taking into account these positive responses to a product that only existed as a conceptual idea, it seemed that Grow Green was right on the pulse of time – but what exactly was the pulse of time? 15 Submission for competitions and presentations of the project were undertaken by students Jennifer Elze and Henrike von Besser. 16 Future Textiles International Prize Competition, Denmark 2011, and Innovationspreis textil+mode in the category Technical Textiles, Germany 2011.

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DESIGN IN A CLIMATE OF DISPLACEMENT

Grow Green was a product designed for the displaced, flexible and adaptable to various kinds of needs, supporting autonomy and self-production in times of need, and at the same time integrating social, humanitarian and sustainable approaches. These properties also defined a particular type of design that followed the Design for the Other 90%: designs of “simple, functional, and potential open-source objects” that addressed the “basic challenges of survival” (see footnotes 12 and 13) – not solely for ‘the Other 90%’ but for everyone. What these designs had in common was their response to a worldwide atmosphere characterized by the “looming threat of manifold environmental crises, exacerbating sociopolitical and economic ones” (Demos 2016): protective and transformable clothing that would enable the wearers to carry their belongings, lightweight and easy-to-transfer furniture, an independent production of everyday goods – in other words, designs that would allow autonomy in case of need. The incidents in Japan had just given a foreshadow of the dimensions of mass displacement resulting from an ecological disaster (see Demos 2016, 26, 63f.), and the aftermaths of the financial crisis demonstrated that economic and spatial stability was no longer a (Western) privilege. “For me the [On the Edge] jacket is the image of a movement”, states Marie-Elsa Batteux Flahault, “[a]ll kinds of equipment could be featured in the jacket. I chose the jacket to show this principle but the way I see it, it could be applied to a whole range of objects.” She predicts that “in the near future, the Prepping movement will grow into a dominant culture and influence the design of everyday products.”17 Her design is an affective product as it revolves around the emotional base of our lives, the home, and its potential loss. It gives form to the subliminal atmosphere of fear and at the same time aims to counteract it by creating a wearable home, bringing essential features to the body as close as a second skin. Francesco Faccin’s Re-Fire Kit (fig. 3) is another project designed for present-day survival. It was commissioned by Stockholm Design Week 2014 and asked to be a “representation of a historical moment, and […] at 17 https://www.designacademy.nl/EVENTS/ArchiveEvents/Graduation13/Project.aspx? ProjectId=685. Accessed 25 May 2018.

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Fig. 3: Francesco Faccin, Re-Fire Kit, 2014

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the same time [to] be absolutely useful and necessary.”18 The idea of manual fire-lighting by friction was incorporated in a well-designed kit consisting of a number of wooden elements produced by sophisticated digital technologies such as CNC milling. Packed in a clean aluminum tube, it evokes the impression of arrows stored in a quiver – Faccin uses archaic images transferred to a contemporary style to communicate his message: to be able to make fire with one’s own hands would “give a powerful sensation of self-sufficiency and independence.”19 The project was also on show at the Domestic Futures exhibition at the National Museum in Stockholm in 2015, a show that aimed to give “a preview of how our domestic lives and daily routines might look in the next 10, 20 or 50 years.”20 The design’s symbolic use of fire making points to humankind’s most instinctive needs as crucial in the present, and counterpoints today’s technological advancements. The AUSTERITY – Edible furniture for times of crisis collection designed by the Italy- and Singapore-based duo Lanzavecchia + Wai (fig. 4) also asks for engagement with how our domestic lives might look in the future. The project was presented during Salone del Mobile 2013 and responded to the question: “How can furniture react to times of crisis?”21 It proposed four conceptual objects with basic nutrients, carbohydrates, proteins, sugar and chocolate [!] as food reserves that at the same time complement and finish the objects by covering their elemental metal structures. The objects then, when needed, are available for consumption. The Grains Sofa’s backrest, for example, consists of 195 one-kilo rice bricks and is kept together by 50 liters of starch glue. The cotton quilt covering the sofa is filled with 19.5 kg of dry beans. Leftover – once its edible parts have been consumed – is a minimalistic iron bench (made of 18.6 kg of iron). “The domestic landscape reflects our culture, our taste and our hab18 https://form.de/en/news/interview-mit-francesco-faccin-die-symbolik-des-feuermachens. Accessed 1 June. 19 https://francescofaccin.it/p12_refire-kit. Accessed 1 June 2018. 20 http://www.domesticfutures.com/. Accessed 1 June 2018. The exhibition was on show from 18 September – 15 November 2015. 21 http://lanzavecchia-wai.com/austerity-edible-furniture-for-times-of-crisis-3/. Accessed 2 June 2018.

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Fig. 4: Lanzavecchia + Wai, Grain Sofa from the collection AUSTERITY – Edible furniture for times of crisis, 2013

its. The objects that populate it absorb the atmosphere that pervades the space through their physicality, functionality and identity,” the designers say. “The decorational elements that were once appreciated suddenly become superfluous and should evolve to reflect a new era of austerity.”22 As a reaction to EU’s economic crisis the AUSTERITY collection is an ironic comment on consumerism, turning the design consumer into a food consumer. The project accentuates the need for an essential shift and ties up with critique of consumer culture and unsustainable design proclaimed since the 1970s (see Papanek 1971, Taylor 2017). Contributing to this shift by designing sustainable solutions that can be produced on-site is Autarchy by the Italian design duo Formafantasma. 22 Ibid.

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Commissioned by Rossana Orlandi and first presented at her renowned design space and platform for contemporary design during Milan’s design week Salone del Mobile 2010, the collection of functional and durable vessels and lamps is made of a bio-material composed of flour, agricultural waste and natural limestone. The material can be dyed with vegetable extracts and hardened by drying naturally or baking at low temperatures. “Autarchy,” the designers say, “suggests an alternative way of producing goods where inherited knowledge is used to find sustainable and uncomplicated solutions.”23 The installation showcased a contemporary form of knowledge production: Different steps in research and explained materials and production processes “as an open source where information and knowledge are shared” and could hence be used as a visual manual for self-production. Projects such as Autarchy offer alternatives for (bio-)materials, fabrication methods and the circulation of information. As do-it-yourself projects they allow the autonomous production of everyday goods, putting into practice Papanek’s claim that all men are designers (Papanek, 1971). The keywords ‘austerity’ and ‘autarchy’ as used in the titles of the presented projects also gave name to a show exhibited at the Triennale Design Museum in Milan in 2014. Autarky, Austerity, Autonomy – Italian Design beyond the Crisis was on display for nearly a year and put emphasis on the notion of self-production in three crucial periods in Italian history: the ’thirties, the ’seventies and the zero years.24 The exhibition showcased design classics such as Enzo Mari’s self-production project Autoprogettazione or the Global Tools initiative and contemporary works of designers such as Lorenzo Damiani and Martino Gamper; of course, Formafantasma’s Autarchy was on exhibit as well.25

23 http://www.formafantasma.com/autarchy. Accessed 25 May 2018. 24 The first period of autarky is related to a seven-month period of sanctions imposed by the League of Nations from 1935 to 1936, the second following the 1973 oil crisis and the third refers to the economic crisis and recession in the 2000s. See Finessi 2014, 20–21. 25 Autarky, Austerity, Autonomy - Italian Design beyond the Crisis was on display from 4 April 2014 – 22 February 2015, see http://www.triennale.org/en/mostra/vii-triennale-design-museumauto-da-se-il-design-italiano-tra-autosufficienza-austerita-e-autoproduzione/. Accessed 7 June 2018. Also see Finessi 2014.

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Designing Scarcity – Design and Innovation in Times of Scarcity at Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, was another exhibition26 in the same year that highlighted the innovative power of design in times of (economic) crisis and proclaimed that “scarcity is the mother of invention.”27 The show was structured around design strategies including repair, substitution, multi-use, resilience, divide/share and inform, to showcase “novel solutions in the face of limitation.”28 Historical positions such as those of Gerrit Rietveld and J.J.P. Oud related to the experience of scarcity in the Netherlands during the First World War, while Stewart Brand’s 1968 Whole Earth Catalogue as a “survival manual for citizens of planet Earth” represented the movements of the 1970s.29 Contemporary positions included Atelier van Lieshout’s project Insect Farm that “sketches a future scenario” with insects providing a substantial food alternative, or Thomas Lommée’s Open Structures, a modular open design system to build anything from furniture to houses.30 Both exhibitions referred to the current crisis as a starting point for dealing with shortage: Autarky, Austerity, Autonomy was linked to the financial crisis that, as the exhibition catalogue states, “has never left Italy since 2008” (Finessi 2014, 17), while Designing Scarcity investigated scarcity as a motivation and driving force behind new approaches in design.

26 In this context, I would also like to mention another exhibition with a slightly different approach that nevertheless touches on the issue of crisis as well: Born out of Necessity was on display at MoMA, New York, from 2 March 2012–28 January 2013. The exhibition offered “close examination of the problems themselves—whether urgent, foreseen, or imagined. From objects that respond to pressing needs in developing countries to new solutions that are tailored to the urban environment, the exhibition examines how design intervenes across a range of experiences, including medical emergencies and natural disasters,” see https://www.moma.org/ calendar/exhibitions/1245?locale=de. Accessed 7 June 2018. 27 Designing Scarcity - Design and Innovation in Times of Scarcity was on show from 28 June – 30 August 2014, see https://designing-scarcity.hetnieuweinstituut.nl/en/exhibition. Accessed 7 June 2018. Also see the long literature list on the website. 28 Ibid. 29 https://designing-scarcity.hetnieuweinstituut.nl/en. Accessed 7 June 2018. 30 Ibid.

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DESIGN AS A MIRROR

Designers, as Victor Margolin puts it, are creators of models, prototypes, and propositions [who] occupy a dialectical space between the world that is and the world that can be. Informed by the past and the present, their activity is oriented towards the future. They operate in situations that call for interventions, and they have the unique ability to turn these interventions into material and immaterial forms (Margolin 2007, 4). Designs as presented in this essay give material form to the instability of current conditions. They do not necessarily show the obvious, instead they mirror and visualize the subliminal, transferring it to an everyday level on which debate can take place. Design here develops strategies to mirror and make visible societal issues and, furthermore, to negotiate collective anxieties and needs. As a result, the objects have the ability to communicate with the viewer, to affect and ask for (re-)positioning. Reading design as a mirror of the present, on the other hand, also means dealing with its contradictory and ambiguous aesthetic politics (compare Gaugele 2014). By creating garments or objects for emergencies they also serve “ideological mechanisms of contemporary catastrophism, according to which spectacles of disaster repeatedly narrate our potential future” (Demos 2016, 28), and criticizing consumer culture through design does not liberate the discipline from its commercial constraints, even if the presented designs are linked to the cultural sector, circulating in galleries, exhibitions and design weeks. 31 Other examples are Louis Vuitton’s Objets Nomades editions – the first was presented at Design Miami in 2012, a second during Milan Design Week in 2017 – or Balenciaga‘s spring/summer collection 2017 with its oversized inflatable vests or multifunctional outdoor vests studded all over with big pockets. See https://de.louisvuitton.com/deu-de/kunst/the-objets-nomades# or https://www.dezeen.com/2012/12/06/objets-nomades-by-louis-vuitton/. Accessed 7 June 2018. For Balenciaga see for example https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/spring-2017ready-to-wear/balenciaga/slideshow/collection. Accessed 15 June 2018.

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Fig. 5: Tom Dixon, Capsule collection for Adidas, 2013. Installation view at the Museum of Science and Technology, Milan, 2013

The phenomenon of multifunctional clothing and furniture associated with autonomy, however, could be found not only in the abovementioned context but in commercial versions 31 as well, showing the trend’s ubiquity. Tom Dixon’s Capsule collection for Adidas presented during Milan’s Salone del Mobile 2013 is such an example. The Capsule, a unisex collection premiering new typologies of bags and garments, contained “everything you can fit in a bag for a week away where products are multi-functional and adaptable to suit any location.”32 It includes a padded parka that could be converted into a sleeping bag and a modular five-in-one overall that could be transformed into a coat, jacket, pant, skirt or shorts. Just like the garments, the accessories were characterized by multi-use: Garment bags would convert to backpacks 32 https://www.tomdixon.net/story/post/announcing-adidas-by-tom-dixon/?___store=eu. Accessed 1 June 2018.

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and backpacks unfold to serve as wardrobes. In the press release the aim of the collection was stated thus: “to be able to spend a week away from home with just one suitcase and the clothes it contains—almost like a survival kit.”33 The garments were presented on camp beds and surrounded by displays that – like infographics – demonstrated the possibilities of transformation and had labels with keywords such as multipurpose, adaptability and multi-functionality. Proclaiming “[m]obility, modularity and a dynamic, 21st-century life [as] the core concepts”34 the Capsule collection correlates with the trend of ‘urban’ or “digital” nomadism, a lifestyle that had become increasingly popular since the early 2000s (Makimoto/Manners 1997).35 These references to urban nomads as migrants on a voluntary basis, however, problematically fuse with the imagery of nonvoluntary migrants such as refugees or homeless people (Pinther 2017), declaring the precarious as a lifestyle: showcased in the reconstructed industrial environment of a 19th-century railway station at the MOST, Museum of Science and Technology, the installation was intended to evoke the idea of living on the move, but with the camp beds in a row and the clothes laid out on them one could also think of a reception camp (fig. 5). Despite these ambiguities, design can be a useful tool to create a “space of possibilities” (Mareis 2011, 206): Concepts and systems as well as objects, garments and furniture as presented are designed for everyday life, though, in challenging circumstances, they become agents for empowerment – in practical, conceptual or symbolical ways. In the recent climate of migration and flight there is a shift to a more human and social dimension (compare Banz 2016); the discipline is renewing its values and approaches and offers alternatives, embedded in materials, forms and functions. As a mirror of present and future conditions, design negotiates the world that is – and the world that can be.

33 Press release “adidas by Tom Dixon unveiled at MOST.” Received by Haeberlein & Maurer, 11 July 2013. 34 Ibid. 35 The term was brought up by Tsugio Makimoto and David Manners who forecasted a new lifestyle based on current and future technological possibilities such as the progress of mobile intelligent devices and high speed communication networks, which would free people from constraints of time and location and allow us to live, work and exist on the move.

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REFERENCES – Antonelli, Paola. Design and the Elastic Mind, exh.-cat. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Thames & Hudson, 2008. – Banz, Claudia. Social Design: Gestalten für die Transformation der Gesellschaft. Transcript, 2016. – Demos, T.J. Decolonizing Nature. Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology. Sternberg Press, 2016. – Finessi, Beppe. Italian Design beyond the Crisis. Autarky, Austerity, Autonomy, exh.cat. Triennale Design Museum, Milan, Corraini Edizioni, 2014. – Gaugele, Elke. Aesthetic Politics in Fashion. Sternberg Press, 2014. – Hammersley, Ben. A Smart Guide to Utopia – 111 Inspiring Ideas for a Better City. Le Cool, 2012. – Makimoto, Tsugio, and David Manners. Digital Nomad. John Wiley & Sons, 1997. – Mareis, Claudia. Design als Wissenskultur. Interferenzen zwischen Design- und Wissensdiskursen seit 1960. Transcript, 2011. – Margolin, Victor. “Design, the Future and the Human Spirit.” Design Issues, vol. 23, no. 3, 2007, pp. 4-15. – Müller, Christa, editor. Urban Gardening. Über die Rückkehr der Gärten in die Stadt, Oekom, 2011. – Palleroni, Sergio. “Katrina Furniture Project.” Design for the Other 90%, edited by Cynthia E. Smith, exh.-cat. Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, New York, 2007. – Papanek, Victor. Design for the Real World. Human Ecology and Social Change (1971). Thames & Hudson, 1985. – Pinther, Kerstin. “Konzepte und Ästhetiken der Passage. Design im Kontext von Flucht und Migration.” Passagen des Exils / Passages of Exile. (Exilforschung, Ein internationales Jahrbuch, 35/2017), edited by Burcu Dogramaci and Elisabeth Otto, edition text + kritik, 2017, pp. 315–333. – Rawsthorn, Alice. Design as an Attitude, edited by Clément Dirié, JRP/Ringier Kunstverlag AG, 2018. – Reynolds, Richard. On Guerrilla Gardening. A Handbook for Gardening without Boundaries, Orange Press, 2009. – Sicking, Jessica. “Refugee Design. Eine Welt für sich.” Form, no. 260, July/August 2015, pp. 81–85. – Smith, Cynthia E., editor. Design for the Other 90%, exh.-cat. Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, New York, 2007. – Taylor, Damon. “A brief history of (un)sustainable design.” Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Product Design, edited by Jonathan Chapman, Routledge, 2017, pp. 11–24.

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FLIGHT DESIGN AND MIGRATORY CITY PLANNING. The Architecture of the Refugee Pavilions of Western Sahara and of Germany at the Venice Biennial of Architecture 2016

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In response to globally dispersed refugee movements, design concepts by and for refugees in architecture, urban development and urban design have taken on a new, socially grown status. The thematic orientation of the 15th Biennial of Architecture in Venice (2016), led by the Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena, reflected this migratory turn as a sociopolitical turnaround in architecture and design. Under the headline Reporting from the Front, it presented architectural and design concepts by and for refugees. As a point of reflection, this article discusses two examples of so-called refugee pavilions: the German pavilion exhibition Making Heimat. Germany, Arrival Country, which was curated by the team of the German Museum of Architecture (Deutsches Architekturmuseum, or DAM) in Frankfurt on the Main, and the pavilion exhibition of the Western Sahara, designed by the Basel-based Manuel Herz Architects in collaboration with the National Union of Sahrawi Women. The objective of this comparative study is to analyze the content-related design concept of refugee pavilions in relation to the nomadization of the urban and the urbanization of the fugitive; moreover, it is to examine pavilion architecture as a migration-reflexive design responding to transitory living conditions and temporary community formations. Since the Western Sahara Pavilion was the first pavilion of a nation in exile presented at the Venice Biennial, the political impact of design and architecture for self-emancipation and nation-building will also be highlighted. The pavilion conceptions at the Biennial of Architecture selected for this individual study question the significance of national representation in the light of current political and sociological diagnoses of flight and migration. The migratory transgression of the national pavilion idea became tangible

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in 2013 in a very concrete way when Germany and France exchanged their pavilions.1 This move was directly linked to issues of transnationalization of art and architecture in times of cultural-economic globalization and global migration, but also brought the discourse around a renationalization of art, architecture and design into play anew. The concept of ‘ImagiNation’ can serve as a theoretical horizon to discern the (trans)nationalizations of the biennial pavilions as societal and identity-political paradigm shifts. It refers back to Benedict Anderson’s book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Anderson 1983), in which the nation is defined as a socially constructed and medially constituted entity, sustained by a collective imagination. Cultural-political art institutions such as the national pavilions at the Venice Biennial have a particularly high share in the media construction of national self-designs. It is the community of artists, architects and designers, assembled by the figure of the curator, who design collective imaginations for the image-discursive construction (and also reconstruction) of national identity as an imagined community.2

THE TRANSNATIONAL BREAKTHROUGH OF THE GERMAN PAVILION

To study the rebuilding of national self-representation in art, architecture and society, the analysis will focus on the curatorial concepts applied in designing the German Pavilion at the Biennial of Architecture in 2016. For

1

The exchange of pavilions was also intended to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Elysee Agreement. For more information on the main biennial exhibition and the German pavilion, see Gioni 2013 and Gaensheimer 2013.

2

The NSK State Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennial 2017 exemplifies the re-imagination of the national pavilion idea. Designed by NSK State in Time, a Slovenian artist collective, in collaboration with migrant communities, humanitarian protection applicants and stateless individuals, it was “conceived as a utopian formation without physical territory and identifying with no existing nation state.” (Cit. following the press release of the NSK State Pavilion, https://nsk-state-pavilion. net/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/PR-UK-FINAL-new.pdf. Accessed 30 July 2018).

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reasons of comparison, an architectural-historical account of earlier pavilion designs will partly be included. Yet the work exhibited in the pavilion will only be touched upon in the discussion where necessary. The title and theme of the German Pavilion was: Making Heimat. Germany, Arrival Country. The pavilion exhibition was conceived by the team of the German Museum of Architecture with its director and general commissioner Peter Cachola Schmal, curator Oliver Else and coordinator Anna Scheuermann on behalf of the Federal Ministry of the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety. The main topical questions raised by the pavilion design and exhibition were related to the situation of Germany as a country of arrival for migrants and refugees: How can conditions be created for a successful integration of migrants and refugees in Germany? What can architecture and urban development contribute in concrete terms to foster integration? The ambivalence and difficulty of this task are already expressed in the bilingual wording of the title ‘Making Heimat’. The polysemy of the German term ‘Heimat’ cannot be represented by the English term ‘home’. Heimat can refer to territorial, national and ethnic belonging, social, religious and cultural identity, home and house, as well as concrete and utopian places of affiliation. Due to this multisemanticity, the German term has made linguistic career as a foreign word and specialist term.3 With ‘Making Heimat,’ the German pavilion curators raise questions of how a person who moves outside his/her usual environment can feel at home and what contributions could be made by architecture and city planning for developing a sense of belonging. In the title of the exhibition, Germany is additionally referred to as an arrival country. The concept of ‘Arrival Country’ is derived from the concept of the ‘Arrival City’, upon which the curators draw as a main orientation for the pavilion design. It was introduced by the Canadian journalist Doug Saunders in his publication Arrival City. How the Largest Migration in History Is Reshaping Our World (2010). In cooperation with the author

3

Vilém Flusser, for instance, used the German word ‘Heimat’ in his English writings on migration and exile (Flusser 2003). For artistic examinations of the idea and concept of ‘Heimat’, see Dogramaci 2016.

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Doug Saunders, the pavilion curator team developed a total of eight theses regarding the arrival city which were presented in the German Pavilion on the basis of their own spatial concept as developed in collaboration with the design agency Something Fantastic4: 1.

The Arrival City is a city within a city. The Arrival City is affordable. The Arrival City is close to business. The Arrival City is informal. The Arrival City is self-built. The Arrival City is on the ground floor. The Arrival City is a network of immigrants. The Arrival City needs the best schools. (Schmal et al. 2016a)

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Besides a discussion of the eight theses, exemplary projects of refugee housing were shown. The Atlas of Refugee Housing (Schmal et al. 2016b) with altogether 55 building projects in Germany served as addition to the catalogue’s first part on the theme of the Arrival City. The architecture of the pavilion was designed as an ‘open pavilion’ (fig. 1). A physical breakthrough was made through the closed boundaries of the National Pavilion on three sides. In autumn 2015, when the number of refugees to Europe increased, the borders of Germany remained open – in contrast to many other European states that reacted by closing down their borders. This unexpected openness gave the team of the German Museum of Architecture (DAM) the opportunity to think about the architectural opening of the German Pavilion building after having preconceived the main exhibition on the urban (re-)design of migrant arrival cities in the pavilion’s interior:

4

Something Fantastic define themselves as “an undisciplinary architectural practice committed to smart, touching, simple architecture. The Berlin based firm’s agenda is based on the idea that architecture is affected by everything and vice versa – does affect everything – and therefore working as architects implies a broad interest and involvement in the world.” https://www. somethingfantastic.net/#contact. Accessed 17 July 2018.

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Fig. 1: Breakthroughs in the walls of the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennial of Architecture 2016

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Is it legitimate to undertake major interventions in the structure of the monument by creating openings in all the exterior walls? And does transferring a concept to a structure – be it that of an ‘open border’, an ‘open house’, or an ‘open society’ – not invariably run the risk of being perceived as overly bold, naïve, or tacky? (Schmal et al. 2016a, 288) In order to gauge the significance of the architectural opening, a brief historical excursion on the structural modifications of the German Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennales is needed. Since 1945, there have been several artistic and architectural attempts to intervene in the architecture of the pavilion in order to deconstruct and transform the monstrosity of its historical Nazi heritage. In 1993, Hans Haacke disassembled the flooring into a field of debris as a commentary on German reunification. In 2001, Gregor Schneider built the installation Totes Haus u r into the pavilion so that the latter’s temple-like interior structure was completely made to disappear.5 In 2007, Isa Genzken wrapped the pavilion with an orange building curtain so that it appeared as a packed monumental sculpture. 6 In 2011, for Christoph Schlingensief’s ‘Church of Fear,’ the pavilion was transformed into a church with altar and apse. On the occasion of the Architecture Biennial of 2006, the roof of the pavilion was made accessible to the public as a viewing platform for the first time.7 In 2010, a statement by Arno Sighart Schmid, president of the Federal Chamber of Architects, saying that the design of the pavilion would “no 5

The original model of Haus u r is located in Unterheydener Straße in the Rhineland town of Rheydt, where Gregor Schneider has worked and lived since 1985. The Wilhelminian entrance of the pavilion with its columned porticoes was equipped by the artist with mailbox slots and doorbell panels. The windows could not be opened to the outside, which emphasized the complete seclusion of the pavilion building. In the context of the Biennial, the work was also interpreted as a subtle political statement on the German pavilion architecture from 1909 which was considered the most martial to be found on the grounds of the Giardini site.

6

In the Berlin newspaper taz, art critic Benno Schirrmeister wrote: “Hier wird gebaut, umgestaltet, und zwar massiv. Ein Versprechen, das Oil in jeder Hinsicht einlöst: Genzken […] hat den Pavillon […] als kolossalformatige Skulptur aufgefasst. Dafür respektiert sie gerade noch seine Innenwände und Räume als Rahmen: Diese werden zur Freiflugfläche für Auge und Gedanken.” Schirrmeister, Benno. “Isa Genzkens Öl für Kunst-Programm.” taz, 9 June 2007, p. 13.

7

The reconstruction measures for the project ‘Convertible City’ were carried out by the Berlinbased architectural practice of Grüntuch-Ernst.

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longer correspond to our democratic self-understanding”8 (cit. in Oelze 2011), produced a lively discussion. In 2014, this led to the Venice Biennial exhibition This Is Modern by the German Werkbund, which assembled 22 proposals by German architects for the redesign or even replacement of the pavilion. The exhibition of ideas had no effect – none of the redesign proposals were implemented. To take up the demand for a democratic architectural self-representation, in the same year of 2014, the allegedly democratic architecture of the Bonn Chancellor’s Bungalow was blended by Alex Lehnerer and Savvas Ciriacidis with the architecture of the German Pavilion, thus exposing the migration of architectural forms. Contrary to these experiments, the architectural openings realized in 2016 were, according to the team of the German Museum of Architecture, not an attempt to make the German Pavilion building disappear, break its symmetry or, indeed, permanently call it into question as a suitable exhibition venue. Nor were the openings in the walls conceived as an objective in themselves. The open pavilion was meant neither as a cultural policy statement, the curators said, nor as a government declaration, but as a test arrangement to reflect Germany’s transforming role as a country of arrival and nation of immigration: Whether the intervention is a success will become apparent only in the interior. Will it become a new, generous space suffused with light offering a qualitatively different experience for visitors? Is that a refreshing breeze blowing gently through the spaces or is it just terribly drafty? Opening up the pavilion to its neighbors, South Korea, and Canada, is intentional; likewise the surprising diagonal vistas transform the exhibition venue into a structure we cannot really imagine today, albeit one that, if successful, will transform the German pavilion in ways similar to how the German government’s 2015-16 refugee policy has transformed – and will continue to transform – Germany. (Schmal et al. 2016a, 290ff.) Architecturally, the pavilion building opens to the lagoon (fig. 2); by this spatial reorientation, it becomes more southern, less formal: “A fine wind 8

English translation from German by the author.

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Fig. 2: View of the exhibition Making Heimat. Germany, Arrival Country in the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennial of Architecture 2016

goes through the pavilion, it is now ventilated, permanently,”9 wrote Hanno Rauterberg in his review of the pavilion exhibition in the German newspaper DIE ZEIT (Rauterberg 2016). After some negotiations, the Venetian society for the preservation of historical monuments had accepted the opening of the pavilion and given permission for the walls to be perforated under certain conditions. The breakthroughs were planned by the Venice-based architecture firm Clemens Kusch and his colleague Martin Weigert, who have been collaborating on the pavilion for many years. The project was carried out in coordination with the design agency Something Fantastic from Berlin. The focus was not on permanent, but temporary openings: The rough edges should emphasize the powerful act of breakthrough. The steel girders taken in to support the 9

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breakthroughs were left visible. The bricks with which the openings were to be closed again after the end of the Biennial were laid out stacked in the interiors. During the Biennial they served partly as seating accommodations, podiums for the display of information materials, including posters, or bar counters, thus symbolizing the provisional nature of the ‘Open Pavilion’ project. With the crane-like installation hanging from the ceiling in the entrance hall, the main interior of the pavilion was marked as a site of (re-)construction. The exhibition display reflected the preliminary design stage of the process of opening. Main content information about the exhibition on view was printed on cardboard panels propped against the wall like discarded construction materials. The eight theses defining the arrival city were mounted as flat text-and-image information directly onto the walls, often ignoring architectural boundaries such as room corners. They were presented to the audience as design sketches open to change. The reprints of the wall pictures as postcards put out on the brick-stack podiums for take-away, together with the movable plastic chairs scattered in the pavilion halls, emphasized the mobile dimension of ‘Heimat to go’. The breaking open of closed and static spaces of national imagination in the German Pavilion is presented as an experiment that can be undone at any time – especially when it is threatened by tendencies towards closure. In this regard, the pavilion architecture in combination with the exhibition design stands as a symbol for the divided political situation in Europe and the European Union, torn between opening borders and closing borders, transnational mobility and national isolationism. Although it took the inner-German wall as a reference point, the follow-up pavilion exhibition at the Venice Biennial of Architecture in 2018, entitled Unbuilding Walls, alluded playfully and also warningly to both the architectural perforation of the pavilion walls in 2016 and the creation of new divisive walls between nations, nationalities and ideologies in Europe and other regions of the world. The representation of an open, perforated nation-state – exemplified by the de- and reconstructive design of the German Pavilion – as an ‘arrival state / city’ and new home stands in stark contrast to the representation of a refugee state, in this case study the Western Sahara, that strives for national self-representation in the temporary and mobile form of a tent pavilion at

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the Venice Biennial of Architecture. In the following, I will have a closer look at the different meanings of ‘ImagiNation’ as a nomadic and transitional nation-building process.

URBANIZATION OF NOMAD DESIGN: THE EXILE PAVILION OF THE WESTERN SAHARA

Western Sahara, a nation in exile, first exhibited its own pavilion in 2016 at the Venice Biennial of Architecture. The basic idea for the Western Sahara Pavilion came from the architect and urban development researcher Manuel Herz, who had investigated the organizational, architectural and urban structures of Western Saharan refugee camps. The design of the pavilion was created in collaboration with the National Union of Sahrawi Women. Nina Zimmer, director of the Fine Arts Museum Bern, served as an advisory curator for the pavilion exhibition. The historic first-time representation of Western Sahara at the Architecture Biennial not only extends the idea of ​​the national pavilion to include the case of a nation in exile10 but also calls the idea of the transnational into question. Representational potentials and boundaries are made evident. On the one hand, the national pavilion idea makes it possible for Western Sahara, despite its exile status, to present itself as a nation with its own state identity and cultural-social value system – despite the fact that it is not recognized as a state by all countries in the world. On the other hand, the nomadic refugee nation in exile, located in refugee camps, torpedoes the idea of ​​a national building of sovereign state architecture with a solid territory and immovable external borders. The representative opening up of a nation-state, as exemplified by the design of the German Pavilion, is radically challenged by the political and territorial fact of a refugee state that has set up tents on the territory of the bordering nation of Algeria. 10 For the history and definition of the Western Sahara as a refugee state and nation in exile, see San Martín 2010, in particular chapters 3 and 4, and Holt 2017.

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Fig. 3: Tent pavilion of the Western Sahara at the Venice Biennial of Architecture 2016 Fig. 4: Berber carpet with a map detailing areas of conflict. Collaboration project by Manuel Herz and the National Union of Sahrawi Women

The tent has become a concrete dwelling place and a symbol for the uprooting and displacement of the Sahrawi people.11 In order to symbolize the temporary situation of a nation-state in exile and, at the same time, make visible elements of Western Sahara’s strongly nomadic society and culture, the Western Saharan Pavilion was erected as a nomadic (Berber) tent on a lawn in the immediate vicinity of the historically located main building of the Venice Biennial (fig. 3). By thus counter-positioning itself against the pavilion forms of the art institution, it reflected the camp situation of the Sahrawi refugee nation as a political entity, spatially exhibiting the in-betweenness of its exile existence. The art space of the nomadic pavilion was built on-site according to traditional tent-building techniques of the nomadic Berber culture. Inside the tent, the design and architecture of the refugee camps of Western Sahara were presented in the context of

11 The tent architecture even forms the political iconography of the Frente Polisario, a rebel

national liberation movement whose members aim at the independence and self-determination of the Western Sahara. See announcement poster for the Polisario Extraordinary Congress held in July 2016 in the Dakhla refugee camps, https://www.spsrasd.info/news/en/articles/ 2016/07/07/2856.html. Accessed 30 July 2018.

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exile history and politics while the narration focused on organizational and administrative structures as well as the institutions of political representation. Thirty women from the National Union of Sahrawi Women had woven Berber carpets by hand12 depicting location plans, buildings and living conditions in the refugee camps (fig. 4). Traditionally, Berber women knot rugs that tell a story and family history. By adopting this mnemonic technique for mapping the contemporary refugee (camp) history of the West Saharan nation in exile, the National Union of Sahrawi Women aspired to reroot the history of national displacement and cultural uprooting. Alternating with the woven documentation, images, maps of the political topography and socio-economic international network of the Western Saharan population as well as photographs of the architecture and the settlement structure in the refugee camps were exhibited on large-scale canvases and monitors. The overarching theme of national self-representation of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) in the pavilion is the development of a new urban identity of the predominantly nomadic Sahrawis in exile. As a disempowered, deterritorialized entity, the nation state – whose major population fled across the border to Algeria – reinvents itself as a city state under the conditions of the camp situation. Flight and migration have become a persistent condition in the Sahrawis’ 40-year refugee (camp) history.13 For this

12 In his study on “The Berber House”, Pierre Bourdieu explains how Berber women’s lives are centered around weaving (Bourdieu 2013, 131ff.). 13 The Western Sahara is a disputed territory. Since 1894 it was a Spanish colony and therefore called Spanish Sahara. After the death of Franco, the Spanish troops were withdrawn from the area. The neighboring countries of Morocco and Mauritania, which had become independent from the French colonial power in 1956 and 1960, began to intervene. On 26 February 1976, an assembly of Western Sahrawi chieftains agreed on the division of Western Sahara between Morocco and Mauritania. In response to this, the liberation movement Polisario proclaimed the independence of the Democratic Arab Republic of Sahara. Morocco did not accept the autonomy of a Sahrawi state and annexed large parts of the northern and southern territory after Mauritania’s withdrawal from the area. The annexation of Western Sahara by Morocco was not recognized by the United Nations. Nor have the Democratic Arab Republic of Sahara’s claims to the territory of Western Sahara been recognized, as the referendum requested by the United Nations has not yet been held. For more information about the political conflict history of the Western Sahara, see Shelley 2004; Pazzanita 2006; Zunes/Mundi 2010 and Ojeda-Garcia et al. 2017.

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reason, the refugees were forced to settle more permanently. In his study on refugee camps in the Western Sahara, Manuel Herz has described this longterm dwelling process as a move “From Camp to City” (Herz 2013). With this analysis, he contributes to the recent ‘urban turn’ in refugee camp studies (Agier 2014; Jansen 2015; Picker/Pasquetti 2015). I would even take Herz’s research a step further, arguing that it is a transformation from the camp to the city state as a new governmental entity of political representation. In the case of the Western Saharan camp cities, refugee nationship, citizenship and “campzenship” (Sigona 2015) overlap in alternative forms of living and housing, belonging and communitarization. The urbanizing effect on the refugee camp communities is manifested on three levels, to which I would like to draw closer attention in the following: the national level of state infrastructure and territorial organization, the spatial level of settlement patterns, and the residential level of housing. Refugee history shows that throughout the decades of exile, the first few scattered refugee camps have transformed into urban agglomerations. The largest of the refugee camps is Smara with an estimated population of 60,000, followed by El Aaiún with 50,000, Awserd with 30,000 to 35,000 and Dakhla and ‘27 February’ with 15,000 to 20,000. In total, the number of refugees in all the refugee camps rises to 165,000, which amounts approximately to one half of the indigenous Sahrawi population.14 The other half of the scattered nation lives in parts of Morocco and Mauritania. The national identification of refugees with the urban habitat of their homeland is expressed in the names of the refugee camps, which are named after the largest cities in Western Sahara. By naming the camps this way, the concept of ‘ImagiNation’ is highlighted as a refugee practice of imagining national community in exile. The spatial organizational structure of the refugee camps – which is based upon the standard model of the UNHRC camps15 with only minor deviations – reflects the typical structure of the Maghreb national states. A refugee camp with an average size of 20,000 refugees is usually divided into 4 sectors. In order to make the division in the spatial order of the camp clearly visible, 14 These figures are based on the information given in Herz 2013, p. 88ff. 15

See UNHCR 2007, in particular section 3/12: site selection, planning, shelter, p. 240ff.

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the individual sectors, which are laid out like a chessboard, are separated from each other by wide open spaces. In turn, the sectors are subdivided into 4 blocks and 16 municipalities, with each municipality being assigned to approximately 16 families. A mostly orthogonal network of roads and sandy paths runs through the blocks and communities. According to the organization of the nation state, the individual camps that make up the Western Saharan nation in Algerian exile are called wilayah; this is the Arabic word for the political administrative unit of ‘province.’ The sectors in the camp are called daïras, that is, districts; the neighborhood blocks barrios, a term that dates back to the Spanish colonial era. Family units, in which 12 to 16 families live, are called khaliya (Herz 2013, p. 92ff.; Farah 2009). In the course of the growth and expansion of the camps to a larger campsite agglomeration, a functional differentiation has emerged (Herz 2013, 154ff.). Rabouni, the first-established refugee camp, has developed from a residential camp into a purely administrative camp with an independent infrastructure. Today, it serves as a kind of capital among the refugee camps, with governmental, religious, cultural and economic institutions such as the parliament, the main ministries (Development and Building, Health, Justice and Religious Affairs, Youth and Sports, Education, Public Culture, Defense, Security, International Relations), the National Archives, the National Museum of Resistance, a mosque and several international refugee organizations (United Nations Refugee Agency, World Food Program). This government institutional presence shows that the state has firmly established itself in the volatile and transitional situation of the refugee camp. In the truest sense of meaning, it has reestablished itself in the form of a refugee state. Within the camps, the refugees have built a nationally sovereign and politically independent state with government functions and the relevant administrative apparatus. The camp is ruled and administered like a nation-state – thus representing the Western Sahrawi refugee nation as a state within the state of Algeria. This unique case illustrates the fact that the transnational perforation of the nation-state can also occur within national territories through migration-related intra-statehood. Over the long period of the refugee camp history spanning from 1976 until today, a structural change of the settlement from rigid checkerboard

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patterns to more organic forms of arrangement can be identified. Due to the constant increase in refugees, rational patterns of order are set in motion. The tents are relocated, and huts or various other extensions are added. More durable dwellings such as cement brick houses are being built between or instead of the tents (Herz 2013, p. 120f.). In addition, within the firmer residential structures permanently private areas, demarcated from the public passageways and meeting places by fences and stone walls, begin to emerge. Families with larger space requirements move to the periphery of the refugee camps. As a result, the fixed outer boundaries of the camps are shifting as well: the given blocky settlement structure is spilling into the surrounding area of ​​the desert landscape. The orderly refugee camp design is continuously disrupted by camp-internal migration. The diversity of individualized social living conditions and space requirements in the collective of the camp manifests itself in the increasing differentiation of housing shapes that express a certain indecision between temporality and permanence. In the timeline of resettlement, tents constitute the preliminary stage for establishing refugee camps. In the case of the Western Saharan refugee camps, as already mentioned, beige Algerian (military) tents were provided by the government for construction. The Algerian tent model, made of canvas fabric over a metal framework, was quickly supplemented with the traditional tent form of the Sahrawi nomadic Berber culture, the so-called khayma. When the UNHCR donated its model tents in the 1990s, these were transformed into new tent shapes by combining them with the local Maghreb tent types. Over time, a house type with its own building culture and fortified walls was erected in the refugee camps: the mudbrick house. The temporary nomadic aspect of this house design could be seen on the roof, which was stretched over the solid mud brick walls as a textile tent roof. In the further development of the building history, several adobe houses were combined to form building complexes, which resulted in a differentiation of spatial functions. Additionally, the textile tent roofs have been replaced with stone-clad zinc plate roofs to provide protection against sandstorms and heavy rains. Corrugated iron huts and cement tile houses were built on the way to more durability. With the plastered cement brick houses, the settle-

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Fig. 5: Architect-designed adobe house plastered with cement in the camp of El Aaiùn

ment and building history in the refugee camp is entering its final phase for the time being, as it signals permanent settlement. They are often arranged into larger complexes enclosing courtyards and already show decorative elements such as archways, cornices and ornamental embellishments. The structural stabilization of short-term living conditions is also reflected in the development of a refugee camp-internal construction economy. Wealthier refugee families can afford hiring architects to build ‘designer houses’ in the camp (fig. 5). The urbanization of refugee camp housing structures thus contributes to socioeconomic advancement. Farah points to the “informal economic trade networks, the seeds of cash economy and a market” that “are beginning to emerge in the wilayas” (Farah 2003, 22). Conversely, increasing prosperity and social well-being are proportionate to the degree of urbanization in the camps. As land ownership is not allowed in the camp, social and economic differences among the refugee families are becoming particularly evident in architecture. In order to be able

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to build larger and more representative residential complexes, negotiation skills are required above all; through dialogue with neighbors and administrators, refugee families seek additional room in the spatial environment of the camp (Herz 2013, 140). In the overall picture, the urbanized camp architecture remains undecided due to its transitory state. Taleb Brahim, agricultural engineer at Smara Refugee Camp, notes: “There are two groups of people in the camps: the ones who don’t want to establish anything that could ever look permanent and the others who want to make their stay in the camps as comfortable as possible.” (cit. in Herz 2013, 146) The overall appearance of the camps indicates that the tent architecture is slightly in the majority, emphasizing the transitional status of the refugee settlements as well as the unclarified recognition status of the Western Sahrawi nation state (SADR) in exile. Despite fixed building organization units and urban structures, the mobile character of the camp and the fleeting living situation remain visible. The volatile state of life, society and nation, kept in limbo between flight and permanent settlement, is also expressed in transitional forms of housing between temporary and permanent design. They confirm the characterization of camp cities as a proliferation of temporary permanence, or permanent temporariness (Picker/Pasquetti 2015) and the emergence of a humanitarian urbanism (Jansen 2016) in its own terms of aesthetic migrancy. Accordingly, the development of hybrid architectural styles, building types and design forms can be observed in the refugee camps. Stylistic mixtures with migrating architectural forms and spatial planning elements from the Sahrawi and Maghrebi Berber culture, Western housing and camp architecture as institutionalized by international humanitarian organizations are an unmistakable sign for the emergence and consolidation of a local urban construction and design culture in the camps. Considering that architects are commissioned to design refugee houses, it seems more than legitimate to speak of refugee architecture and flight design as a new sociopolitical aesthetic field. Architectures of migration should be studied in relation to the migration of architectural forms and styles, as Pinther suggests (Pinther 2011). The design of refugee camps evolving into refugee cities has become a political praxis of not only humanitarian, but social engagement.

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DESIGN FOR SOCIAL IMPACT

The exhibition analysis of the refugee pavilions of Western Sahara and Germany at the Biennial of Architecture in Venice has vividly demonstrated how design and architecture can be made sociopolitically relevant for processes of homeland-making, nation-building and empowerment. Whether we are dealing with an arrival city, such as Offenbach, or a refugee city, such as the urban settlement of the Rabouni refugee camp as a political representation of the West Saharan nation in exile, it is necessary to recognize the social and political importance of migrant and refugee architecture and urban planning, and its formative impact on the lives and living conditions within migrant communities and societies. Flight design and city development by and for migrants present new design areas and creative spaces; they make it possible to reflect identity-political transformation processes in migrant and exile societies and to redesign social habitats in response to migrant needs. On this understanding, architects, designers, urban planners and urban researchers should collaborate more closely with migrants and migration policy makers to implement a new design culture and architecture with a clearly social impact on migrant cultures.

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REFERENCES – Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, 2006. – Bourdieu, Pierre. “The Berber House.” The Anthropology of Space and Place, edited by Setha M. Low and Denise Lawrence-Zúñiga, Blackwell, 2003, pp. 131–141. – Dogramaci, Burcu. Heimat. Eine künstlerische Spurensuche. Böhlau, 2016. – Farah, Randa. “Refugee Camps in the Palestinian and Sahrawi National Liberation Movements: A Comparative Perspective.” Journal of Palestine Studies, vol. 38, no. 2, Winter 2009, pp. 76–93. – Farah, Randa. “Western Sahara and Palestine: Shared Refugee Experiences.” Forced Migration Review, no. 16, 2003, pp. 20–23. – Flusser, Vilém. The Freedom of the Migrant. Objections to Nationalism. University of Illinois Press, 2003. – Gaensheimer, Susanne, editor. La Biennale di Venezia 2013, Deutscher Pavillon, Begleitpublikation. Ai Weiwei, Romuald Karmakar, Santu Mofokeng, Dayanita Singh. Gestalten, 2013. – Gioni, Massimiliano, editor. The Encyclopedic Palace. 55th International Art Exhibition: La Biennale di Venezia. Marsilio, 2013. – Herz, Manuel, and ETH Studio Basel, editors. From Camp to City. Refugee Camps of the Western Sahara. Lars Müller Publishers, 2013. – Holt, Bella. Western Sahara. Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic: Protracted Sahrawi Displacement and Camping. CreateSpace Independent Publishing, 2017. – Isidoros, Konstantina. Nomads and Nation-Building in the Western Sahara. Gender, Politics and the Sahrawi. I. B. Tauris, 2018. – Jansen, Bram J. “The Protracted Refugee Camp and the Consolidation of a ‘Humanitarian Urbanism.’” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2016, http://www.ijurr.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Refugee-Spotlight-The-ProtractedRefugee-Camp-Jansen.pdf. Accessed 31 July 2018. – Oelze, Sabine. “Der Deutsche Pavillon der Biennale Venedig.” Deutsche Welle (DW), 2011, https://www.dw.com/de/der-deutsche-pavillon-der-biennale-venedig/a-6536596. Accessed 18 July 2018. – Ojeda-Garcia, Raquel, et al., editors. Global, Regional and Local Dimensions of Western Sahara’s Protracted Decolonization. When a Conflict Gets Old. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. – Pazzanita, Anthony G. Historical Dictionary of Western Sahara. Scarecrow Press, 2006. – Picker, Giovanni, and Silvia Pasquetti. “Durable Camps. The State, the Urban, the Everyday.” City, vol. 19, no. 5, 2015, pp. 681–688. – Pinther, Kerstin. “Architekturen der Migration/Migration der Architektur. Künstlerische Annäherungen.” Die Kunst der Migration. Positionen zum europäisch-afrikanischen Diskurs. Material – Gestaltung – Kritik, edited by Marie-Helene Gutberlet and Sissy Helff. Transcript, 2011, pp. 169-182.

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– Rauterberg, Hanno. “Heimat, frisch gelüftet. Architektur-Biennale 2016.” DIE ZEIT, 25 May 2016, https://www.zeit.de/2016/23/architektur-biennale-venedig-deutschepavillon-oliver-else, n.p. – San Martín, Pablo. Western Sahara. The Refugee Nation. University of Wales Press, 2010. – Saunders, Doug. Arrival City. How the Largest Migration in History Is Reshaping Our World. Heinemann, 2010. – Schmal, Peter Cachola et al. editors. Making Heimat. Germany, Arrival Country. Hatje Cantz, 2016a. – Schmal, Peter Cachola, et al. Making Heimat. Germany, Arrival Country. Atlas of Refugee Housing. Hatje Cantz, 2016b. – Shelley, Toby. Endgame in the Western Sahara. What Future for Africa’s Last Colony? Zed Books, 2004. – Sigona, Nando. “Campzenship: Reimagining the Camp as a Social and Political Space.” Citizenship Studies, vol. 19, no. 1, 2015, pp. 1–15. – UNHCR. Handbook for Emergencies. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2007. – Zunes, Stephen, and Jacob Mundy. Western Sahara. War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution. Syracuse University Press, 2010.

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DESIGN OBJECTS AS TOOLS FOR REFLECTING ON MIGRATION AND FLIGHT: Works by Studio Formafantasma and Superflex

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The image (fig. 1) shows a work by the designers Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin of Studio Formafantasma: Moulding Tradition (2009)1 consists of a group of five ceramics in different shapes and forms: boatlike bowls of various sizes, vases and bottles. Some of the maiolica objects display special attributes which refer to the sea and to rescue operations on the water such as a pair of paddles and lifebuoys. Others use ribbons, printed with historical and immigration data, to tie framed photographs and other ‘décor’ to the vessels.2 The project is informed by the tin-glazed maiolica from Caltagirone in Sicily3 – itself a result of the encounter with (Moorish) Islamic ceramic traditions in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which in the following centuries triggered a technical and content-related process of adaptation (Goldthwaite 1989, 11f.). From the early modern age onwards, maiolica thus became “an excellent indicator and agent of design transmission across the globe” (Ajmar-Wollheim/Molà 2011, 17; see also Goldthwaite 1989, 10). 1

Moulding Tradition was the joint graduation project by Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin at the Design Academy Eindhoven and was exhibited at the graduation show in 2009. Later in the same year, it was on display – together with their Baked project – during Milan’s design week at the Spazio Rossana Orlandi. In 2014, Formafantasma had a first survey exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum’s-Hertogenbosch, see the catalogue edited by Baas 2014.

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Formafantasma had used a similar technique in an earlier project called Baked. Here, the rubber bands “literally reinforced the associations between the vessels and bread and as such also between the project and its origin in Salemi’s medieval bread craft” (Ozorio de Almeida Meroz 2014, 910).

3

Tin-glaze then was an imported substance, which made maiolica a far more expensive commodity than ordinary pottery; due to the tin oxide, it has a brilliant white, opaque surface.

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Fig. 1: Studio Formafantasma, Moulding Tradition 2009, unglazed ceramic, jacquard ribbon, cotton ropes, glass, photographic print

Among the ceramic vessels being produced up till now is the genre of the so-called teste di moro – vases that in a stereotypical, often grotesque and derogative manner depict the faces of people referred to as either ‘African’ or as ‘Arabic.’ In their original form as busts they most probably date back to the seventeenth century, when they were used as flowerpots to decorate balconies and terraces, suggesting an exuberant vegetation. By replacing this generic image with a black-and-white photograph of a known and thus named immigrant from Nigeria, Sofien Adeyemi, Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin update the references and create a link to recent migration movements. A flask with an attached ceramic tile lists the names of the countries Adeyemi has traveled through on his way from West Africa to Italy. His (multiplied) portrait together with written information on present-day migration policies is attached to the ceramic form, thus literally adding a new level of meaning. Yet another wine bottle recalls fruit picking,

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predominantly done by migrant workers under harsh and exploitative conditions.4 By introducing further elements of reality in traditional forms, Formafantasma with Moulding Tradition create complex discourses on the historical and present-day entanglements between Africa and Europe and the imbalance in their economic and political conditions. According to the designers, “contemporary public opinion polls have claimed that 65% of Italians believe that the immigrants are ‘a danger for our culture.’”5 In this context Moulding Tradition speaks of the blind spots of contemporary culture: Neither the explicit transcultural character of the maiolica which had contributed to – if not established – the fame of Caltagirone’s craft tradition is valued, nor are the descendants of those who once introduced this new ceramic technique welcomed. Moulding Tradition also alludes to the fact that in the most recent age of globalization nearly everything – data, information, images, objects – is free-flowing, but some people’s movements from specific geographies are monitored and restricted. Thus, it questions the ideology of cultural segregation and confronts it with the factual migration of people and goods as well as with the various historical entanglements. Furthermore, Moulding Tradition, for which the designers cooperated with a local craftsperson,6 can also be read as a comment on the role of craft in contemporary society as well as on the question of how craft is sometimes “locked into a tradition repeating [moulding, author’s note] the same objects over and over again” (Studio Formafantasma 2015). In order to counter this tendency, the designers left their products with a kind of raw surface, since normally maiolica ceramic is painted in bold colors after being dried thoroughly. In the case of Formafantasma’s maiolica, the objects remain ‘unfinished’ – a (blank) space to metaphorically be worked

4

See for instance Gala Pianigia, A Woman’s Death Sorting Grapes Exposes Italy’s “Slavery,” New York Times April 11, 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/world/europe/a-womansdeath-sorting-grapes-exposes-italys-slavery.html. Accessed 20 July 2018.

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http://www.formafantasma.com/moulding-tradition. Accessed 30 July 2018.

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A potter from Caltagirone created the initial models, and the post-production was done later in Eindhoven near Amsterdam in the Netherlands, where the designers live and work.

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on and to open up a debate. Thus, Moulding Tradition stands for Studio Formafantasma’s conceptual and critical design-thinking approach. In this approach, the duo relies on textual information as well as on the haptic and aesthetic qualities of the substances they use: “[M]aterials are not only functional but also have the ability to evoke memories or to testify historical knowledge” (Studio Formafantasma 2015).

FORMS OF CRITIQUE BY DESIGN

The authors of Global Design History make clear how the most recent phase of globalization not only accelerates flows of people, images, information, commodities and capital, but also contributes to the various types of exclusion and border control regimes (Adamson et al. 2010, 1f.). At a time when design is becoming increasingly politicized, the question of how designers respond to the hitherto biggest wave of flight and migration in the years 2015/16 (for data see Edwards 2016) becomes obvious. Indeed, similar to Moulding Tradition, there are other design objects as well as works at the interface of design and art which can be seen as tools for reflecting on migration and flight. In using design as a tool, the migrancy reference can often be found on more than only one level. Besides its content-related presence, it is also tangible via the objects’ materiality or techniques, which for their part often bear traces of mobility and cultural transfer. Thus, these objects speak strongly to the historical and cultural migration of forms (Prinz / Möbius 2012, 20). With this orientation, they differ from (sometimes) ambivalent design projects for (and with) refugees and their implicit aesthetic politics.7 At the center of this essay are selected works by Studio Formafantasma and the Danish group Superflex. The designer duo and the artists from Co-

7

On the aesthetic politics in the field of (fashion) design see Gaugele 2014; Van Helvert 2016 and Pinther 2016. In May 2017 Formafantasma, too, held a design and fabrication course for a group of mostly Syrian refugees at Villa Magni in southern Sicily, where the humanitarian design group Architecture Sans Frontières has established a training center (Rawsthorn 2017).

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penhagen share a conceptual approach and a common interest in design and architecture as formed by political issues. Both are equipped with a keen sense for things as storage of meanings and histories that can be unpacked and made visible – a knowledge that very much informed the projects about different kinds of flows and mobilities, discussed here. I ask how design contributes to a critical debate on migration and flight in society, how it provides ‘material’ to rethink and to differentiate the often complex historical and cultural relationships. What specific designerly forms of critique have evolved and how do they relate to a former genealogy of ‘alternative design practices’? What shape does criticality – seen as a resistant mode of thinking and acting – take and how can it be articulated in and through artefacts? Design practitioners as well as scholars of design theory every now and then, but in particular in times of crisis, struggle with the issue of aesthetics, ethics and politics. Design, then, is often characterized as a normative figure of ambivalence, caught in its manipulative behavior to create ever new desires within a capitalist economy (Dunne/Raby 2001, 59). In contrast, there is the professionals’ quest for a design that does no harm, that counteracts the logic of the marketplace and that is even capable of changing society for the better. In fact, ‘alternative’ design approaches look back on their own – (widely) ramified – historical trajectories. Among others they connect to Victor Papanek’s Design for the Real World. Human Ecology and Social Change (1971), which explicitly argued for a humanitarian design for what was then called the ‘Third World.’ They can be further linked to Enzo Mari’s ‘design to share’ and to the radical design movement with Superstudio and Archizoom Associati, among others, in Italy during the late 1960s (Rossi 2014).8 What they all have in common is a critical stance towards ‘conventional’ market driven design – and here the spectrum and the means of what is optionally called social, participative, humanitarian or responsible design varies widely. At least it ranges from developing products for (and sometimes with) hitherto marginalized (consumer) groups to the creation of bizarre or Dadaistic 8

The radical design movement was an important reference for Formafantasma, as Andrea Trimarchi explains in a Design Indaba Talk on 3 November 2015. Accessed 30 July 2018.

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objects unsuitable for ‘proper’ use. In addition, it includes participative approaches as well (Mazé/Redström 2007).9 More recent design approaches and theories of the 1990s differ from their forerunners insofar as they have partly given up the idea of creating ‘real,’ usable products. Instead they envisage objects as a vehicle for imagining how things could (and should) be different for possible futures. Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby termed this approach ‘critical design’ and refer to a design practice that uses objects to ask questions and raise issues in society. “Critical design,” they write, “is related to haute couture, concept cars, design propaganda, and visions of the future, but its purpose is not to present the dreams of industry, attract new business, anticipate new trends or test the market. Its purpose is to stimulate discussion and debate amongst designers, industry and the public about the aesthetic quality of our electronically mediated existence” (Dunne/Raby 2001, 58). Here, it soon becomes clear that ‘critical design’ in the writings of Dunne and Raby largely operates within the narrower limits of design itself. The projects they are referring to mainly explore the emancipatory potential of technology (and its restraints), they often act as “platforms through which to question, contest, and reframe notions of expertise in technology and environmental use” (DiSalvo 2012, 1). In contrast to this ‘narrow’ approach, the projects this article focuses on create objects that, beside their reflection on the migration of forms, objects and architecture, also aim to trigger social and political issues outside the realm of design.

COLONY: ON WEAVING TOGETHER DIVERGENT FORMS OF MIGRATION AND MOVEMENT

Formafantasma’s Colony series (2011) can again be taken as an example of how Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin tackle the political in their de9

For an insightful debate on social design as well as fragments of its historical chronology see Banz 2016 as well as Mareis 2014.

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Fig. 2: Studio Formafantasma, Colony, mohair wool, unglazed ceramic, polyester. Asmara, Urban planning Asmara city, 1897, Fiat Tagliero service station, Giuseppe Petazzi, 1938, Migrants’ African routes, 2011, reproduction original stamp, Somalia, 1903

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sign, this time with regard to the legacy of Italy’s colonial past in Africa. As always, they started with a collection of images and different materials and documents, thereby reinforcing their design credo, which is paraphrased in the label’s name itself. The combination of form and fantasma (meaning ghost) underscores their research-driven approach, in which the material gradually sets the pace: “We always know where we are going to start, but we never have any idea where we are going to end” (Studio Formafantasma 2015). According to their talk at the Design Indaba conference in Cape Town in 2015, their designerly practice furthermore owes much to their Italian background. However, whereas Farresin grew up in the country’s north-east with furniture production being dominant and ‘art’ happening in galleries and museum spaces, Trimarchi is originally from Sicily. Here, production mainly consists of more or less rural crafts and is often linked to popular religious events (ibid.). By removing the mere functional elements of their design objects, Formafantasma – and this can be identified as a third principle of their work – gets closer to the principles of the arts – and to some of Formafantasma’s intellectual paragons, such as the collective Archizoom, who used similar approaches and understood (radical) design as a mode of protest. But still, the studio’s practice is deeply embedded in the craft and production techniques of design, as, for example, they get commissions from both ‘sides’– from galleries and museums as well as from international firms. The former was the case for Colony, for which support came from the Gallery Libby Sellers and from the Textilmuseum Tilburg, where the cloth was woven. Colony (fig. 2) consists of a series of a total of three mohair and mixed media blankets. The textiles share the same size of 165 × 230 cm and follow a similar composition. Each blanket is kept mainly in off-white with different shades of beige providing the background for the darker architectural sketches. Stamp-like appliqués in light blue are to be found in one of the corners, suggesting the overall appearance of oversized postcards. Each blanket refers – via attached little ceramic tiles – to a capital city of the former Italian colonies and occupied territories in Africa – to Tripoli / Libya, Asmara / Eritrea and Addis Ababa / Ethiopia. Not only parts of their urban grids but also sketches of their iconic (modernist) buildings are depicted; a

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third level comes in with drawings of recent migration routes from Africa to Europe. Similar to the ‘décor’ in Moulding Tradition there are textual inserts in linen and cotton in each of the blankets, which – unlike the usual label – provide no product information nor washing instructions. Instead they give key data on migration policies or recall stereotypical European travelogues of the past, as is the case with ‘Ethiopian blanket’. As a conceptual starting point, Colony takes geopolitical issues of migration and flight and links them to the complex historical, cultural and political cross-flows between North / East Africa and Italy. In this context, the studio’s use of mohair as the main material is evocative in many respects. It not only contributes to the low weight and fluffy surface; most importantly it alludes to the material’s entangled history as an actual trade good. An echo of this can be found in its name mohair, which etymologically refers to the French mocayart and the Italian mocaiarro – both terms having roots in the Arabic mukhayyar, designating a cloth of goat hair (Kluge 2011). Further evidence of this travelling material is provided by Suraiya Faroqhi, who mentions Bursa in Turkey as the principal market for the famous Ankara mohair. Around 1500 the material was in great demand in Italy and much in vogue among the elite (Faroqhi 1982/1983, 211). Beside its unique character as a traded textile, Trimarchi and Farresin for Colony also relied on the sensual, emotional and associative qualities of their raw material ‘mohair.’ Although the blankets are not made to be used – and thus in the exhibition context cannot be touched, seeing them evokes the mohair’s warmth and its soft touch, which suggests comfort, intimacy and familiarity, home and shelter – and also the exact opposite, the loss of these amenities. These references and their chain of associations became even more apparent in a solo exhibition Formafantasma had held at the MAK Branch Geymüllerschlössel in Vienna (fig. 3). In Stranger Within (2013), as the show was titled, one of the woven textiles was on display as a bedcover, underlining the characteristics mentioned above. While the overall context of the show deals with an ambivalent fascination with the exotic – present in the villa’s architecture and interior – the designers added another layer of meaning to their work, this time in a spatial and three-dimensional setting. The main piece in the exhibit was a gigantic stylized ‘rug-mask’ in pastel

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Fig. 3: Studio Formafantasma, Stranger Within, 2013, exhibition view (detail), MAK Museum Vienna’s Geymüllerschlössel, Vienna 2013

colors and with a palm tree, which firstly evokes Art Deco jewelry and its frequent exotic attributes. Second, it stands for the exotic artefact per se.10 Other pieces – among them vases from Moulding Tradition – were displayed in several rooms of the Geymüllerschlössel, replacing exotic nippes with evocative objects (Hemmings 2015,109f.). Another central layer of Colony emphasizes the legacy of Italy’s colonial history in Eritrea, Libya and Somalia and that of its military occupation of Ethiopia; depending on the country, the state of (colonial) domination lasted from the late 1860s until Benito Mussolini’s death in 1941 (Ben-Ghiat/Fuller, 2005). With a special focus on colonial modern architecture and urbanism in Italian East Africa, the designers make a hitherto rather neglected field visible and debatable in public as well as in architectural discourse. The Asmara blan10 For more on the exhibition as a site-specific installation see Hemmings 2015, 109 ff.

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ket, for instance, shows the futuristic service station of Fiat Tagliero (1938) by Giuseppe Pettazzi – an airplane-shaped building with gigantic cantilevered wings. In a critical evaluation of the service station – placed, of course, at an infrastructurally vital point in the colonial landscape – the architecture historian Edward Denison unveils its dark concomitants. He not only links it to the Futurists’ technological enthusiasm – mainly represented by Marinetti – but most importantly to the brutal chemical airstrikes by the Italian air force on villages in Ethiopia: “For Africa,” he writes, “encounters with modernity were particularly brutal but, amid the destruction they caused, there were remarkable examples of construction” (Denison 2015). With a textual reference, Formafantasma alludes to very recent relations between the two countries. Via its written information, the viewer learns about the so-called friendship treaty between Italy and Libya in 2009 that promised Italian investment as compensation for its former military occupation in exchange for Libya’s collaboration in fighting immigration coming from its shores. Just like the ‘Asmara textile,’ the ‘Libyan blanket’ also testifies to the fact that former colonies, and especially their urban spaces, were treated as laboratories for new building, planning and surveying technologies (Wright 2001, 225), meanwhile creating an architectural discourse of their own. One of the key questions materialized in the so-called colonial (model) houses, an eponymous example is depicted in Formafantasma’s Tripoli piece. It shows the colonial house with its characteristic courtyard as suggested by the Italian rationalist architect Luigi Piccinato.11 On display at the Fifth Triennale Fair in Milano in 1933, it gained a prize for appropriate housing in the colonies: “With regard to Libya, architects were to implement the expression and design of Italy’s new identity as a colonizing nation, which was to go hand in hand with Italy’s return to architectural distinction,” states Mia Fuller (1988, 455). She further elaborates on how the “inevitable implication of various archaeological materials was that the single and determining architectural, and therefore cultural, influence in Tripoli had been that of the Romans. The recent colonization was nothing more than a return to the past, rewriting 11 Luigi Piccinato, another Rationalist, wrote an encyclopedic entry on colonial architecture in 1931; see Fuller 2007, 17.

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origin myths to legitimize present situations” (1988, 459). An excerpt from an Italian travelogue about two northern Ethiopian villages depicted on the blanket proves this interpretation: “… it is a village of Romagna, with the dry stone walls, designed with an inventive, precise art …. In the poverty and precariousness of the material, an ancient noble tradition can be seen.” With the Addis Ababa tapestry, it finally becomes clear that Formafantasma’s Colony aims at different colonial contexts and their urban underpinnings in East Africa. As Ethiopia was the last country to be conquered by the – then Fascist – Italian regime, the process of urban change was a radical one. It was based on a single master plan, which for the first time foresaw separate quarters for Africans and Europeans (Fuller 2007, 11). Italian architects took the land as a blank space on which they projected their plans on a vast scale. As an example, the weaving shows a municipal building over which the text of an Italian travelogue about new town developments in Ethiopia (see Fuller 2007, 10) is superimposed. Here again, Studio Formafantasma created works that aesthetically reveal the complex and interwoven past and contemporary relations. With its geometric simplicity, aesthetic purity and specific materiality, the senses are addressed in manifold ways. At the same time, economic, social and political issues are problematized and made available for debate.

SUPERFLEX: ON THE MIGRATION OF FORMS IN THE (POST)COLONY

Whereas Studio Formafantasma creates transgressive objects with the aim of changing perceptions of mobility, migration and flight, Superflex with its project Prouvé in Africa. Bent, Pressed, Compressed, Welded, and then Copied (2012) focuses on the often ambiguous flows of forms along a colonial and postcolonial matrix (fig. 4). Thereby they reflect on the change in meanings and on the concomitant ruptures characteristic of the processes of translation. The artist trio from Copenhagen was founded in 1993 by Jakob Fenger, Bjørnstierne Christiansen and Rasmus Nielsen. It is well known as a practice at the intersection of art and design, which

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Fig. 4: Superflex, Prouvé in Africa. Bent, Pressed, Compressed, Welded, and then Copied, 2012

applies equally well to Prouvé in Africa. This project had its starting point in 2012 with an invitation by the Cité du Design and the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Saint-Étienne to work with their design collection. Superflex had chosen to follow the complex trajectories of the transportable architecture and furniture initially made by Jean Prouvé. In particular, his iconic Cafétéria Chair stood at the center of their exam-

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ination. Hence, they refer and contribute to a complex discourse on the ‘belongingness’ of cultural artefacts and a new culture of sharing (Hall 1999/2000, Mbembe 201812). Prouvé, who was trained as an artist blacksmith, but worked as an architect and a designer from the 1930s to the ’50s, became best known for his aluminum and folded steel houses (Sulzer/Sulzer-Kleinemeier 2000) – the material itself had only been explored as building material in the second half of the nineteenth century. Besides his commitment to constructing affordable (metal) houses, he was also involved in the creation of transportable houses and furniture to be used in colonial Africa. His prefabricated Tropical Houses, initially called Maisons Coloniales, which followed a modernist aesthetic, were sent as prototypes to Niamey / Niger in 1949 and to Congo Brazzaville in 1951. There, they provided accommodation for colonialists and, in the Congo case, they housed the principal office of the French state-owned Aluminium Français. As such, the Maison Tropicale together with its modernist furniture was, on the one hand, firmly embedded in avant-garde and reform oriented architectural movements in Europe, which – as mentioned above – owed much insight to the architectural experimentations in the colonies (and Prouvé’s houses were no exception). On the other hand, it was part and parcel of a colonial building genealogy – the more so since the complex trade relations between Africa and Europe are literally inscribed in these objects; with bauxite as their base they were clearly colonial products.13 However, in the course of the following decades and especially after independence in the late 1950s and ’60s, the houses in Africa became adapted, changed and were integrated into contexts differ12 In a keynote address at the Museum am Rothenbaum, Kunst und Kulturen der Welt (MARKK) Hamburg, formerly the Museum für Völkerkunde, on 18 May 2018, Achille Mbembe suggested a new culture of sharing, when it comes to the debate on restitution. At the same time he made clear that the latter debate cannot be separated from the recent refugee challenge. Neither objects nor people should be thought of as only belonging to one place. For a journalist’s report on this event see Häntzschel 2018. 13 A catalogue produced by Christie’s (2007) contains a photograph of Prouvé’s Aluminum and Formica Table, c. 1950, in situ in the Bauxite Processing Plant of Aluminium Français in Edea, Cameroon. See Huppatz 2007 https://djhuppatz.blogspot.com/2007/12/. Accessed 22 September 2018.

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ent to those envisaged; they developed a life of their own, being inhabited by different people and used for different purposes – or being abandoned altogether (Diawara 2008).14 In Europe, Prouvé’s design tended to be neglected for many years and was not very much appreciated until the twentyfirst century. It is in this context that the Tropical Houses of Niger and Congo Brazzaville were ‘rediscovered,’ dismantled and ‘returned’ to France by the French art dealer and gallery owner Eric Touchaleaume (Touchaleaume 2006, for a critical account Rausch 2018). With this (neo-colonial) reclamation, final ‘return’ and immediate placement on the art market, their history became even more complex and contested.15 Media coverage was particularly problematic, since journalists often referred to the gallerists’ activities as the ‘repatriation’ or even ‘rescue’ of the ‘French’ design icons, as if objects and houses have a clear national identity and are bound to fixed places. A catalogue produced by Christie’s describes the successful “repatriation” and the expensive and time-consuming restoration which brought back the original state of the house prior to its ‘life’ in Niger. Concomitant images depict the house as a trophy of pure design: Prouvé has gained his lawful place again (Rubin 2009, 119, Touchaleaume 2006).16 The same ‘return’ from various spots in Africa, but followed less closely by the press, happened to the furniture and other smaller home furnishings designed and produced by Jean Prouvé and other modernist designers, for instance, Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret. Superflex took this story of various entanglements – the complex back and forth of modernist housing and furniture – as a reference point for Prouvé in 14 For more on this aspect see the film Maison Tropicale (2008, 58 min) by Manthia Diawara as well as the conversation on the ambivalent history of the houses between him and Judith Rodenbeck in 2010. The film itself was initiated by the Portuguese artist Ângela Ferreira, who presented her installation Maisons Tropicales at the Portuguese Pavilion during the Venice Biennale (Bock 2007). 15 As a result, the smaller building from Brazzaville was given by an American collector Rubin as a permanent loan to the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France. The other two houses are still awaiting their final destination; one was bought at an auction for five million dollars by the hotelier André Balazs, the third one is still in gallery ownership (Rausch 2018, 85). 16 See Gentleman 2004; https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2004/aug/31/architecture. regeneration. Accessed 15 August 2018.

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Africa. Its project evolved around Prouvé’s ‘classical’ demountable Cafétéria Chair, originally fabricated in the 1950s from enameled steel and molded plywood. Among other envisaged uses, it was then conceived “as a tool for creating comfort for the white man who travels, explores and exploits a colonial territory” (Lagae 2017, 27f.). Representative of the many furniture items that decades later had been ‘returned’ to the former colonial ‘center’ as veritable cult objects, in a kind of reversal, Superflex commissioned carpenters in Brazzaville to manufacture a series of copies based on the prototype (or rather on sketches) of the Cafétéria Chair. Basing work on exact sketches normally doesn’t correspond with the working methods of the local furniture production, which is rather based on images (if at all) and their direct translation, accompanied by experimentation and manifold adjustments.17 As interpretation and thus change is a substantial part of copying, the Brazzaville version of the Cafétéria Chair differs from the ‘original prototype.’ The wood has turned dark and massive; whereas Prouvé used steel for the chair’s legs, this is lacking and replaced by wood in the Brazzaville version. Beside this material morphosis – which is significant with regard to the local availability or non-availability of raw materials – there are technical modifications as well. The resulting chairs were to be presented by Superflex along with photographs of their production process, but for unknown reasons got lost on the way.18 Here, one could speculate whether this again has to do with different notions on the object’s symbolic value as opposed to its ‘simple’ value when in use. To leave it at that and to present only the project’s context can already be seen as a political gesture by the members of Superflex. With Prouvé in Africa. Bent, Pressed, Compressed, Welded, and then Copied they pose a range of provocative and political issues concerned with divergent and sometimes antagonistic concepts of ‘copy’ and ‘original’ and of notions of ‘authenticity.’ They thus pose several important questions on cultural heritage, ownership, different value systems and attitudes towards the object, the migration of forms and the nature of adaptation. 17 Regarding this, but in the Malian context, see Cheick Diallo in a film by Kerstin Pinther and Tobias Wendl, 2018. 18 Superflex in an email to the author, January 2018. https://vimeo.com/263935845. Accessed 26 September 2018.

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With a process-oriented and, in a sense, ‘shared’ approach, Superflex emphasizes the fact that Prouvé’s chairs (and other pieces of his furniture) do not ‘belong’ to the West alone, but instead are incorporated into new and different contexts of production and use in their new homes. In fact, the interpretation and translation of ‘Western design’ took place in different parts of Africa from an early stage of cultural encounters and led not only to material morphosis, but also to an attribution of new meanings (Sieber 1994, 37). As the title – Prouvé in Africa. Bent, Pressed, Compressed, Welded, and then Copied – already suggests, the works contest the exclusive appropriation by the West and unmask the cult of modern design objects in their fetish-like character. The Cafétéria Chair traveled back and forth, while – depending on the cultural context – its value and attribution of meaning was permanently changing. Thus, the object’s migrancy trajectory can easily be explained with James Clifford’s “art-culture-authenticity” diagram (1988, 224), where the sheer hunting for these objects of desire comes close to colonial and postcolonial collecting practices of African art objects (see Steiner 1994) – and the concomitant more recent debates on their restitution and on their ‘proper’ place in Western museums or in their ‘home countries’ (Mbembe 2018; for an overview see Häntzschel 2018). Now that the chairs are reproduced serially in Brazzaville, Superflex not only underlines the chairs’ ‘African’ history,19 but adds just another layer in this endless apparent loop of exchange and value production.

IN THEIR OWN FORM: DESIGN AS A MATERIAL MODE OF CRITICAL INQUIRY

“Design is about objects, regardless of whether they are produced industrially or as crafted objects. We don’t really want to create new objects, but to rethink objects,” says Andrea Trimarchi (Studio Formafantasma 2015). For 14 With the same intention the architecture historian Vikramaditya Prakash wrote on the ‘Indian’ Le Corbusier in Chandigarh, see Prakash 2002, 21.

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Formafantasma, he further elaborates, functionality goes beyond use. “A vessel can contain both a substance and an idea” (ibid.). This exactly illustrates the approach the designer duo has followed for Moulding Tradition and Colony. Although not made for daily use, but rather displayed in an exhibition context, the artefacts enfold their inscribed meaning via their semantically rich materials and surfaces, their genuine forms as well as their haptic appearance – the latter provoking an echo in our bodies even if the objects themselves cannot be touched (Auch 2016, 64f.). With their unusual and unexpected layering and mixing, which contributes to a particularly dense materiality (in the double sense of the German Stoff, material and content-relented) the objects become triggers – vehicles for thought and debate. Formafantasma and Superflex share an understanding of objects as carriers of (already) told, but often pending or suppressed histories, which they manage to activate and update, thus creating links to present (political and social) events. Their understanding of design objects thus comes very close to the way artefacts in the interdisciplinary field of material culture studies are regarded. Most important in the tradition of phenomenology they are seen as transmitters of meaning, which communicate through their sheer materiality and the substances of which they are composed (Tilley 2013). With this approach the designers / artists work with a distinctively sensual perspective on recent debates about migration and flight. The use of materials, techniques and objects that bear traces of mobility and cultural exchange, but also of frictions, lies at the heart of their projects. Through materials and forms the complexities of past and present entanglements between Africa and Europe become available. Complex histories and narratives of colonialism, flight and migration, latently present in objects, are ‘excavated’ and made visible and accessible in design and art projects. Neither Formafantasma nor Superflex claim that label of artistic or design research, but rather follow their discipline’s material mode of critical inquiry. Criticism, then, appears as a multifaceted practice devoted to and triggered by the object – and thus providing food for thought.

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REFERENCES – Adamson, Glenn, et al., editors. Global Design History. Routledge, 2011. – Ajmar-Wollheim, Marta, and Luca Molà. “The Global Renaissance. Cross-cultural Objects in the Early Modern Period.” Global Design History, edited by Glenn Adamson, Giorgio Riello and Sarah Teasly, Routledge, 2011, pp. 11–20. – Auch, Monica. “The Intelligence of the Hand.” Crafting Textiles in the Digital Age, edited by Nithikul Nimkulrat, Faith Kane and Kerry Walton, Bloomsbury, 2016, pp. 61–73. – Baas, Fredric, editor. Formafantasma: Formafantasma as a book. Lecturis, 2014. – Banz, Claudia. Social Design. Gestalten für die Transformation der Gesellschaft. Transcript, 2016. – Ben-Ghiat, Ruth, and Mia Fuller, editors. Italian Colonialism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. – Bock, Jürgen, editor. Maison Tropicale. Portuguese Pavillion. O Ministério da Cultura, 2007. – Clifford, James. The Predicament of Culture. Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Harvard University Press, 1988. – Denison, Edward. “Asmara’s Fiat Tagliero Service Station: A History of Cities in 50 Buildings, Day 18.” The Guardian 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/apr/17/asmara-eritrea-fiat-tagliero-service-station-history-cities-50-buildings. Accessed 30 July 2018. – Diawara, Manthia. Maison Tropicale. 58 minutes, 2008, Portugal. – DiSalvo, Carl. Adversarial Design. The MIT Press, 2012. – Dunne, Anthony, and Fiona Raby. Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects. Springer Science and Business Media, 2001. – Edwards, Adrian. “Global Forced Displacement Hits Record High. UNHCR Global Trends report finds 65.3 million people, or one person in 113, were displaced from their homes by conflict and persecution in 2015.” UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency, http://www.unhcr. org/afr/news/latest/2016/6/5763b65a4/global-forced-displacement-hits-record-high. html.%20Accessed%2030%20July%202018. Accessed 18 July 2018. – Faroqhi, Suraiya. “Mohair Manufacture and Mohair Workshops in Seventeenth Century Ankara.” İstanbul Üniversitesi İktisat Fakültesi Mecmuası, vol. 41, no. 1–4, 1982/1983, pp. 211–236. – Fuller, Mia. “Building Power: Italy’s Colonial Architecture and Urbanism, 1923–1940.” Cultural Anthropology, vol. 3, no. 4, 1988, pp. 455–487. – Fuller, Mia. Moderns Abroad: Architecture, Cities and Italian Imperialism. Routledge, 2007. – Gala, Pianigia. “A Woman’s Death Sorting Grapes Exposes Italy’s ‘Slavery.’” New York Times, 11 April 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/world/europe/a-womansdeath-sorting-grapes-exposes-italys-slavery.html. Accessed 20 July 2018. – Gaugele, Elke, editor. Aesthetic Politics in Fashion. Sternberg Press, 2014. – Gentleman, Amelia, “Bullet Holes Extra. A Classic of Modern Design Has Been Saved from Squatters, Snipers and the Congolese Jungle.” The Guardian, 31 August 2004, https://

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15 August 2018. – Goldthwaite, Richard. “The Economic and Social World of Italian Renaissance Maiolica.” Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 42, no. 1, 1989, pp. 1–32. – Häntzschel, Jörg. “Neue Kultur des Teilens.” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 22 May 2018. https:// www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/postkolonialismus-neue-kultur-des-teilens-1.3988604. Accessed 20 July 2018. – Hall, Stuart. “Whose Heritage? Un-Settling ‘The Heritage’, Re-Imagining the Post-Nation.” Third Text. Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Art and Culture, vol. 49, winter 1999/2000, pp. 3–13. – Hemmings, Jessica. Cultural Threads. Transnational Textiles Today. Bloomsbury, 2015. – Huppatz, Daniel. “Jean Prouvé’s Maison Tropicale in New York: Update.” Critical Cities. Reflection on 21st Century Culture, 7 December 2007, https://djhuppatz.blogspot. com/2007/12/. Accessed 22 September 2018. – Kluge, Friedrich. Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache. De Gruyter, 2011. – Lagae, Johan. “Nomadic Furniture in the ‘Heart of Darkness’: Colonial and Postcolonial Trajectories of Modern Design Artifacts to and from Tropical Africa.” The Politics of Furniture: Identity, Diplomacy and Persuasion in Post-War Interiors, edited by Floré Fredie and Cammie McAtee, Routledge, 2017, pp. 15–32. – Mareis, Claudia. Theorien des Designs zur Einführung. Junius, 2014. – Mazé, Ramia, and Johan Redström. “Difficult Forms: Critical Practices of Design and Research.” IASDR07 International Association of Societies of Design Research, 2007, pp. 1–18. – McLaren, Brian L. “Casa Mediterranea, Casa Araba and Primitivism in the Writings of Carlo Enrico Rava.” The Journal of Architecture, vol. 13, no. 4, 2008, pp. 453–467. – Ozorio de Almeida Meroz, Joana. “Autarchy: The Making of Dutch Design in Practice.” A Matter of Design. Making Society through Science and Technology. Proceedings of the 5th STS Italian Conference, edited by Claudio Coletta, et al. STS online publishing, 2014, pp. 901–919. – Palumbo, Patrizia, editor.  A Place in the Sun: Africa in Italian Colonial Culture from Post-Unification to the Present. University of California Press, 2003. – Pinther, Kerstin. “Konzepte und Ästhetiken der Passage. Design im Kontext von Flucht und Migration.” Passagen des Exils / Passages of Exile, edited by Burcu Dogramaci and Elizabeth Otto, edition text + kritik, 2017, pp. 315–333. – Pinther, Kerstin, and Tobias Wendl. Cheick Diallo – ou la quête de rendre les choses légères. / Cheick Diallo – oder die Suche nach der Leichtigkeit der Dinge. Film, 13 min. https:// vimeo.com/263935845. Accessed 26 September 2018. – Prakash, Vikramaditya. Chandigarh’s Le Corbusier: The Struggle for Modernity in Postcolonial India. University of Washington Press, 2002. – Prinz, Sophia, und Stephan Moebius, “Zur Kultursoziologie des Designs. Eine Einleitung.” Das Design der Gesellschaft. Zur Kultursoziologie des Designs, edited by Stephan Möbius and Sophia Prinz, Transcript, 2012, pp. 9–25.

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– Rausch, Christoph. “Maison Tropicales / Maisons Coloniales: Contesting Technologies of Authenticity and Value in Niamey, Brazzaville, Paris, New York and Venice.” International Journal of Heritage Studies, vol. 24, no. 1, 2018, pp. 83–100. – Rawsthorn, Alice. “One Take: Studio Formafantasma’s Ore Streams.” Frieze, 15 October 2017, https://frieze.com/article/one-take-studio-formafantasmas-ore-streams. Accessed 30 July 2018. – Rodenbeck, Judith. “Maison Tropicale: A Conversation with Manthia Diawara.” October Magazine, vol. 133, 2010, pp. 106–132. – Rossi, Catharine. “Crafting a Design Counterculture: The Pastoral and the Primitive in Italian Radical Design, 1972 – 1976.” Made in Italy: Rethinking a Century of Italian Design, edited by Grace Lees-Maffei and Kjetil Fallan, Bloomsbury Academic, 2014, pp. 145–162. – Rubin, Robert. “La Maison tropicale de Jean Prouvé (Brazzaville, 1951): conservation, presentation, reception. Jean Prouvé’s Tropical House (Brazzaville, 1951): Preservation, Presentation, Reception.” Jean Prouvé. La Maison Tropicale. The Tropical House, edited by Olivier Cinqualbre, exh-cat. Centre Pompidou, Paris, Éditions du Centre Pompidou, 2009, pp. 116–132. – Sieber, Roy. “Möbelkultur zwischen Tradition und Kolonisation.” Afrikanische Sitze, edited by Sandro Bocola, Prestel, pp. 31–37. – Steiner, Christoph. African Art in Transit. Cambridge University Press, 1995. – Studio Formafantasma. “Studio Formafantasma on Words as a Tool for Design.” Design Indaba Conference, Talk on November 3rd 2015, http://www.designindaba.com/videos/ conference-talks/studio-formafantasma-words-tool-design. Accessed 30 July 2018. – Studio Formafantasma Homepage, http://www.formafantasma.com/moulding-tradition. Accessed 30 July 2018. – Studio Formafantasma Talk, “Movie: Peroni Collaborazioni Talk with Formafantasma, Part 1.” dezeen, 19 June 2012, https://www.dezeen.com/2012/06/19/movie-peronicollaborazioni-talk-with-formafantasma-part-1/. Accessed 30 July 2018. – Sulzer, Peter, and Erika Sulzer-Kleinemeier. Jean Prouvé: Oeuvre complète, vol. 3, 1944– 1954, Birkhäuser, 2000. – Superflex. “Interview with Nacking, Åsa // 1998.” Design and Art, edited by Alex Coles. Whitechapel, 2007, pp. 127–130. – Tilley, Chris, et al. Handbook of Material Culture. Sage Publications Ltd, 2013. –

Touchaleaume, Eric. Jean Prouvé: Les Maisons Tropicales – Tropical Houses. Galerie 54, 2006.

– Van Helvert, Marjanne. “Responsible Objects, Utopian Desires. A Two-Sided Monologue on the Future of Design.” The Responsible Object: A History of Design Ideology for the Future, edited by Marjanne van Helvert. Valiz, 2016, pp. 251 –262. – Wright, Gwendolyn. “The Ambiguous Modernisms of African Cities.” The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945–1994, edited by Okwui Enwezor. Prestel, 2001, pp. 225–233.

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HEIMAT ‘TO GO’. Migration in the Fashion Design of Hussein Chalayan

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INTRODUCTION

The migration movements Europe experienced lately in 2015 and 20161 have conclusively changed (fashion) design and the perspectives on it. Like art, design disciplines are today quite naturally creative media not only for communicating and negotiating trauma experienced during flight or expulsion, but also tools for (de)constructing political power structures and identities (see Gaugele 2017).2 These changes can be traced back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, when a new role was assigned to fashion and other creative disciplines. The postmodern condition, characterized by globalization, sociopolitical crisis, the compression of time-space – a product of rapid advances in travel and (digital) communication –, as well as wars, forced migrations and flight, led to a specific dissolution of social, philosophical

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What is meant here is the period of increased African, Middle East and South Asian immigration to Europe beginning in the late 20th century and culminating in the years 2015 and 2016, when more than 2.3 million illegal border crossings were noted. See http://www.europarl.europa. eu/news/de/headlines/society/20170629STO78630/eu-fluchtlingskrise-zahlen-und-fakten. Accessed 13 September 2018.

2

Elke Gaugele takes a critical look at the fashion shows of Prada, Walter Van Beyrendonck and Ikiré Jones held after the largest migration waves in 2015 and 2016. She reveals the shows to be not only reflections and statements on migration, but also important political tools of representation. In the shows, fashion discourses connect with structures of global power and can hence be capable of controlling the public’s behavior and/or even focus on the construction of identities. Since the 2000s, the global fashion industry has been contributing to UNHCR on the basis of UNHCR’s “corporate social responsibility” (CSR) initiatives, wishing to be associated with a humanitarian brand: so-called “ethical fashion” is becoming more and more important.

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and cultural categories and systems, which could even be detected in art and design production. A design that encounters delimitation, multiple situatedness, heterogeneity and cultural shifts may no longer be able to respond to the modernist design formula correlating form and function, thus avoiding homogenization processes and classical market and sales strategies.3 Instead of function, the form of the objects is defined by ideas about loss of home and belonging, fear, the feeling of alienation in a foreign place, but also hope. Unlike the statement of the pioneer of modern architecture and leader of the International Style, Le Corbusier, who, for instance, insisted that “a chair is in no way a work of art; a chair has no soul; it is a machine for sitting in […]” (Le Corbusier [1931] 1986, 142), postmodern (fashion) design – among other features – is characterized by the generation of creative approaches to visualizing, communicating, discussing and critically reflecting upon sociocultural conditions, such as forced or voluntary migration. The questions that arise are, in what ways can migration be made visible, given form? What material, but also what narrative artistic and design practices can be used to communicate fear, loss of home, as well as hope and the construction of new identities and homelands? What role does the context of the fashion presentation play when speaking about migration? What challenges and opportunities can be derived from the research of (fashion) design and migration?

HEIMAT ‘TO GO’: (TRANSFORMABLE) FURNITURE DRESSES

One of the possible answers to these questions comes from the designer and artist Hussein Chalayan. Based on personal migration experiences, but also driven by the challenges of global migrations at the end of the 20th century, he is designing flight and exile by creating a sort of home ‘to go.’

3

The famous design formula ‘form follows function’ derived from 19th century architectural and social ideologies defined modernist design as practical, standardized mass products, without any intrinsic motivations and values.

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Fig. 1: Hussein Chalayan, Afterwords, Fall/Winter 2000/2001, photo: Chris Moore

A prominent example of his ‘furniture dresses’ can be found in the Fall/ Winter 2000/2001 collection Afterwords (fig. 1). Chalayan’s presentation, the show’s intro as well as the finale are marked by a performative installation.4 Instead of the classical runway, the designer chose to set up his stage as a minimalistic, coldly lit sitting room with lots of white space echoing the white cube. Very spare, it alluded to a private living space consisting of four chairs, a round wood table, a flat screen television, several vases and pots. Outside the ‘room’ sang a ‘traditional’ Bulgarian choir; the women could vaguely be seen through a semi-transparent niche suggesting a window, but clearly appeared as images on the television screen in the room. Like the chorus in an ancient Greek tragedy, their collective voices, penetrating and dreadful, seemed to

4

The video is available under: https://vimeo.com/7686397. Accessed 6 September 2018; a first insight into the theme of migration in Chalayan’s Afterwords was provided by Zijpp 2005, p. 80; For a closer and more recent analysis of Chalayan’s works discussed in this essay associated with the correlation between migration, art and design, such as Afterwords, see also Geiger 2016, and id. 2013, pp. 165-168.

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prefigure a dramatic action. The show started with predominantly black or dark, simply cut dresses, coats and trench coats, and the catwalk part concluded with the last few models carrying away the displayed household items in the inner or outer pockets of their clothes. The end of the show was the high point of the dramatic spectacle: Four models approached the set of chairs, removed the covers and literally put them on. A process of transformation began as the grey covers were turned into sophisticated, multilayered and colorful dresses. Another model stepped inside the table, lifted it up, and transformed it into a tectonic, wooden skirt. The chairs were folded into suitcases, and all five models faced out with and in the transformed objects, finally carrying them off the empty stage (this paragraph follows Geiger 2016, 68–72.). These transportable, flexible furniture dresses worn by the models allude to the very close relationship between furniture and humans. The etymological origin of the French word meuble, meaning furniture, refers to mobility (see Giedion [1948] 1982, 304). The general term mobilier stands for movable goods in contrast to non-movable goods, such as houses and land (see ibid.). In periods of increased forced or voluntary migrations dating back to the early Middle Ages between the 6th and the 10th century, characterized by the fall of the Roman Empire and the forced Christianization of large parts of Central Europe, people carried select pieces of furniture such as chests and x-shaped portable folding chairs with them, as they never knew if they would ever return (see ibid., 304ff.; Weyrauch-Pung 2010). Mobility is not a new phenomenon, but rather repeatedly re-stages itself over time. With the new form of increasing mobility at the turn of the 21st century, numerous designers were eager to create so-called ‘flat-pack’ furniture (see Quinn 2011, 150), such as the ones made by Farsen/Schöllhammer. Meister Eder from 2007 (fig. 2) is a sixteen-sided stool that rapidly unfolds into a three-dimensional piece of furniture as the tension of a hidden rubber band is released (see Farsen/Schöllhammer). Likewise, it can be folded up again and carried along (see ibid.). In spite of, or even because of the fact that mobility is a fundamental human condition, ideas about home continue to shape the way people often frame an understanding of their lives connected to housing, homeland and belonging; ‘home’ as such remains a central organizing concept in human life (see Fox

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Fig. 2: Farsen/Schöllhammer, Meister Eder, 2007, foamed and CNC milled synthetic, photo: Andreas Velten

2016, 1). The German word Heimat, derived from the old German word ‘Heim,’ meaning homeland and roots, and etymologically linked to a sedentary life, has been a medium of debates on German identity between region and nation for at least a century, starting with ‘Heimat literature’ as a response to modernization and tensions before World War I (see Dogramaci 2016, 8ff.; Boa/Palfreyman 2000, 1–29). Especially the fact that the term Heimat was employed by opposing factions during the so-called ‘Third Reich’ between 1933 and 1945, when it was used or abused to serve racist ideology, left-wing opposition and inner resistance to the National Socialist regime, shows its highly explosive political dimension and how complex and diverse the idea of home and belonging can be (see ibid.). Heimat suggests a concept related not only to a territory, a nation, a homeland, a material dwelling or personal belongings, but also social attachment and strong emotional ties to a place, the natural landscape, relationships and traditions (see Dogramaci 2016, 11; Fox 2016). In regard to Chalayan’s furniture dresses, what catches the viewer’s eye in the first place is the flexible, only seemingly practical and above all highly aesthetic design: The smoothly polished surfaces, the concern about the proper placement of the objects, the staging and the deliberately chosen light and colors, the choreography as well as the ‘perfect’ human bodies – the models – within a fashion show speak an unmistakable design language. But the strikingly beautiful objects are a means of addressing exile and forced migration. As conveyed by the transformed suitcases at the show’s finale, in their time of need, people affected by flight and expulsion try to save not only their lives,

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but also a few possessions. Were it not for the crisis and the losses that always accompany forced migration and wars, the scenery could be interpreted as its opposite. Taking along furniture to represent a house, a living room where families come together, could prevent a complete loss of home; by reconstructing the household at one or more new localities, home could be carried with one as a feeling and not necessarily as physical housing. Represented by simple items such as clothes or furniture and blended with memories, language, gestures, roots, feelings of protection, family, nostalgia and a deep attachment to it – as traditionally suggested by the word Heimat (see Dogramaci 2016, 6–19) – one’s former environment could be brought to life again. Chalayan’s creations derive from general but also personal exile experiences. At the time he worked on Afterwords, the news was full of reports from the Kosovo War, which reminded him of his childhood during the political turmoil in his homeland of Cyprus in the 1970s (see Evans [2003] 2009, 285, 288). After the island’s division in the course of the Turkish invasion in 1974 and the displacement of both Turkish and Greek Cypriots, Chalayan had to flee into British exile at the age of 12 (see ibid., 288). London – a metropolis shaped by constant migration flows – became his new living and working place – and very much affected his work. Chalayan’s designs tie in with other artists’ and designers’ models from the threshold of the third millennium, which can be seen as creative proposals for a life in flight and/or without shelter, when the transformability of one’s house or home plays an important role. Lucy Orta’s famous work Refuge Wear (1998)5 represents temporary shelters made of high-quality materials and items such as microporous rip-stop, PU-coated polyamide, telescopic aluminum armature, detachable kits, silkscreen print and transport bags (see Orta). Purely practical, the design transforms from a full body parka to a sleeping bag, to a tent-like shelter and vice versa (see ibid.). Lucy Orta’s portable habitats were a reaction to the Iraqi and Kurdish refugees fleeing war zones and the increasing population of homeless people living in metropolitan cities such as Paris – phenomena deriving from the First 5

Images of Lucy Orta’s Refuge Wear can be found here: https://www.studio-orta.com/en/ artwork/100/Refuge-Wear-Intervention-London-East-End-1998. Accessed 18 June 2018.

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Gulf War in the early 1990s and the related economic recession (see ibid.). Although Orta’s portable habitats are designed for the homo mobilis, her transformable shelters are intended to be used during an occasional stay in one place, while Chalayan’s furniture dresses unfold their ‘function’ only in their mobility. Moreover, Chalayan’s portable home dresses are not so much functional shelters as personal metaphors for Heimat – the mental and physical home and homeland.

HEIMAT ‘TO GO’: WANDERING THOUGHTS

In contrast to the furniture dresses as metaphors for a portable home, Chalayan also designs dematerialized images of migration which do not require any kind of physical activity, as in the Fall/Winter 2011/2012 collection Kaikoku. Chalayan presents a film with a floating dress, a special exhibition piece that he created in collaboration with Swarovski. Kaikoku is a continuation of the collection Sakoku, Chalayan’s fashion film for Spring/Summer 2011, which recounts Japan’s isolation during the Tokugawa period from 1603 to 18676 (see Battista 2011). The term kaikoku, on the other hand, means ‘open country’ and stands for Japan’s openness to Western culture, which since the country’s opening in the middle of the 19th century has influenced its food, fashion, art, architecture and technology (see ibid.). In the film, a nude young woman steps into a gold spray-painted glass-fiber and polyester resin shell. The remote-controlled dress starts to move – with the model inside it. In the next sequence the woman leaves the motorized ‘dress’ and stands

6

The Tokugawa period (or Edo period) is a period in Japanese history between 1603 and 1867. The period marks the governance of the Edo or Tokugawa shogunate, which was officially established by the first Edo shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. The era is characterized by a foreign policy called sakoku, which lasted from 1633 to 1639. Although it literally means ‘country in chains’ and refers to the interdiction against entering or leaving the country on penalty of death, the policy was, rather, a system in which strict regulations were applied primarily to commerce and foreign relations by the shogunate. The policy remained in effect until 1853, which marked the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry and the opening up of Japan. See Hiroshi 2006.

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still while the empty shell continues its journey – now remotely controlled by the woman. The spectacle was highlighted by the release of the similarly remote-controlled, small, shining grains of crystal pollen that flew off the ‘dress’; almost magically, their rotation and twirling in the air was reminiscent of miniature helicopters. Finally, even the dress shell stays immobile, while the pollen keeps on wandering. The once encapsulated body has left its shell, house or home: Considered as the form of human habitat nearest to our skin, the clothing no longer seems to be necessary. Unlike the material body, the pollen grains as a metaphor for ideas, dreams, memories and hopes can overcome barriers both physical and mental. As ambassadors of border crossing and creation of new life, they highlight the power of thought. A specific kind of ‘immobile nomadism’ (Haehnel 2007, 202)7 has already been explored by the conceptual and performance artist Kimsooja since 1993. In ever more contexts and constellations, she has been presenting bottari (fig. 3), Korean multicolored cloth and bedcover bundles that were traditionally used as ordinary containers for the safekeeping or transportation of a family’s worldly goods.8 Reflecting on the nature of travel, the bottari embody the very idea of wandering, globalization, exile and rootlessness due to political or ethnic persecution (see Beccaria 2012, 17; Sans 2017, 207). Such diverse movements as the transatlantic slave trade, the migrations from Mexico and South America to the U.S., the stream of Syrian refugees to Europe, as well as the artist’s own childhood, spent in a demilitarized zone of South Korea where borders, migration and refugees were day-to-day topics, are to be found inside these bundles of personal possessions, memories, fears and hopes (see ibid.). They represent the drama of kidnapped, displaced and dislocated people who were able to save only their skins – and a bundle (see ibid.). As Annett Reckert so aptly remarked, these everyday objects, now transformed into art objects and presented in a museum, “[…] become symbols of the restive or restless, the stateless, uprooted, and uninvited, of the stranger or foreigner.” (Reckert 2001) But without their human carrier, and

7

Haehnel uses the German expression ‘Nomadismus am gleichen Ort,’ which could be translated as ‘same-place nomadism’ or ‘nomadism at the same place / while staying put.’

8

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Fig. 3: Kimsooja, Deductive Object, 1993, used sheets and clothes tied in bundles, Ise Art Foundation, New York

as they linger motionless on the floor of the exhibition space, the bundles’ voyage is a purely mental one. Bearing strong associations with awakening, departure, travel and arrival, they forgo the physical aspects of mobility and declare them to be unnecessary. The so-called ‘spatial turn,’ which favors an understanding of space formed by social or cultural factors, and global debates on migration have led to critical artistic confrontations with topics surrounding various forms of human mobility. Kimsooja’s and Chalayan’s works seem to be creative, even somewhat romantic proposals for a world that is set in motion, where mental migrations could eventually help to overcome territorial borders in favor of a life without losses. A high point of such mental homes and homelands that are designed as something ‘to go’ might be identified in Chalayan’s Airmail Dress (1999) (fig. 4). In contrast to Kaikoku, this dress does without the human wearer from the outset. Endowed with graphic lines, the work at first resembles

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classical dress patterns, but – folded, written on and featuring red, blue and white stripes – this garment, made from Tyvek®, DuPont’s synthetic, paper-type material known for its strength, turns out to be a ‘simple’ envelope. An envelope that unfolds into a dress – thus a silhouette of the female body – suggests the presence of an absent person. Therefore, this work could be understood as an alternative existence for those killed or left behind (in wartime). Unfolded and read as a letter, the absentees can live on in the minds of the readers. In addition, the robust material shaped as a human body is reminiscent of the fabrics traditionally used for the production of clothes. The textiles, which usually behave as ‘second skins,’ are shaped by the wearer and his/her body fluids; they actually ‘preserve’ the physical traces of the human wearer and work as substitutes for those who left. Moreover, the robust Tyvek material, which is not a classic destructible fabric, suggests the surmounting of ephemeral life, again validating the advantage of a memory transformed into a letter-dress in order to survive. As in Kimsooja’s bottari, the organic body, marking a territorial residence such as the homeland left behind, is given up in favor of ever-present imagined places and emotions that can be revived at any time, in any place. Salman Rushdie, who himself experienced exile, pleaded for a life in imagination; he propounded an anti-essentialist view of place, emphasizing that not only thoughts, but also home or homelands can indeed wander (Rushdie 1992, 22, 151f.). The dematerialized homes in Chalayan’s designs could be linked to Rushdie’s ‘imaginary homeland’ – a refuge for migrants, where lost communities could come to life again (see ibid.). These flowing, mentally constructed spaces, conquering borders, detached from their physics, could provide those who are affected by exile and losses with self-determination and power over a seemingly hopeless situation.

CONCLUSION

Chalayan’s creations illustrate the complex aesthetic and narrative relationship between migration and (fashion) design. His fashion shows are perfor-

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Fig. 4: Hussein Chalayan, Airmail Dress, 1999, Tyvek®, photo: Matthew Pull

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mative installations, his designs oscillate between fashion, product and industry design as well as art, technology and philosophical or anthropological debates and as such stand for the transgression of ‘classic’ art form boundaries. Chalayan’s very openly formulated creations and those of his design contemporaries since the 1990s arise from a stock of current sociopolitical and artistic issues. Flight, expulsion and homelessness have all been made tangible by form and idea – migration as both object and concept, so to speak. Although all his creations are perfectly shaped works of design, Chalayan never negates the dread of exile. Precisely because he uses the medium of fashion, the fractures and the pain of exile can be felt very directly through his dress-like designs. Hanging on, or being worn by human bodies, clothes always transmit a specific feeling, whether it is their weight, their production or their surface and material qualities such as warmth or coldness. If we recall the heavy wooden dress the last model in Afterwords wore, we can, of course, recognize its beauty, but also the heaviness of the exile experience; likewise, the delicate grains of pollen released from the empty Kaikoku dress shell – the potential symbol of a ‘homeland’ left behind – not only enchant us with their light movement and sparkle, but also imply the fragile status of those who were forced to flee and to seek a new beginning. But there is surely more to Chalayan’s design than the reproduction of loss. Through different levels of abstraction and conceptuality, his approach to migration is in each case a subtle provocation: for instance, when terror and fear are transformed into the perfect surfaces that are traditional and typical of fashion, or homage is paid to mobility-related issues through astonishingly beautiful letters, pollen or suitcase metaphors. Seen as such, migration can mean new opportunities: The status of the migrant could even be reversed and be made into an advantage. The prospect of regeneration could lead to an understanding of destruction as a source for an enriching experience and/or a creative impulse. From that angle, the designer could be seen as a cultural broker, a person who has not only experienced migration and exile, but lives between classifications and beyond borders, acting like a general bridge, link or medium between differing cultural backgrounds for the purpose of reducing conflict or producing change (Jezewski/Sotnik 2001).

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Transposed onto the discipline of (fashion) design, this would mean that form stands in support of a culture that questions rigid concepts of identity, home and belonging and rejects patterns of classification. A world that is set in motion brings a design to the fore that is relativistic, that integrates concepts, redefines function and questions genres, moving easily between places, cultures, nations, times, genders, ages and even practice and theory. As social contexts change, new methods, media, materials and production and presentation techniques are being developed that must be considered in the field of migration and design research. Furthermore, this necessitates an adequate discussion, in a broad scientific context, of design as something globally produced, something that touches upon global topics and is not restricted to one specific discipline. For the field of fashion and design research, this means a necessary renegotiation of the old problem of differentiating design from other sciences, in order to create an open, new and inventive methodological as well as content-related approach.

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REFERENCES – Battista, Anna. “Hussein Chalayan’s ‘Fashion Narratives’ at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs Paris.” Zoot, 8 August 2011, http://www.zootmagazine.com/2011/07/08/hussein-chalayans-fashion-narratives-at-the-musee-des-arts-decoratifs-paris/. Accessed 3 March 2013. – Beccaria, Marcella. “Kimsooja.” Kimsooja, exh.-cat. Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, Saint-Étienne Métropole, Silvana Editoriale, 2012, pp. 16f. – Boa, Elizabeth, and Rachel Palfreyman. Heimat. A German Dream. Regional Loyalties and National Identity in German Culture 1890–1990. Oxford University Press, 2000 (= Oxford Studies in Modern European Culture). – Bolton, Andrew. Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology, exh.-cat. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2016. – Dogramaci, Burcu. Heimat. Eine künstlerische Spurensuche. Böhlau, 2016. – Europäisches Parlament. “EU-Flüchtlingskrise: Zahlen und Fakten,” Europäisches Parlament, 14 July 2017, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/de/headlines/society/20170629STO78630/eu-fluchtlingskrise-zahlen-und-fakten. Accessed 13 September 2018. – Evans, Caroline. Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity and Deathliness (1st edition 2003). 3rd edition Yale University Press, 2009. – Farsen, Nina, and Isabel Schöllhammer. “Meister Eder.” Farsen/Schöllhammer, http:// ninafarsen.de/en/?s=meister+eder. Accessed February 2019. – Fox, Michael Allan. Home. A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2016. – Gaugele, Elke. “Globale Flucht und Migration als Diskursfelder der Mode.” Widerspenstiges Design. Gestalterische Praxis und gesellschaftliche Verantwortung, edited by Friedrich Weltzien and Hans-Jörg Kapp, Reimer, 2017, pp. 60-75. – Geiger, Hanni. form follows culture. Entgrenzungen im Konzept-Design Hussein Chalayans. Böhlau, 2016 (= mode global; vol. 1) (PhD thesis Munich, 2014). – Geiger, Hanni. “Raum und Zeit überwinden. Hussein Chalayans Design für postmoderne Nomaden.” Migration und künstlerische Produktion. Aktuelle Perspektiven, edited by Burcu Dogramaci, transcript, 2013, pp. 161-178. – Giedion, Sigfried. Die Herrschaft der Mechanisierung. Ein Beitrag zur anonymen Geschichte. Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1982 (= Europäische Bibliothek; vol. 8). – Haehnel, Birgit. Regelwerk und Umgestaltung. Nomadistische Denkweisen in der Kunstwahrnehmung nach 1945. Reimer, 2007. – Hiroshi, Mitani. Escape from Impasse. The Decision to Open Japan. Translated by David Noble, International House of Japan, 2006. –

Jezewski, Mary Ann, and Paula Sotnik. “Culture Brokering. Providing Culturally Competent Rehabilitation Services to Foreign–Born Persons.” CIRRIE, 2001, http://cirrie-sphhp. webapps.buffalo.edu/culture/monographs/cb.php. Accessed 21 September 2018.

– Le Corbusier. Towards a New Architecture (originally published by J. Rodker, 1931). Dover Publications, 1986.

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– Lilov, Victor. “Hussein Chalayan after words, autumn/winter collection 2000 – 2001.” Vimeo, https://vimeo.com/7686397. Accessed 6 September 2018. – Meyer-Stoll, Christiane, editor. Kimsooja. Interviews. Translated by Wolfgang Astelbauer, Silvana Editoriale, 2018. – Orta, Lucy, and Jorge Orta. “Refuge Wear Intervention London East End 1998.” Studio Orta, https://www.studio-orta.com/en/artwork/100/Refuge-Wear-InterventionLondon-East-End-1998. Accessed 18 June 2018. – Quinn, Bradley. Design Futures. Merrell Publishers, 2011. – Reckert, Annett. “The Concept of Bottari.” Kimsooja, 2001, http://www.kimsooja.com/ texts/reckert.html. Accessed 19 September 2018. – Reineke, Anika, et al. editors. Textile terms. A glossary. Edition Imorde, 2017. – Rushdie, Salman. Heimatländer der Phantasie: Essays und Kritiken 1981-1991. Kindler, 1992. – Sans, Jérôme. “Reisen, ohne sich fortzubewegen. Kimsooja im E-Mail-Interview mit Jérôme Sans.” Kimsooja. Interviews, edited by Christiane Meyer-Stoll, translated by Wolfgang Astelbauer, Silvana Editoriale, 2018, pp. 206-213. – Weyrauch-Pung, Alexa. “Mobil im Mittelalter.” Süddeutsche Zeitung Online, 11 May 2010, https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/geschichte-mobil-im-mittelalter-1.179398. Accessed 5 August 2018. – Zijpp, Sue-an van der. “Introduction to the Collections.” Hussein Chalayan, exh.-cat. Groninger Museum, Groningen, 2005, pp. 16-45, 52-105, 112-153, 158-191.

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DESIGN D I S P E R S ED DESIGNERS AND ARTISTS AS CULTURAL AGENTS AND BROKERS

‘ETHNO FASHION’ IN MODERNIST MEXICO. Transfer Processes between Anachronistic Recourse, Individual Identity, and the Transnational Conception of Modernism

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An iconic image of Frida Kahlo shows the Mexican artist earnestly looking at the viewer (fig. 1). In the photograph taken in 1939 in New York by the American Nickolas Muray, Kahlo is sitting in front of a luscious green background decorated with delicate pink cherry blossoms on what is presumably a cast-iron bench painted white, the back of which is made up of intricate interlocking floral and leaf elements.1 Rich in folds, the hem of her dress runs into the bottom edge of the photo, evoking the impression of a sculpturally detached figure in an ornamental space. The elaborate braided hairstyle, which coils around her head in a long plait and incorporates a blue scarf, is crowned by an arrangement of real flowers, a decoration that matches the hues of the cherry blossoms in the background. Her face, its cheeks heavily rouged, is dominated by expressive eyes under bold but well-proportioned eyebrows, while her full lips seem to almost glow thanks to the brilliant red lipstick. Heavy earrings hang from her earlobes. She is wearing a red, black and gold costume that evokes an indigenous Mexican association: a blouse ornately decorated with lace and braid on top of a widespread black skirt printed with white blossoms and thus mirroring the pattern in the background. A wide border in red and gold that features several layers of interlacing zigzag lines emblazons the upper skirt hem as her white petticoat peeks out from underneath. Across her shoulders she 1

Nickolas Muray was a famous fashion and advertising photographer at the time who worked for magazines such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Vanity Fair, among others. At the time of the photoshoot with Kahlo, the painter and the photographer were having an affair: Deffebach 2004, 48; on Muray’s relationship to Mexican artists and his collection of avant-garde Mexican art see Heinzelmann/Mears 2004; Grimberg 2006.

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Fig. 1: Nickolas Muray, Frida Kahlo on Bench, New York City 1939, color carbon print, 37.5 × 25.7 cm

is wearing a shawl, presumably made of silk, which has long fringes and flowers woven inconspicuously into it, her bare arms visible from the elbow down. Her hands lie one on top of the other in her lap in the middle of the image, her fingernails are carefully polished and a striking gold ruby ring adorns her hand. A thick gold chain hangs around her neck, looped twice around, with the second loop decorated with a locket and a gold heart falling between her breasts towards her lap. The photograph’s references to classical portrait painting in terms of composition and painterly character have certainly supported its iconic status; every single detail seems to be carefully orchestrated, and the ‘beautiful’ woman appears monumentalized, esthetically merging with the ornament in the planar background.2 Even in her own lifetime, the modern artist Frida Kahlo became arguably more famous thanks to her colorful and stylish folkloristic appearance than to her painting (Lindauer 1999, 154; Ankori 2005, 32; Deffebach 2004, 47), even though in the latter she also almost exclusively reflected on herself and dealt with questions of identity and belonging, often expressed by depictions of her clothing. In this essay I will discuss the contexts in which national belongingness, femininity and avant-garde creativity resonate in indigenous Mexican and folkloristic fashions. Taking Kahlo’s striking appearance in the described photograph as the starting point, I intend to show how the fashion-oriented indigenism in Mexico is connected to the avant-garde’s use of textiles during the interwar period in Europe. The (self-)exoticized staging as described here, which laid claim to the body of the female artist, is contemporary with the recourse to indigenous or rural textile traditions and their integration into an avant-gardist canon of forms as a widespread phenomenon in Western modernist appropriations. These aesthetic practices were being internationalized, in part due to the numerous and complex transnational (exile) experiences of the artists involved, such as Josef and Anni Albers, Wolfgang Paalen and Hannes Mayer in Mexico, or the American Edward Weston, among many others (Locke 2018, 45f.). This essay identifies 2

On the perception of iconicity in this and other photographs of Kahlo and the phenomenon of “fetishizing Frida” (Lindauer 1999, 150–177), see Aragón 2014; Baddeley 2005; Deffebach 2004; Lindauer 1999; Grimberg 2006, André 2005. In October 2013, the image was used to illustrate the cover of a special issue of Vogue Mexico.

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the place of Kahlo’s ‘ethno fashion’ in this textile-like intermeshing and plots the migrations of ethnicized fashion adaptations. From the 1920s on, following the Mexican Revolution which led to a process of national unification and international positioning, Mexico was dominated by an indigenist discourse (see Maihold 1986; Báez Landa 2011). In the process of nation building the search for a national, ‘Mexican’ identity was preeminent; indigenous cultures in this context were marked as ‘different’ and thus provided the basis for a uniquely national, quintessentially ‘Mexican’ identity, both politically and socially. In effect, this meant that elite and intellectual circles ideologically reevaluated the indigenous positively. But because this search for a national unity was especially a concern of the mestizo elites, it was in fact the mestizo, also conceived biologically as a mixture of the European and the indigenous, which was taken to be particularly modern and pioneering for the nation’s future. As the ‘pure,’ original and ‘authentic,’ the indigenous was on the one hand taken as the starting point for modernization, but on the other hand (paradoxically) in the will to preserve its characteristics was excluded from it. The members of the country’s artistic avant-garde considered anything that was indigenous and Mexican to be a fresh resource for a virtuosic status as an individual artist, for claiming a unique artistic career, and as a means for staging a modernist discourse surpassing the narrower confines of national boundaries. Thus, they could appropriate the indigenous as specific and at the same time become visible in the internationally entangled and cosmopolitan circles of the avant-gardes (for artistic indigenism, see Flores 2013; Greet 2007; Greet 2009; Hedrick 2003; Majluf 1994; Zavala 2010). Kahlo as a member of these artist circles in Mexico presented herself in some of her paintings allegorically as a very emblem of Mexico, as a mestiza who publicly celebrated the collecting and displaying of indigenous artefacts as well as the keeping of so-called Xoloixcuintle dogs, staging all this as her ‘indigenous heritage.’ At the same time, however, she clearly took up a privileged social position with her active participation in avant-garde artist circles, her use of international networks, her pursuit of an urban lifestyle, and indeed her much-discussed body, which, while marked by illness, nevertheless conformed to a white ideal of beauty thanks to the artist’s light skin color, elegant slenderness and markedly slim waistline.

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Fig. 2: Frida Kahlo, My Grandparents, My Parents, and I (Family Tree), 1936, oil and tempera on zinc, 30.7 × 34.5 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Still, in 1926, a year after the publication of José Vasconcelos’ La Raza Cósmica (1925), in which the politician and philosopher put forward an ideologically inflated concept of ‘race’ and elevated the idea of a perfect, nationally unified mestizaje into what he called a “cosmic race,”3 Kahlo did not yet wear regional costume but rebelled against assigned gender roles in a photograph taken by her father Guillermo. Posing with her sisters and cousin, she defi3

Vasconcelos was sympathetic to National Socialism, see Bar-Lewaw 1982.

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antly wore a three-piece men’s suit. Ten years later, in 1936, Kahlo broached the theme of her mestizo descent, and it is in fact the choice of clothing – or rather, the representation of the absence of clothing – that clearly relates where she locates herself. She painted herself as a naked infant standing in the patio of her family home (fig. 2). Above her are her parents, classically attired in a white wedding dress and black suit. But both sets of grandparents, paternal/European and maternal/indigenous, are depicted wearing festive European clothes; the indigenous element in her descent is radically reduced and is perhaps only discernible in the facial features of the maternal grandfather, who is wearing a shirt and tie. Unclothed, she appears in a state prior to the assignation of any ethnocultural identity signaled by clothes. From around 1929 onwards (after marrying Diego Rivera), Kahlo wore indigenously inspired or regional costumes and heavy native jewelry, and braided her hair into elaborate plaits garlanded with flowers – according to her, because this is what best pleased her husband (del Conde 2008, 30; Trujillo Soto 2018, 23). However, the degree of deliberate staging, patently visible in the photographs and paintings, contradicts such a subordination to the erotic and private preferences of her husband; it indicates instead a highly deliberate and strategic self-staging, one in which the boundaries between public and private, art and life, and artist and sitter are dissolved. After spending several years in Europe, Rivera had returned to Mexico in 1921 in order to contribute artistically to achieving the goals of the revolution and artistic indigenism (González Matute 2016, 87, 90; Wolfe 1963, 114ff.), and it may be assumed that he appreciated the political signals sent out by indigenous clothing – but did not wish to turn his own body into an indigenous canvas, though he knew he could benefit from the fashionable appearance of the woman at his side, a kind of complementary self. In this perspective, Kahlo assumed the role of a personification, which allegorically refers to abstract phenomena – in this case the mestizaje is embodied through the body of a young, adaptable woman, while her male counterpart acted as an individual (see Warner 1985). In my view, this fashionable indigenism4 can be placed in two grand narratives about the usage of ‘Other’ textiles: firstly, within the long tradition 4

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of aristocratic women wearing the ‘traditional costumes of the people’; and secondly, in how the avant-garde elevated textile handicrafts into an independent work of art, a practice that also contained performative elements. This means that the practice of using indigenous clothes in both art contexts mirrors two expressions of a single phenomenon: Women of higher social standing appropriate the clothes of less privileged fellow females, which is by no means a direct and uninterrupted recourse to traditions of their own. If we are to understand Kahlo’s way of dressing as recourse to an indigenous culture, that culture is most certainly that of the Tehuanas. As early as the nineteenth century, Tehuana women had become a national symbol, eulogized by twentieth century intellectuals like José Vasconcelos or Sergei Eisenstein as particularly sensuous, untainted by outside influences and very Mexican (Barson 2005, 75). The women of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec were considered beautiful and intelligent, more authentic than other indigenous groups and, above all, were seen as heads of a matriarchal society.5 Avantgarde artists and photographers like Miguel Covarrubias, Rufino Tamayo, Roberto Montenegro, Manuel and Lola Álvarez Bravo, Tina Modotti and others revered the Tehuana women and reinforced the image of an independent, erotic, female folk culture. The Tehuana women wore colorful long skirts with sweeping lace ruffles over a white underskirt and a huipil, a short blouse adorned with braid and embroidery that was not tapered at the waist (fig. 3). Thus, when Kahlo set herself in scene as a Tehuana woman in paintings and photographs, she was playing with ambivalent semantics. On the one hand, she often did not wear the everyday clothes of the Tehuana but the holiday and wedding costume with an opulent lace veil framing her face and heavy gold necklaces, traditionally the dowry of a Tehuana woman, thus presenting herself as Rivera’s bride. The subordination expressed through such clothes is particularly striking in her work Diego on My Mind (Self-Portrait as Tehuana) (1943), which illustrates how her husband has literally occupied 5

Frances Toor describes them in this way in A Treasury of Mexican Folkways, p. 79: “The gayest Oaxaca costumes are those of the Tehuanas […] who are famous for their good looks. […] The Tehuanas carry fruit, vegetables, and flowers on their heads in gayly painted gourd bowls called xicapextli. As they walk regally along the unpaved streets in their colorful dresses, with bare feet, they look like exotic queens.” See also Covarrubias 1946, 243–266.

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Fig. 3: Tina Modotti, Mujer de Tehuantepec (Tehuana con xicaplextele), ca. 1929, gelatin silver print, 21 × 18.7 cm, Col. Fototeca del INAH, Pachuca Fig. 4: Ignacio Zuloaga y Zabaleta, Gitana florista, 1902, oil on canvas, 116.8 × 90.1 cm, private collection

her mind.6 On the other hand, she referred back to the myth of the independent woman, part of a matriarchally organized society, adept at staging her feminine allures (Martínez Vidal 2016, 74; Dexter/Barson 2005, 75). At the time when Kahlo began to wear regional costumes these were by no means in vogue in Mexico; on the contrary, wearing ‘traditional dress’ was associated with belonging to a lower rural social stratum, with poverty and a life in the remote countryside. When it came to fashion, glamour was the ideal, embodied for instance by the acclaimed actress Dolores del Rio (Rankin 2010, 96f.). Nevertheless, Kahlo’s appearance seems to have generated a very positive response – mainly in the United States –, indicated

6

Frida Kahlo, Diego on My Mind (Self-Portrait as Tehuana), 1943, oil on masonite, 76 × 61 cm, The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of Modern and Contemporary Mexican Art, Mexico City.

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by how she was frequently mentioned in U.S. fashion journals. In 1933, The New Yorker described her as the “slim, dark-haired Mexican beauty who is the third Mrs. Rivera” (Martinez Vidal 2016, 10f.), and in October 1937 Vogue ran a four-page article on Mexican fashion entitled Señoras of Mexico, featuring Toni Frissell’s photographs, which showed Kahlo in indigenous costume (Martinez Vidal 2016, 10f.). Kahlo appears here in a landscape marked as Mexican – contrasting with the bright blue sky over a low horizon are agaves, which the photographer Edward Weston had long established in the U.S. as the epitome of all things Mexican. In 1939 the fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli saw Kahlo in a Tehuana costume in the Paris gallery Renou et Colle. She praised Kahlo’s style effusively and felt inspired to design a “Madame Rivera gown” (Martinez Vidal, 10).7 In 1941 Harper’s Bazaar proclaimed Mexico to be source of fashion inspiration for affluent Americans, declaring: “The Mexican rebozo is the most exotic and original accessory of the season.” (Martinez Vidal 2016, 90) One reason for this could well have been the printing in this issue of Harper’s Bazaar of several photographs Nickolas Muray had made of Kahlo (see for instance fig. 1, see also Deffebach 2004). For her part, Kahlo wrote a letter back home from the USA in 1933: “A couple of gringo women are even imitating me and want to dress ‘à la mexicana’ but they look like beets, to tell the truth they remind me of fairground clowns […].” (Frida Kahlo in a letter to Isabel Campos, New York, 16 November 1933, quoted in Tibol 2004, 82f.) In fact, she does appear to have influenced some of her friends into at least emulating her style for a time: There are photos showing Kahlo and her North American friend Emmy Lou Packard, both wearing modern Western clothes, the latter, however, with a striking braid hairstyle with a scarf woven in. A photograph taken in 1955 shows Diego Rivera painting his patron Dolores Olmedo, who is posing in the role of a Tehuana. Roberto Montenegro portrayed Miguel Covarrubias’ wife Rosa Rolanda wearing a Tehuana costume in 1926, and Maria Izquierdo completed several self-portraits in indigenous costume but always wore Western fashion in public (del 7

It is unclear whether Schiaparelli then followed up on the plan, but Frida Kahlo certainly knew about the impression she had made and felt very flattered (del Conde 2008, 36).

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Conde 2008, 36). The examples show that the wearing of indigenist clothes was definitely accepted as a fashion statement in Mexican artist circles; however, it was not adapted as a widespread social phenomenon.8 While in these female portraits it always remains clear that the role, similar to the mythological portrait or the oriental masquerade,9 is a guise, the person Frida Kahlo and the artistic figure she creates enter into a symbiotic relationship wherein the staged body of the artist itself becomes a work of art (Bronfen 2006, 26; Böhm 2006). Before she was able to attract the attention of the public with her paintings (her first exhibition took place in 1938 in New York), she had long gained fame as a muse, a model and a style icon (Martínez Vidal 2016, 10f.; Ankori 2018, 146). And this attention was explicitly coupled with her role at the side of Rivera and, occurring at the same juncture, her transformation into an emblem for the sensuous-exotic Mexican woman. However, the staging as pure ‘indigenously’ inspired fashion and the styling as ‘national icon’ ignore the actual references of the clothes and jewelry. Martinez Vidal has noted: With her great aesthetic flair, she modified and designed indigenous outfits to imbue them with her own unique style. She selected what she deemed the most beautiful ethnic clothing pieces and blended them with imported fabrics – English muslin, French velvet, Spanish silk, Brussels lace, Asian satin. […] Frida never wore the typical Tehuana costume in the traditional manner, instead creating her own distinctive variation of the original idea. (Martínez Vidal 2016, 74) Kahlo’s style is thus based more on an eclectic combination of traditional and contemporary garments rather than those clothing traditions her 8

However, there existed a 1943 weekly series of indigenist adaptions in fashion designs published in the magazine Hoy addressing Mexican women of the upper classes: The Mexican designer Armando Valdéz Peza draw “inspiration from colors and intricate designs from traditional indigenous apparel” and “created updated, modern, and elegant women’s styles that carried a hint of inspiration from traditional clothing” (Rankin 2010, 103) – though “the combination of traditional inspiration and modern style is significant. In all of his designs, the traditional contribution to the new style is relatively minor.” (Rankin 2010, 105).

9

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For mythological portraits, see Wind 1986; for oriental masquerades, see Trauth 2009.

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contemporaries imagined to be ‘purely indigenous.’ Moreover, indigenous clothing by no means simply continued the original pre-Columbian, in this sense ‘native,’ traditions; in the early twentieth century it was itself a product of exchange in fashion already spanning centuries. It is no coincidence that the multilayered, full-length, lace-trimmed skirts Kahlo adapted very much recall the costumes worn by Spanish ladies in the colonial period. Against this backdrop, a recourse to indigenous traditions seems less probable than another reference point: the long Mexican tradition, cultivated by women of high social standing, of wearing the outfit of the china poblana. Gaining fame thanks to the Romantic travel writers of the nineteenth century, the chinas poblanas were originally young mestizo women who dressed elegantly but in folkloristic outfits and – being working-class women – were very much a part of everyday urban street life. These “female dandies” (Randall 2005, 51) came up with their own distinctive style, which then, as it rose in prominence and became increasingly charged with erotic associations in the course of the nineteenth century, evolved into a national symbol, their outfit taken as the national costume.10 The chinas – “representative[s] of both feminine beauty and Mexican nationalism” (Randall 2005, 44) – combined indigenous elements like the huipil or the rebozo with those of the colonial tradition, such as the skirt, albeit with shorter hems, often only to mid-calf, or silk scarfs from the Asian overseas trade (Randall 2005, 44f.).11 Their outfits merged colonial networks of trade and influence from Spain and Mexico through to Manila. 10 The costume worn by the china poblana was increasingly nationalistically charged, for example through the color coordination with the national flag, while quite often national symbols like the eagle on the cactus or the Virgin of Guadalupe were printed on the skirt. In the preface to La China Poblana, Louise Stinetorf writes that the original china poblana gave the following answer to a question about her outfit: “[T]he white of her costume was for the snow-capped volcanoes of her adopted land, the green for its many palm trees and red for the spilled blood of its heroic sons, native and transplanted” (Stinetorf 1960, 9). 11 The name china poblana can be understood as referring to both the overseas trade with Asia, which provided the “female dandies” with the finest fabrics, as well as the origin legend of an Asian (Indian) nun who in Puebla was revered for her piety and visions in the seventeenth century. See Randall 2005; Bailey 1997. Teresa Castelló Yturbide (1998, 65) believes it possible that North African influences were behind the embroidered blouses.

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As an unambiguously mestizo phenomenon, and moreover that of the working class, the image of the china poblana is also influenced by another Romantic idealization, that of the ‘Spanish woman’ (Randall 2005, 51). With the insecurity plaguing national identity and the criticism of restorative structures levelled by the ‘Generation of 1898’ in Spain, the symbolically charged idea of the ‘Spanish woman’ or maja emerged, serving as both a national symbol and, in Europe (particularly in Paris), as the expression of exotically sensuous femininity: the simple working-class woman with the erotic aura (Thiemann 1994, 57). The Spanish painter Raimundo de Madrazo, who spent most of his life in Paris, cultivated the image of the erotic, ‘simple’ Spanish woman, which merged with the imagination of the Andalusian flamenco dancer12 and reached its pinnacle in the figure of Carmen, a worker in a Seville tobacco factory, from Bizet’s 1875 opera. Ignacio Zuloaga’s Gitana florista (fig. 4) is a maja depiction, inspired by the painter’s visits to Seville at the end of the nineteenth century, and he too celebrates the custom, adopted in Mexico, of adorning the hair with real flowers, a tradition in some Andalusian provinces, and the sweeping skirts. The tasseled silk scarf from Manila decorated with flower patterns, adopted by the chinas poblanas and ultimately by Frida Kahlo as an accessory, was extremely popular in Spain during the second half of the nineteenth century and became an established part of the Spanish national costume (ibid., 53). In addition, the outfit worn by the maja was fashionable in aristocratic circles, where women appeared “in the ‘attire of the simple people’ at fancy-dress balls” (ibid., 56). Attending a bullfight, also stylized into a national passion, served aristocratic women as an opportunity to dress as a maja and thus in a somewhat more libertine and revealing manner than usually (ibid., 60f.). It was considered stylish among fashion-conscious Mexican women in the late nineteenth century to go on outings to the countryside dressed like chinas poblanas (Randall 2005, 57); this was in turn taking up a fashion from the Rococo period influenced by Marie Antoinette, where aristocrat women, dressed in simple white linen, without corsets and with 12 Thiemann (1994, 57) speaks here of a “view that reduced Spain to Andalusia and the female type of the ‘gypsy.’”

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their hair open, indulged in the pastoral pursuits of Arcadian idylls (see Martin 2011). Besides these various instances of resorting to the elitist cultures of dressing in the outfits of the socially inferior, Kahlo’s staged fashion self-presentations can also be seen in the context of a contemporaneous trend: the explicitly avant-gardist revaluation of textile handicrafts into works of art in European and North American artist circles. Beginning with the ornamental Jugendstil of a Henry van de Velde, for instance, and the ‘reform’ dress he designed (see Bertschik 2005, 91–99; Stern 2004, 125–142), as well as the arts and crafts movement in North America,13 which still had men as its main protagonists, textile design had developed on an international scale into a – female – avant-garde domain since the end of the First World War. Sonia Delaunay created modernist textiles in a design that she also realized in painting. She created fashion that was meant to be worn and from 1925 on – after the company director Joseph de Leeuw had seen her work at the Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris – she designed fabrics and fashion exclusively for the tradition-steeped Amsterdam department store Metz (see de Leeuw-de Monti 2013; McQuaid 2011). At the very same Paris exhibition Nadezhda Lamanova and Vera Mukhina were awarded the “Grand Prix for national originality in combination with contemporary design” for their designs of modern outfits with embroidery (see Raev 1994; Strizhenova 1991). The name of the award itself reveals that the nation and the artistic avant-garde were not taken as mutually exclusive. Within the complex networks of relationships, many female textile artists drew inspiration from the artistic fashion of the time and often adopted variations on so-called ‘primitive’ textiles into their designs. Lamanova, for instance, submitted to the Paris jury a simple dress for the working class that, intended to save materials, was to be made out of recycled Rus-

13 The Arts and Crafts Movement, which was developed in 1850s Britain, was adapted to the U.S. context in the last decade of the nineteenth century; see further Boris 1986. Heidi Shugg (2016) analyzed conceptual connections between William Morris and Diego Rivera and thus brought together the English movement with Mexican post-revolutionary arts.

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Fig. 5: Nadezhda Lamanova (design), Vera Mukhina (illustration), A House Dress from a Headscarf, Tablet No. 6 in Iskusstvo v bytu [Art in Everyday Life], edited by Ia. A. Tugendkholʹd, Moscow, 1925, 192

sian-folkloristic embroidered shawls and hand towels (fig. 5). While in French exile, Natalia Goncharova designed avant-gardist evening dresses with Russian-inspired embroidery which were then sold to customers from across the globe at the Maison Myrbor in Paris. In the first decade of the century, she had already completed a self-portrait with a Russian folk headscarf.14 For her Dada performances in the 1920s Sophie Taeuber-Arp, not so much presenting ready-to-wear fashion as following primitivist art conceptions, developed “cubistic costumes” inspired by drawings of Hopi kachina figures from New Mexico (Krupp 2016, 54). Anni and Josef Albers were members of the Bauhaus, where the importance of textiles was acknowledged when a weaving class was started 14 Natalia Goncharova, Self-Portrait, ca. 1907, oil on canvas mounted on board, 55.9 × 45.7 cm, Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, Mass.

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in Weimar; however, fashion was explicitly excluded from the Bauhaus curriculum (see Wolsdorf 2013; Wortmann Weltge 1993; Smith 2014; Troy 2016). After the Bauhaus was closed under pressure from the National Socialist Party in 1933, the couple went into exile in the U.S. and began teaching at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. They traveled to Mexico and South America a total of fourteen times. Like many other artists of the time, they found inspiration in the mainly architectural pre-Columbian forms and adapted them to create abstract designs (Locke 2018, 46). Having tried out the forms in photography, Anni Albers more or less directly translated them into her handwoven wall hangings (Troy 2002), while Josef Albers once stated: “Mexico is truly the promised land of abstract art, which here is thousands of years old” (Josef Albers 1936, quoted in Blume 2015, 263). With her indigenist fashion practices, Frida Kahlo can definitely be placed in a broad international context of avant-gardist efforts to elevate textiles to the status of art, which entailed the concomitant recourse to socalled original, indigenous or rural textile practices. But Kahlo goes further: she uses textiles as ready-mades, adopting both the design and the crafted execution from others; it is not the piece of clothing that is the artwork: rather, the piece of clothing she wears on her body becomes the art. This means that she develops the textiles performatively, with her own body. The first artist to be so consequential in this approach, and certainly for Latin America, she actually wore the ‘archaic’ on her own body, a flawlessly staged merging of art and life.15 She stages herself as the union of artist and art object, of creator and model; pursuing this approach, she broaches the themes of gender roles and ethnic ascriptions, using her own body. Her exhibition and performance of the folkloristically dressed body merge modernist cosmopolitanism, national semantic codes and gender connotations. Though she was referred to repeatedly as “the third Mrs. Rivera” (see above, Martínez Vidal 2016, 10f.) and thus virtually impersonated her hus15 With this kind of artistic self-staging she anticipates other performative practices emerging in 1970s Latin America (and precisely by feminist women artists who often turn their own body into an art object, e.g., Ana Mendieta, Tania Bruguera), see Böhm 2006, 38.

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band’s indigenist and nationalist ideas as his work of art, she created her own body of art, intrinsically intertwined with her painterly oeuvre, so convincingly that the folkloristic performance can be interpreted as a subject of art in its own right (see also Böhm 2006). Through her style, she carefully positioned herself between the claim for a self-exoticized ‘different’ and ‘special’ self and the adaption of in-vogue modernist textile exoticism (see also Ankori 2018). The fashion indigenism as performed by Frida Kahlo is a primitivistic practice, schooled in the elitist-nostalgic resorting of fashion to a romanticized and sexualized image of the mestizo working-class women and the international avant-garde’s interest in textile designs.

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REFERENCES – André, María Claudia. “Evita and Frida: Latin American Icons for Export.” The Latin American Fashion Reader, edited by Regina A. Root, Berg Publishers, 2005, pp. 247–262. – Ankori, Gannit. “Frida Kahlo: Das Gewebe ihrer Kunst.” Frida Kahlo, exh.-cat. Tate Modern, London, edited by Emma Dexter and Tanya Barson, Schirmer/Mosel, 2005, pp. 31–45. – Ankori, Gannit. “Frida Kahlo: Posing, Composing, Exposing.” Frida Kahlo. Making Her Self Up, exh.-cat. Victoria & Albert Museum, London, edited by Circe Henestrosa and Claire Wilcox, V&A Publishing, 2018, 131–159. – Aragón, Alba F. “Uninhabited Dresses: Frida Kahlo, from Icon of Mexico to Fashion Muse.” Fashion Theory, vol. 18, no. 5, 2014, pp. 517–550. – Baddeley, Oriana. “Nachdenken über Frida Kahlo: Spiegel, Maskerade und die Politik der Identifikation.” Frida Kahlo, exh.-cat. Tate Modern, London, edited by Emma Dexter and Tanya Barson, Schirmer/Mosel, 2005, pp. 47–53. – Báez Landa, Mariano. Indigenismo y antropología. Experiencia disciplinar y práctica social. Universidad Veracruzana, 2011. – Bailey, Gauvin Alexander. “A Mughal Princess in Baroque New Spain. Catarina de San Juan (1606–1688), the china poblana.” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, UNAM, vol. XIX, no. 71, 1997, pp. 37–73. – Bar-Lewaw, Itzhak. “La Revista Timón y la Colaboración Nazi de José Vasconcelos.” Actas del Cuarto Congreso Internacional de Hispanistas, vol. 1, edited by Eugenio Bustos Tovar, Universidad de Salamanca, 1982, pp. 151–156. – Barson, Tanya. “‘Alle Kunst ist zugleich Oberfläche und Symbol’ – Ein Frida Kahlo-Glossar.” Frida Kahlo, exh.-cat. Tate Modern, London, edited by Emma Dexter and Tanya Barson, Schirmer/Mosel, 2005, pp. 55–79. – Bertschik, Julia. Mode und Moderne. Kleidung als Spiegel des Zeitgeistes in der deutschsprachigen Literatur (1770–1945). Böhlau, 2005. – Blume, Eugen, et al., editors. Black Mountain. Ein interdisziplinäres Experiment, 1933– 1957, exh.-cat. Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, Spector Books, 2015. – Böhm, Dorothee. “Frida Kahlo – ein Produkt ihrer Kunst. Selbstinszenierung als künstlerische Praxis.” Frida Kahlo, exh.-cat. Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg, edited by Ortrud Westheider and Carsten Müller, Hirmer, 2006, pp. 32–39. – Boris, Eileen. Art and Labor: Ruskin, Morris, and the Craftsman Ideal in America. Temple University Press, 1986. – Bronfen, Elisabeth. “Das Wunder des verwundeten Körpers. Frida Kahlo, eine mexikanische Diva.” Frida Kahlo, exh.-cat. Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg, edited by Ortrud Westheider and Carsten Müller, Hirmer, 2006, pp. 22–31. – Castelló Yturbide, Teresa, and Carlotta Mapelli Mozzi, editors. La chaquira en México, exh.- cat. Museo Franz Meyer, Artes de México y del Mundo, 1998.

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– Conde, Teresa del. “Frida Kahlo – Her Look.” Self Portrait in a Velvet Dress. Frida’s Wardrobe. Fashion from the Museo Frida Kahlo, edited by Denise Rosenzweig and Magdalena Rosenzweig, Chronicle Books, 2008, pp. 27–49. – Covarrubias, Miguel. Mexico South. The Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Alfred A. Knopf, 1946. – Deffebach, Nancy. “The Magenta Rebozo.” The Covarrubias Circle. Nickolas Muray’s Collection of Twentieth-Century Mexican Art, edited by Kurt Heinzelman and Peter Mears, University of Texas Press, Austin, 2004, pp. 47–61. – Dexter, Emma, and Tanya Barson, editors. Frida Kahlo, exh.-cat. Tate Modern, London, Schirmer/Mosel, 2005. – Earle, Rebecca. “Nationalism and National Dress in Spanish America.” The Politics of Dress in Asia and the Americas, edited by Mina Roces and Louise Edwards, Sussex Academic Press, 2007, pp. 163–181. – Flores, Tatiana. Mexico’s Revolutionary Avant-gardes. From Estridentismo to ¡30-30! Yale University Press, 2013. – González Matute, Laura. “L’école mexicaine de peinture.” Mexique 1900–1950. Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, José Clemente Orozco et les avant-gardes, exh.-cat. Grand Palais Paris, edited by Agustín Arteaga, Réunion des musées nationaux, 2016, pp. 81–91. – Greet, Michele. Beyond National Identity: Pictorial Indigenism as a Modernist Strategy in Andean Art, 1920–1960. The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009. – Greet, Michele. “Manifestations of Masculinity: The Indigenous Body as a Site for Modernist Experimentation in Andean Art.” Brújula – revista interdisciplinaria sobre estudios latinoamericanos. Art and Encounters, vol. 6, no. 1, December 2007, pp. 57–74. – Grimberg, Salomon. I Will Never Forget You. Frida Kahlo and Nickolas Muray. Chronicle Books, 2006. – Hedrick, Tace. Mestizo Modernism. Race, Nation and Identity in Latin American Culture, 1900–40. Rutgers University Press, 2003. – Heinzelman, Kurt, and Peter Mears, editors. The Covarrubias Circle. Nickolas Muray’s Collection of Twentieth-Century Mexican Art. University of Texas Press, Austin, 2004. – Krupp, Walburga: “‘Echte Indianer’. Sophie Taeuber-Arps Frühwerk im Hinblick auf fremde Kulturen. Eine Spurensuche.” DadaAfrika. Dialog mit dem Fremden, exh.-cat. Museum Rietberg, Zurich, edited by Ralf Burmeister et al., Museum Rietberg, 2016, pp. 49–55. – Leeuw-de Monti, Matteo de. “Metz und Co. De Stijl und Sonia Delaunay.” To Open Eyes. Kunst und Textil vom Bauhaus bis heute, exh.-cat. Kunsthalle Bielefeld, edited by Friedrich Meschede, and Jutta Hülsewig-Johnen. Kerber, 2013, pp. 36–43. – Lewis, Tasha. “Folklore Influences in Mexico and Panama.” Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion: Latin America and the Caribbean, edited by Margot Blum Schevill. Bloomsbury Academic, 2005, pp. 131–136. – Lindauer, Margaret A. Devouring Frida. The Art History and Popular Celebrity of Frida Kahlo. Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1999. – Locke, Adrian. “Quetzalcoatl’s Grin: The Changing Face of Art and Culture in Frida Kah-

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lo’s Mexico.” Frida Kahlo. Making Her Self Up, exh.-cat. Victoria & Albert Museum London, edited by Circe Henestrosa and Claire Wilcox, V&A Publishing, 2018, 35–56. – Maihold, Günther. Identitätssuche in Lateinamerika. Das indigenistische Denken in Mexiko. Breitenbach, 1986. – Majluf, Natalia. “El Indigenismo en México y Peru. Hacia una visión comparativa.” XVII. Coloquio Internacional de Historia del Arte: Arte, Historia e Identidad en América. Visiones Comparativas, vol. II, edited by Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, UNAM, 1994, pp. 611–628. – Martin, Meredith. “Marie Antoinette and the Hameau Effect.” Martin, Meredith. Dairy Queens. The Politics of Pastoral Architecture from Catherine de Medici to Marie-Antoinette. Harvard University Press, 2011, pp. 158–213. – Martínez Vidal, Susana. Frida Kahlo – Fashion as the Art of Being. Assouline, 2016. – McQuaid, Matilda, and Susan Brown, editors. Color Moves: Art and Fashion by Sonia Delaunay, exh.-cat. Smithsonian’s  Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Thames and Hudson, 2011. – Raev, Ada. “Zwischen konstruktivistischer ‘Prozodezda’ und extravaganter Robe – russische Avantgardistinnen als Modegestalterinnen.” Frauen Kunst Wissenschaft, vol. 17, May 1994, pp. 41–53. – Randall, Kimberly. “The Traveler’s Eye: Chinas Poblanas and European-Inspired Costume in Postcolonial Mexico.” The Latin American Fashion Reader, edited by Regina A. Root, Berg, 2005, pp. 44–65. – Rankin, Monica A. “La ropa cósmica: Identity and Fashion in 1940s Mexico.” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, vol. 28, 2010, pp. 95–111. – Shugg, Heidi S. William Morris and Diego Rivera: The Pursuit of Art for the People. Master of Liberal Studies Theses, Rollins College Florida, 2016: http://scholarship. rollins.edu/mls/75 (accessed 15 October 2018). – Smith, T’ai Lin. Bauhaus Weaving Theory: From Feminine Craft to Mode of Design. University of Minnesota Press, 2014. – Stern, Radu. Against Fashion. The Avant-Garde and Clothing. MIT Press, 2004. – Stinetorf, Louise. La china poblana. Bobbs-Merrill, 1960. – Strizhenova, Tatiana. Soviet Costume and Textiles 1917–1945. Flammarion, 1991. – Thiemann, Birgit. “Die Spanierin. Nationaltracht als Form weiblicher Mythisierung und deren Überschreitung im Cross-Dressing der Torera.” Frauen Kunst Wissenschaft, vol. 17, May 1994, pp. 53–71. – Tibol, Rachel, editor. Frida Kahlo. Jetzt, wo Du mich verlässt, liebe ich Dich mehr denn je. Briefe und andere Schriften. Schirmer Graf, 2004. – Toor, Frances. A Treasury of Mexican Folkways (1947). Bonanza Books, 1985. – Trauth, Nina. Maske und Person – Orientalismus im Porträt des Barock. Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2009. – Troy, Virginia Gardner. Anni Albers and Ancient American Textiles. From Bauhaus to Black Mountain. Ashgate, 2002. 

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– Troy, Virginia Gardner. The Modernist Textile. Europe and America, 1890–1940. Lund Humphries, 2006. – Trujillo Soto, Hilda. “Treasure in the Blue House.” Frida Kahlo. Making Her Self Up, exh.-cat. Victoria & Albert Museum London, edited by Circe Henestrosa and Claire Wilcox, V&A Publishing, 2018, 21–30. – Vasconcelos, José. La raza cósmica (1925). Espasa Calpe SA, 1948. – Warner, Marina. Monuments and Maidens. The Allegory of the Female Form. Atheneum, 1985. – Wind, Edgar. Hume and the Heroic Portrait. Studies in Eighteenth-Century Imagery. Clarendon, 1986. – Wolsdorff, Christian. “Wir waren halt die Dekorativen am Sternenbanner Bauhaus.” To Open Eyes. Kunst und Textil vom Bauhaus bis heute, exh.-cat. Kunsthalle Bielefeld, edited by Friedrich Meschede and Jutta Hülsewig-Johnen, Kerber, 2013, pp. 60–67. – Wortmann Weltge, Sigrid. Bauhaus Textiles. Women Artists and the Weaving Workshop. Thames and Hudson, 1993. – Zavala, Adriana. Becoming Modern, Becoming Tradition. Women, Gender, and Representation in Mexican Art. Penn State University Press, 2010.

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ERWIN BRONER’S EXILE IN IBIZA. The Transformation from Vernacular to Avant-garde in Architecture

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THE MEDITERRANEAN AND THE MODERN MOVEMENT IN ARCHITECTURE

The natural world and culture of the Mediterranean was a source of inspiration for architects like Le Corbusier or Josep Lluís Sert (Lejeune/Sabatino 2010), but also for artists like Paul Klee, August Macke and Louis Moilliet, who, in 1914, were together pursuing their studies in light and space in Tunis (Güse 1982). The cubical building styles on the one hand and the sharp play of lights and shadows on the other emphasized the geometry of vernacular architecture in a particular way, inspiring both architects and artists in their efforts to achieve abstraction. Some members of the Modern Movement were directly inspired by the vernacular solutions found in the Mediterranean region, and reinterpreted the materials and forms anew with their artistic intuition. In 1931, a number of Spanish architects around Josep Lluís Sert, inspired by the ideas of Le Corbusier, founded the group GATEPAC in Barcelona, who wanted to impact the local building industry along the lines of the Modern Movement. In their mission statement they wrote: “Local traditions, habits and specific methods change over time. Fundamental elements endure, while secondary forms disappear again. We have only to look at the building types necessitated by climate or other permanent factors.” (Freixa 1984, 11) In the early ‛thirties the search for models took the group around Sert to Ibiza, where exiled artists and architects from Germany were studying local architecture. One of them was the artist and architect Erwin Heilbronner1, who in late 1933, fleeing from the National Socialists, came to the island and after many emigration stations in Europe and in the U.S. settled there permanently in the late ’fifties.

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A HOUSE AS A STATEMENT

Erwin Broner’s own house had special significance for his architectural work on Ibiza. In 1960, together with his third wife Gisela, he bought a property in the old part of Ibiza Town, in Sa Penya. The house was intended to be a distinctive statement in which architecture and environment, and their existing conditions, form a symbiosis, and in which climate determines the form and function in an exemplary way – exactly as formulated by the group around Sert in the early ’thirties. The long rocky crest and its steep coastal cliffs extend from the harbor to the striking corner of the Bastion Santa Lucia, which as part of the massive city wall encloses the old town of Dalt Villa. The property purchased by Broner had the foundation walls of an older building and was located directly on the cliffs with a spectacular view of the small chain of rocky islands on the way to the neighboring island of Formentera. In back of it was the maze of the old town with the white cubical houses of the fishermen. For the poor neighborhood in the district of Sa Penya, Broner designed and built, at his own expense, a public toilet with a washhouse directly below the bastion. The property is accessible by a flight of stairs both from above and below; there is no driveway for vehicles directly up to the house. It is embedded in the organic form of the urban neighborhood, which to this day is inhabited by the poorer population. Because it is on a slope, skillful integration was required in order to maintain the property’s accessibility and walkability. Broner set his new building on the foundations of the demolished house; the two-story house completely faces the sea (fig. 1). Accessible from the courtyard, the basement is on three levels, connected in a spatial continuum by short flights of stairs. The deepest part at the end of 1

He was born as Heilbronner (1898–1971) and used this name until the forties. Later he took the name Broner in the course of his naturalization in the U.S. in 1944. I will use the name Heilbronner for the time before 1944 and Broner for the period thereafter. The estate of Erwin Broner (Heilbronner) is today in the archive of the Collegi Oficial d’Arquitectes de les Illes Balears (http://www.coaib.org) and in the archive of Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Eivissa (MACE), both in Ibiza Town. I would like to thank both institutions, and especially Elena Ruiz from MACE, for the opportunity to consult the documents in the respective archives.

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Fig. 1: Erwin Broner, Sketch for Broner House, no year, probably 1960

the series of rooms is lit by a side window from the courtyard. It was here that Broner worked as a painter who, coming from the Expressionism of the nineteen twenties, explored abstraction.2 On the middle landing stood the large desk and drawing board on which the architectural projects of the subsequent years were developed (Guimerá 2006). The door on the upper level leads directly into the courtyard, which at the time could be used as a passageway for the public. Due to the topography, the yard itself was also on two levels interconnected by flights of stairs that were connected with the upper staircase by a concrete ramp past the house. At the same time the ramp bridges a gap in the cliff below it through which one can see the breaking surf. Because the house is superimposed on existing walls, it is somewhat out of the right angle and, on two sides in the rear, is completely connected to the neighboring building over both floors.

2

The artistic production of Broner has so far only been very rudimentarily recorded and discussed. Between 1952 and 1994, however, there were over thirty exhibitions in which his art works could be seen in solo or group exhibitions.

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Fig. 2: Erwin Broner, Living room in the Broner House, 1960, view from 2016

Many items of furniture are designed as built-in cabinets and are precisely planned down to the last detail (fig. 2). The residential level, directly accessible from the public alleyway through a small courtyard, projects above the lower floor. In this floor, the lower outside wall gives way to pillars, two of which stand in the room as circular columns. The house is entered by a patio that is enclosed on three sides, with a picture window overlooking the sea and the horizon. In front of the opening to the sea there is a U-shaped fixed bench, of a type found in many of Broner’s houses, which naturally invites one to linger. The living area and kitchen are partitioned off by a glass wall. Located behind them were a bathroom and bedroom, and off the latter was a small terrace that was open to the harbor and the courtyard. Today the view of the harbor is obstructed by new buildings that also block the passage through the courtyard. The little built-in skylighted kitchen seamlessly merges into an open fireplace that used to heat the building in winter. Built-in masonry shelves housed daily utensils. In addition to fixed masonry benches there were a few self-designed pieces of furniture, such as tables or chairs. To-

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Fig. 3: Erwin Broner, Broner House from the seaside, 1960, view from 2016

ward the sea, the main room is horizontally opened across its entire width by four adjoining window elements. This wide opening in the façade was made possible by the abovementioned pillars that support the roof. On the outside the windows have folding shutters that can be adjusted by means of a simple mechanism so that even if the shutters are closed, the sea horizon always remains visible from the living room. As it strikes the cliffs below, the surf carries upward a cool breeze and the background noise of the breakers. The view, the filtered light, the movement of the air and the sounds stage the local conditions (fig. 3). The flat roof, an extension of the living space, is subdivided by means of two semicircular wall elements and a few additional structures. Open to the sea, the two walls were meant to shield the solarium from the curious eyes of the neighbors. They are painted white on the outside, but are olive green on the inside. The exterior wall of the lower floor is bloodred, a color also found in the residential floor above it on the round pillars and some of the interior walls. The balustrade on the courtyard and waterside consists of a simple black handrail that is also repeatedly featured in other Broner build-

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ings. Otherwise, the cubical house, white on the outside, fits seamlessly into the neighborhood. Those who go past it by boat on the sea are struck by the geometric volume that stands out elegantly against its surroundings due to its characteristic ribbon window. Thanks to its scale and coloring, the Broner House is integrated in the environment, showing how, using contemporary methods, a dialogue can be created between the simple houses of fishermen and the housing needs of an artist and architect.3

BACKGROUND AND EDUCATION

Erwin Heilbronner came from a Munich family that owned the Heilbronner Bank and, in the early twentieth century, frequented the city’s cultural circles. In World War I, from 1916 on, Erwin joined the cavalry as a volunteer, and was presumably deployed to install phone lines in Poland (Guimerá 2006, 179). Around 1919 Heilbronner began to study painting at the Art Academy in Stuttgart. He took additional courses at the private art school of Hans Hofmann in Munich, who went to New York in 1932 and is considered to belong to the New York School. It is at the Munich school that Heilbronner met his first wife, Anne Wittmer (they were married in 1920), who like him was studying painting with Hofmann. From 1922 on he continued his studies of art with Oskar Kokoschka at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts (ibid., 179). After the birth of their daughter Nanna, in 1924, the Heilbronners bought a house and a few properties on the outskirts of Hanweiler (near Stuttgart) that included a quarry. Between 1928 and 1930 Heilbronner, working together with his friend, the painter Manfred Henninger, and his brother, built a studio on the property, which was run as a small artists’ colony (Grupp/Sihler 2007, 95–114). Beside him, the artists’ group included Manfred Henninger, 3

Since 2000 the house has been on the list of cultural monuments of the Balearic Islands. Gisela Broner, who died in 2005, bequeathed the house to the city of Ibiza, which had it renovated and, as part of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Eivissa (MACE), opened it to the public free of charge from 2010. The architects Isabel Feliu and Raimon Ollé carried out the renovation; the curator was Elena Ruiz.

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Robert Breitwieser, Karl Sihler and Wilhelm Schmid, as well as – from 1932 on – the young painter Eugen Schmid-Korb (Anonymous 2009). The latter came out of political conviction as well, for Heilbronner and Henninger saw themselves as Marxists and were members of the Communist Party. The villagers remembered the many parties in the ‘artists’ villa’ for a long time thereafter. The wild terrain in the quarries provided a background for figurative life drawing in an expressive style. The artists modeled their work after Renoir, Monet and Manet. Study trips farther abroad, to Lake Constance or to Paris, where Heilbronner stayed with Breitwieser and Sihler in 1930, expanded their horizon. At the Württembergischer Kunstverein the artists showed their work to the public (Grupp/Sihler 2007, 95–114). While busy with building his own studio, between 1927 and 1931, Heilbronner studied architecture at the TH Stuttgart, where Paul Schmitthenner, Paul Bonatz and Heinz Wetzel were teaching at the time. The distinctly conservative orientation of the school, which opposed the Werkbund housing complex built in the Weissenhof Estate in 1928 under the direction of Mies van der Rohe, did not rub off on Heilbronner, however. Evidently he modeled his buildings on those of the international avant-garde, like the ones built at the Weissenhof Settlement (Warmburg 2005, 379). He designed the first and only house he was able to build at the conclusion of his studies for a former domestic worker in Owen, a small town near Stuttgart. The surviving photograph shows a three-story white cube with a flat roof and with unusual façade articulation that clearly speaks the language of the Modern Movement. A second villa, for his artist friend Otto Neumann, could no longer be implemented after 1933.

REFUGE IN IBIZA

In the early 1930s the Mediterranean island of Ibiza, or ‘White Island,’ became a place of longing for intellectuals from Germany and other parts of Europe. Due to its hitherto isolated location, a preindustrial rural culture had survived on the island, becoming the subject of many disputes about issues relating to progress and modernization. After the 1933 National Socialist

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takeover in Germany, the island became a station in exile. The German philosopher and writer Walter Benjamin visited Ibiza in 1932 and 1933 for several months at a time. He was impressed by the regional architecture and its ‘archaic’ forms and ways of living, which found their way into in his literary production. The island world, which had seemingly remained untouched by industrialization, appeared to be the ideal refuge for dropouts in search of the ‘authentic.’ On his second stay in 1933, Benjamin was already on the run from the National Socialists in Germany. In Ibiza, for a few months during the summer of 1933, he found a place of retreat (Valero 2008). The Austrian-German Dadaist Raoul Hausmann, fleeing National Socialist persecution, reached the Balearic island of Ibiza together with his Jewish wife Hedwig Mankiewitz and his lover Vera Broido on 28 March 1933 and remained until 1936, documenting the traditional architecture (Raoul Hausmann 1990). After Franco’s takeover in Spain he emigrated once more, to France. The young Berlin architect Walter Segal came to Mallorca in the spring of 1933 in connection with a building contract and then studied the farmhouses on the neighboring island of Ibiza and together with Hausmann published an article about traditional architecture (Hausmann/Segal 1934, 14–18) before emigrating to England. For the artist, architect and Marxist Erwin Heilbronner, too, Ibiza became a first station in emigration. Initially, in early March 1933, he traveled to Switzerland with his colleague Manfred Henninger in order to find out about emigrating there legally. During his absence the paramilitary Storm Detachment (Sturmabteilung SA) of the Nazi Party searched the premises in Hanweiler, intending to arrest Heilbronner as a Jew, proscribed artist and Communist (Henninger 1988, 8). Friends intercepted the two at the border, and they did not return to Germany again. Their families followed to Geneva, where they received a six-month temporary residence permit. When the visa ran out in the fall of 1933, both families emigrated together to Spain. In October 1933, on the way from Mallorca to Barcelona, Heilbronner and Henninger came to Ibiza for the first time, and like many before them were fascinated by the simple rustic culture. Also of importance, however, was the argument that life there, in contrast to cities like Barcelona, was affordable. Together with his friend, the architect Richard von Waldkirch,

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with whom while in Germany he had already taken part in an architectural competition in the Swiss city of Interlaken, he explored the historic homesteads of the peasants.4 Taking measurements and photographs, they documented the cubical indigenous architecture that had come to be a source of inspiration for the Spanish Modern Movement. It is no wonder, then, that the Spanish group of architects GATCPAC around Josep Lluís Sert, which was sympathetic to the Modern Movement, published Heilbronner’s analyses and Hausmann’s documentations in an issue of their periodical A.C. (Heilbronner 1936, 15–23). Also included in the issue is an implemented bathhouse with a café and bar by Erwin Heilbronner, which he was able to realize for a Czech businessman on the sea front of Talamanca not far from Ibiza Town. The complex was razed in 1964. Documented as a project, in addition to the café-bar, is a modernist townhouse development, which was never built, however (Heilbronner 1936, 24f.). Although the life of the emigrants in Ibiza was quite inexpensive, income opportunities were also minimal. Heilbronner was able to earn extra cash as a musician in an orchestra. Yet he had to commute to Barcelona, where it was simpler to find work. As for the property in Hanweiler, he transferred it to his non-Jewish wife, who returned to Germany alone in 1934 and from whom he was later divorced.

REFUGE IN HOLLYWOOD

The Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939 forced most German emigrants to flee once more. In February 1937 Heilbronner received an Argentinian visa in Barcelona, and two days later a visa for France.5 Apparently the Argentinian visa was necessary in order to return to France; he also traveled to Palestine, where his younger brother was staying. There he met the former Bauhaus student Monica Bella Ullmann, who had fled to Palestine and 4

Richard von Waldkirch was active in Zurich in 1937.

5

The entries can be found in his passport, which is in the archives at the MACE in Ibiza.

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opened a film studio. Together with her, he was able to emigrate to the U.S. by way of France in 1938.6 Ullmann had studied at the Kunsthandwerkschule Loheland and took courses between 1928 and 1931 at the Bauhaus in Dessau with Josef Albers,7 Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky (Poling 1987, 110f).8 In Gunta Stölzl’s course, she studied textile design (Droste/Ludewig 1998, 222). After a short period in New York, Heilbronner and Ullmann went to California, where, between 1939 and 1947, Ullmann ran her own office for film sets in Hollywood (Grieb 2007, 186).9 Erwin Heilbronner changed his name to Erwin Broner when he was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1944.10 Work as an architect has not been documented for Broner for this period up to the late ’forties, but presumably he worked intermittently for Richard Neutra and other architects in California (Guimerá 2006, 181). In order to survive financially, Broner was forced to accept all sorts of different jobs. “Erwin [will take on] any work, at first in New York and then, after two years, in California. These are jobs connected with decoration, design, advertising, stage production, architecture and much more. In California he also establishes connections to the cinema […].“ (Pascuet 1985, no page numbers) In Hollywood he met George Pal, originally from Hungary, for whose cartoons he helped do the animations. All the films mentioned below are outstanding for their high artistic quality. Although it is difficult to say exactly what part Broner had in the production, it does become clear that as an artist and architect he was able to contribute a radical approach to the use of aesthetic means, possibly influenced by his wife Bella Ullmann. In his estate are sketches for cartoon films that suggest he worked for these productions among other things as a cartoonist. To this day many questions 6

To date, details about their emigration are unknown.

7

She is mentioned with a ‘contrast study’ in Josef Albers’ preliminary course. See http://cms. bauhaus100.de/de/damals/werke/kursarbeiten/kontraststudie/. Accessed 10 December 2018.

8

In the book on Kandinsky mentioned above, her drawings are used to illustrate his teaching at the Bauhaus.

9

In 1956 she participated in an exhibition on textiles at the MoMA in New York. See https://www. moma.org/artists/36053. Accessed 10 December 2018. But unfortunately nothing is yet known about her involvement in the film industry.

10 Broner and Ullmann married in the U.S., and she kept the name Ullmann-Broner even after the divorce.

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Fig. 4: Erwin Broner, Sketches for an animated film about Greek mythology, no year

here are still unanswered, both as regards collaboration between Broner and Ullmann and his involvement in film production. In 1946 Broner worked for Pal on the very successful animated short film John Henry and the Inky-Poo,11 which was nominated for an Oscar the following year. There followed further films with Pal – for instance, Rhapsody in Wood12 or – again with Pal – a 26-minute advertising cartoon for Shell in 1948, titled Prospecting for Petroleum (This Is Oil, no.1), which tells the story of petroleum (Catalogue of Copyright Entries 1948, 78).13 A proposal for a cartoon series on Greek myths is in the archive at MACE, regarding which he wrote: 11 Broner is named as “animator: stop motion”. See https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038657/ fullcredits. Accessed 3 December 2018. 12 Broner is named as “animator”. See https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0152186/fullcredits?ref_ =tt_cl_sm#cast. Accessed 3 December 2018. 13 There are more scribbles to cartoon movies in the estate in MACE that were most likely not filmed.

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The intention of these films is neither archaeological nor sociological, nor is it to be just another dry tale of old fables. We have no intention to teach or educate (though the learning of ancient stories will be a by-product of our effort as a matter of course). We want to create something excitingly fresh and acutely new and valid in every respect to entertain people living today.14 (fig. 4) In 1949 Broner came to Paris to work under Dallas Bower on making the musical Alice au pays des merveilles, a French adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. He was responsible for the photography animation, in a complex technical process in which real film sequences had to be combined with animated sections.15 The film was a flop, although artistically and aesthetically of extraordinarily high quality. Its minimalist aesthetics with its empty spaces and imaginative backgrounds have an almost surreal character, implementing artistic ambition with amazingly simple means.

ARCHITECT AND ARTIST

Broner designed his first house in the U.S. in 1950 in Krumville, near New York, for the German emigrants Ernst and Eva Nauen. The L-shaped wooden box is set on a stone foundation, and Broner skillfully used a ledge in order to connect both the lower and the main floor directly to the terrain. Not only the materiality, but the ground plan as well shows some similarities with the Californian models of the Case Study House Program of the 1940s magazine Arts & Architecture. In addition to the architecture, Broner also designed the interior of the house and the furniture especially made for it (Guimerá 2006, 30– 33). While working on this project, he met his later third wife, Gisela Strauss. 14 Manuscript, Suggestions for a Series of Films on the Greek Myth, Estate Broner at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Eivissa (MACE) Ibiza. 15 Broner is referred to as an “animation photographer.” What he had to do and what his contribution was is unclear. See https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042189/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_ sm#cast. Accessed 3 December 2018.

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Together with Gisela, for the first time after the war, he visited the island of Ibiza during a stay in France in 1952, and the couple spontaneously stayed there for almost five years. During this period Broner was a consultant in the development of film studios in Paris, where after the war in Europe new ideas for animated film productions were being tried out. In Ibiza he spent his time painting, and designed, among other things, the furnishings for a hotel (ibid., 38–47). However, the couple had to return to the U.S. in 1956, since they would otherwise have lost their citizenship. Broner moved to Los Angeles, where his mother and his brother Paul were living. He bought a house and converted it according to his ideas. In the years that followed, he taught art students and tried to underpin his own painting with a theoretical foundation in order to allow his art to move from reality to abstraction. In 1957, longing for Europe, he accepted an invitation to join the staff of a cartoon studio in London.

A FINAL DESTINATION: IBIZA

In March of 1959, after moving back and forth between the U.S. and Europe, and between film, architecture and art, Erwin and Gisela Broner decided to relocate to Ibiza permanently. His curiosity and his experience in various disciplines obviously predestinated him to cross many existing boundaries. He was now over sixty years old, but the decade leading up to his death in 1971 was to become the most important in his life. As an architect he developed an influential language, which was shaped by the experiences of his many migrations, and linked the Californian Modern Movement and Neues Bauen (as part of New Objectivity) from Germany with the traditional architecture of the island. After Broner built the house in Ibiza Town, described earlier, for himself and his wife Gisela in 1960, he received many commissions from artist friends who all emphasized his intuitive flair and his sensitivity for Ibiza. Thus, until the time of his death, he was able to develop over 50 projects, almost 30 of them implemented16, that have left a lasting impression on the island to this day and to which the local press still

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Fig. 5: Erwin Broner, A sketch showing some of the paintings by Broner shown in the Grupo Ibiza 59 exhibition at the Haus am Waldsee in Berlin, 1961

pays tribute as positive examples of a stimulating modernist architecture.17 As an artist Broner had a substantial role in establishing the Grupo Ibiza 59, which in subsequent years has come to be regarded as an initial impulse for the independent development of artistic modernism on the island (Grupo Ibiza 59 1992). In addition to Broner, the group included artists from various countries – Erwin Bechtold, Hans Laabs, Katja Meirowsky, Egon Neubauer and Heinz Trökes from Germany, Robert Munford and Bob Thompson from the U.S., Antonio Ruiz and Carlos Sansegundo from Spain, Bertil Sjöberg from Sweden, followed later by Pierre Haubensak from Swit-

16 From 1962, partial collaboration with the architect Raimon Torres, from 1964 also with Eric Mühle, and with the two assistants Pep Riera and Antoni Ferran. 17 There are many reports or texts in local newspapers on the Internet dealing with Broner’s legacy.

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zerland. Their international orientation and many contacts made it possible to have exhibitions in many different countries, for instance, in Berlin in the Haus am Waldsee, where the work of the group was displayed in March/April 1961. In the exhibition catalogue, Broner writes: [We are motivated by] a particular artistic restlessness, a dissatisfaction with fast effects and results, always starting over, turning around and questioning whether certain means of expression are really useful for the necessary artistic statement. Hence, the same principle applies in our work: To start with, the urge to communicate, to say something, and subsequently, not being seduced into inventing nice aesthetic and decorative frills. (Grupo Ibiza 59 1961, no page numbers) The loosely connected group remained in existence until 1964 and attracted international attention for the art produced on the island (Spence 1965) (fig. 5).

LEGACY AND IMPACT

The artist and architect Erwin Heilbronner was robbed of his homeland in 1933 by racist and political persecution and changed his name to Erwin Broner in the ’forties due to political developments. As a result of the exile that took him to Spain, France, England, the United States and the Balearic island of Ibiza, he became a ‘world citizen’ (Pascuet 1985, no page numbers) who turned against provincialism and nationalism, seeking a spiritual homeland instead. After his unexpected death in 1971 during a trip to Germany, Ibiza underwent upheaval: the island was known, on the one hand, for its vernacular culture and on the other for its contemporary cultural scene. Mass tourism and social dropouts discovered in equal measure the qualities that had already impressed the exiled architects in the ’thirties. In a 1980 publication, Broner’s colleagues and friends pay homage to his life’s achievement, and two hitherto unpublished texts on modern painting and on urban development are published (Broner 1980).

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After Broner had finished building his own house, he built homes and studio buildings for friends in the countryside and on the outskirts of town, and converted existing buildings in the old part of town. His approach was always similar and takes the existing situation as its starting point while changing it with simple means in a way that makes the result appear perfectly natural. The blending of new and old, new elements built the traditional way, and local materials make for the continuation of the architectural tradition with seemingly simple means. Broner’s complex artistic oeuvre, which combines architecture, painting and film production, plus his work as a musician and organizer of cultural events, which has not been mentioned here at all, cannot be simply explained in a way that does justice to all its aspects. Of his architecture, however, we can say that vernacular Ibicencan architecture, adapted to the local climate as it was, became the starting point of his reflection, which he brought in line with his experiences in California and the Modern Movement in Germany. The culture and architecture he found in Ibiza, and his own forms of expression, schooled in the ideas of the international avant-garde, formed a symbiotic relationship here. With this in mind, we can read the artistic and architectural production of Erwin Broner on Ibiza as follows: Inspired by his experiences in emigration and by diverse changes in his life situation, his work gave rise to a discourse that made local realities into the starting point for something new. Translation: Ilze Mueller.

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REFERENCES – Anonymous. “Eugen Schmid ist tot.” ZVW. Waiblinger Kreiszeitung, 30 October 2009, https://www.zvw.de/inhalt.waiblingen-und-umgebung-eugen-schmid-ist-tot.2008 239d-afdd-456f-b461-a0eb24268de5.html. Accessed 3 December 2018. – Anonymous. “Erwin Broner A Eivissa.” Quaderns d’arquitectura i urbanisme, no.153, 1982, pp. 8–21. – Bauhaus Kooperation 2019. http://cms.bauhaus100.de/de/damals/werke/kursarbeiten/ kontraststudie/. Accessed 10 December 2018. – Bechtold, Erwin. “Erwin Broner.” Erwin Broner: ciudadano, arquitecto, pintor, (1898). Ibiza 1934–1971, edited by Rafael García Pascuet and Félix Julbe Moreno, La Gaya Ciencia, 1985, pp. 67f. [German translation by Barbara Richartz in a typewritten version in the library of the TU Berlin, no page numbers.] – Broner, Erwin. “Ideas sobre pintura moderna.” Erwin Broner: ciudadano, arquitecto, pintor (1898). Ibiza 1934–1971, edited by Rafael García Pascuet and Félix Julbe Moreno, La Gaya Ciencia, 1980, pp. 79f. (1st and 2nd edition 1980, 3rd edition 1985). [German translation by Barbara Richartz in a typewritten version in the library of the TU Berlin, no year and no page numbers.] – Die Tunisreise. Klee, Macke, Moilliet, exh.-cat. Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster, Gerd Hatje Cantz, 1982. – Droste, Magdalena, and Manfred Ludewig. Das Bauhaus webt. Die Textilwerkstatt am Bauhaus. Ein Projekt der Bauhaus-Sammlungen in Weimar, Dessau, Berlin. G+H Verlag, 1998. – Erwin Broner. 1898–1971, exh.-cat. Centre de Cultura Sa Nostra, Palma de Mallorca, 2006. [Reprint of the monographic number 11/12 of the magazine D’A as hardcover, originally published in April 1994.] – Freixa, Jaume. Josep Ll. Sert. Artemis, 1984 (2nd edition). – Grieb, Manfred H., editor. Nürnberger Künstlerlexikon. Bildende Künstler, Kunsthandwerker, Gelehrte, Sammler, Kulturschaffende und Mäzene vom 12. bis Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts. 1 A–G, K.G. Saur, 2007. – Grupo Ibiza 59, exh.-cat. Haus am Waldsee, Berlin, Reiter, 1961. – Grupo Ibiza 59. Passat i Present, exh.-cat. Museu d’Art Contemporani d’Eivissa, Ibiza Town, 1992. – Grupp, Bernd, and Andreas Sihler. “Eine Künstlerkolonie in Winnenden-Hanweiler – Idyll im Reich der ehemaligen Hanweiler Steinbrüche.” Veröffentlichungen des Stadtarchivs: Winnenden Gestern und Heute. Migration – Integration – Heimat, vol. 11, verlag regionalkultur, 2007, pp. 95–113. – Hausmann, Raoul, and Walter Segal. “L’architecture de l’île d’Ibiza.” Œuvres, no. 9, 1934, pp. 14–18. – Heilbronner [Broner], Erwin. “Ibiza (Baleares). Las Viviendas Rurales.” A.C., vol. 21, 1936, pp. 15–23. [German translation: “Ibiza (Balearen). Die ländlichen Wohnhäuser.” Proji-

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zierte Moderne. Deutschsprachige Architekten und Städtebauer in Spanien (1918–1936). Dialog–Abhängigkeit–Polemik, edited by Joaquín Medina Warmburg, Vervuert Verlag, 2005, pp. 511–512.] – Heilbronner [Broner], Erwin. “Establecimiento de Baños en la Playa de Talamanca, Ibiza (Baleares).”, A.C., vol. 21, 1936, pp. 24–25. – Henninger, Peter. “Aus einem Gespräch mit Nanna Kraus.” Manfred Henninger. Die ersten Jahre im Exil. Ibiza 1933–1936, exh.-cat. Galerie Valentin, Stuttgart, 1988. – Ibiza 65, exh.-cat. Galeria Ivan Spence, Ibiza Town, 1965. – IMDb 2018. John Henry and the Inky-Poo (1946), https://www.imdb.com/title/ tt0038657/fullcredits. Accessed 3 December 2018. – IMDb2018b.RhapsodyinWood(1947),https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0152186/fullcredits? ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast. Accessed 3 December 2018. – IMDb 2018c. Alice au pays des merveilles (1949), https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042189/ fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast. Accessed 3 December 2018. – Lejeune, Jean-François, and Michelangelo Sabatino, editors. Modern Architecture and the Mediterranean. Vernacular Dialogues and Contested Identities. Routledge, 2010. – Mira, Eduardo. “Un gramático de la arquitectura.” Erwin Broner. ciudadano, arquitecto, pintor (1898). Ibiza 1934–1971, edited by Rafael García Pascuet, and Félix Julbe Moreno, La Gaya Ciencia, 1980, pp. 15–18. (1st and 2nd edition 1980, 3rd edition 1985). [German translation by Barbara Richartz in a typewritten version in the library of the TU Berlin, no page numbers.] – MoMA 2018: Textiles U.S.A. (August 29–November 4, 1956), https://www.moma.org/artists/36053. Accessed 10 December 2018. – “Motion Pictures and Filmstrips.” Catalogue of Copyright Entries. Third Series, vol. 2, no. 1, Parts 12–13, Library of Congress, 1948. – Pascuet, Rafael García. “Apuntes biográficos.” Erwin Broner. ciudadano, arquitecto, pintor (1898). Ibiza 1934–1971, edited by Rafael García Pascuet and Félix Julbe Moreno, La Gaya Ciencia, 1980, pp. 82–88. (1st and 2nd edition 1980, 3rd edition 1985). [German translation by Barbara Richartz in a typewritten version in the library of the TU Berlin, without year.] – Pascuet, Rafael García and Félix Julbe Moreno, editors. Erwin Broner. ciudadano, arquitecto, pintor (1898). Ibiza 1934–1971. La Gaya Ciencia, 1980. (1st and 2nd edition 1980, 3rd edition 1985). [German translation by Barbara Richartz in a typewriter version in the library of the TU Berlin, without year.] – Poling, Clark V. Kandinsky’s Teaching at the Bauhaus. Color Theory and Analytical Drawing. Rizzoli, 1986. – Raoul Hausmann. Architecte – Architect. Ibiza 1933–1936, exh.-cat. Fondation pour l’Architecture, Bruxelles, AAM Editions, 1990. – Valero, Vicente. Der Erzähler. Walter Benjamin auf Ibiza 1932 und 1933. Parthas Verlag, 2008. – Warmburg, Joaquín Medina. “Erwin Broner (1898–1971) und die Volksarchitektur Ibizas.” Deutsches Architektenblatt, no. 2, 1998, pp. 150–151.

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– Warmburg, Joaquín Medina, editor. Projizierte Moderne. Deutschsprachige Architekten und Städtebauer in Spanien (1918–1936). Dialog–Abhängigkeit–Polemik. Vervuert Verlag, 2005. – Wirth, Günther. Verbotene Kunst. Verfolgte Künstler im Deutschen Südwesten 1933–1945. Verlag Gerd Hatje, 1987.

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A RETURN TO THE MOTHERLAND: Afro-Brazilians’ Architecture and Societal Aims in Colonial West Africa

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In the past half-century, historians have recognized the impact of African visual cultures in the African diaspora during the transatlantic slave trade. Examples of these transfers include the sculptures of deities that African slaves in Brazil kept in their homes. These objects resembled similar figurines in West and South Africa (Lawal 2004 as cited in Fálọlá and Childs 2004, 291–324; Thompson 1984, 1–100; Drewal 2000, 243–244). Such research extended Melville Herskovits’ argument that the diaspora’s diverse mores and customs conveyed ‘Africanisms’ or habits from Africa to the Americas (Herskovits 1941, 7). The present essay, however, examines a reverse trend: the architecture of the Afro-Brazilian returnees in Lagos and the house built by Balthazar dos Reis and Herbert Macaulay. Dos Reis was an Afro-Brazilian Catholic artisan in Lagos Colony in 1913 who had probably returned from Salvador. Macaulay, on the other hand, was a Sàró architect who designed homes for Lagosians at the turn of the twentieth century.1 Their building practice exemplifies the rise of an architectural movement – largely spearheaded by Afro-Brazilians – that dominated colonial West Africa in the nineteenth century, and scholarly research 1

The Sàró were ex-slaves from Sierra Leone and their descendants. A comment needs to be made about the tonal marks on words throughout this essay. First, those words where the marks appear are in the Yorùbá language of Southwest Nigeria. Some, such as Sàró or Àgùdà, are English or Portuguese words transliterated into Yorùbá. The marks above the vowels in the words follow a “do-re-mi” sound system that Yorùbá scholars use to convey the sound of the Yorùbá words.

2

Herbert Macaulay was one of the two Sàró architects that we know of who worked in Lagos at the turn of the twentieth century (Bagan Benjamin was the other one). Afro-Brazilians overwhelmingly contributed to the rise of the new African immigrant architecture in Lagos – hence the need in this text to categorize the architectural movement as an Afro-Brazilian phenomenon. See Aradeon 1996, 78, for a reference to Bagan Benjamin. Not much is known about Benjamin’s life.

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about this rarely studied phenomenon is now beginning to surface (Teriba 2017, 246–255; Aradeon 1996, 78; Herman 1988, 99–107).2 The Afro-Brazilians, also referred to as Àgùdà, lived in a district known in Lagos, Nigeria, as the Brazilian Quarter or Pópó Àgùdà.

THE ÀGÙDÀ’S SEARCH FOR AN ARCHITECTURE OF HOME

According to the oral history of Lagos, in the fifteenth century King Ògúnfúnminire, a hunter, founded a settlement called Iṣẹri, 12 miles north of the present-day ruler’s palace (Adéribigbé 1975, 1–3; Bigon 2009, 40). Gabaro, who reigned from 1669 to 1704 and was one of Ògúnfúnminire’s progeny, chose Èkó (the local name for Lagos), which lies on the northwestern tip of a peninsula, because of its fertile land. Such was the political climate that greeted the Sàró and Àgùdà who settled there between 1850 and 1900. The colonial administration’s presence in Lagos and the fact that the areas outside Akίtóyè’s kingdom were swampy gave the immigrants the freedom to make changes to the landscape that would not incur the Ọba’s wrath. The colonial government in Lagos, in conjunction with the Ọba, divided Lagos into four zones. The northeast part of the colony – Ìsàlẹ̀ Èkó – was where the Ọba of Lagos resided. Consisting of the king’s palace and the market, it was also called “Old Lagos.” To the north was Pópó Àgùdà, which, as noted earlier, the Ọba gave to the Afro-Brazilians. The British settled in Marina, east of Olówógbówó or Sàró Town (Bigon 2007, 607). Balthazar dos Reis was arguably one of the most versatile Afro-Brazilians in colonial Lagos in the nineteenth century, winning acclaim for his furniture, cabinetmaking and architecture. Focusing on his artistic practice, the present essay aims to demonstrate how Afro-Brazilian returnees and the Lagosian elite created homes – psychological places of familiarity and comfort – in Anglophone colonial Nigeria and beyond. Part of this argument contends that the religious buildings – mosques and churches – were also ‘homes’ in the ways in which their styles signified reminiscences of Brazilian Baroque architecture, which the diaspora found comforting (Castillo

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2016, 36). Some Lagosians’ harsh treatment of the Àgùdà may be pertinent to this current discussion, because the immigrants’ tastes in architecture in their new homes may have been the result of a need to create an environment full of structures that seemed familiar and reflected their new cultural and religious values (ibid.). To put it differently, the settlers may have felt that the solidity of their structures projected a visual stability in the midst of their clashes with the natives, who viewed the immigrants as enemies. The essay will also reveal how the diaspora used architectural elements – former symbols of their servitude as slaves in nineteenth-century northeastern Brazil – to recast their personae as a cultural elite in colonial Nigeria. Nearly eight thousand Afro-Brazilians landed on the shores off the Bight of Benin between 1820 and 1899, mostly as a result of the antislavery uprisings that took place in Salvador throughout that era (Matory 2005, 53). The Brazilian authorities expelled some of the Afro-Brazilians, who in their eyes were the instigators of the riots, sending them to the West African region.3 In 1880 alone, Lagos had 3221 Afro-Brazilians and Afro-Cubans as well as 111 Europeans out of a total population of 37.458 residents (Awẹ́ 1983, 5). Yet these foreigners were one of many immigrant groups of African descent that lived in the city. Some came from the Caribbean and settled in Èbúté Mẹ́tta, another borough of Lagos (ibid.). In 3

Evidence of Afro-Brazilian travelers from Brazil to West Africa dates back to the latter half of the eighteenth century, but a surge in the exodus occurred after the Brazilian authorities quelled a major uprising in Salvador in 1835 (Reis 1995, 73–128; Castillo 2016, 25). In the wake of this insurrection, also known as the Malê Rebellion, the municipal government deported 200 instigators, both enslaved and freed Africans, to the Bight of Benin. Furthermore, Castillo (2016) also states that Bahia’s provincial magistrature passed a law that curtailed free Africans’ economic ascension and put all such individuals under surveillance. As a result, an increasing number of Afro-Brazilians applied for passports in Salvador and to a lesser extent in Rio de Janeiro. Their departures after the suppression of the revolt occurred in stages. In November 1835, the Brazilian slaver Felix de Souza agreed to help the Bahia state resettle intending emigrants in the Lusophone community in Dahomey. The second phase mainly consisted of men who in the 1840s went back and forth between Brazil and what the travelers called the ‘African Coast’. Lagos became the city of choice for the settlers two decades later. Some of these immigrants also left Lagos for Ouidah, Porto-Novo, and Agoue in Dahomey in present-day Benin as well as cities such as Lomé in Togoland and Jamestown, a borough of Accra in the Gold Coast. See Sino 2013, 177–82 for a reference to the Afro-Brazilians who settled in Benin.

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the 1870s, former slaves from Southern Africa also came via the island of Saint Helena (Brown 1964, 57). Between 1854 and 1857, the Christian Missionary Society and the British government resettled 168 Afro-Cubans in Lagos (ibid.). The Lagosians called these Spanish-speaking newcomers Àgùdà also, obscuring the cultural differences between the Afro-Brazilians and the Afro-Cubans. And, as Solimar Otero has correctly noted: Though the Brazilian cultural aspects tend to dominate some visible forms of Aguda social performance (like the Boa masquerade held in Lagos every year), the emergence of the Aguda culture represents a unique synthesis of many social and cultural diasporic groups (Otero 2010, 88). In 1859 alone, the total number of Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Cuban families in Lagos was 130 (Smith 1978, 32). That number would escalate. As the following pages will demonstrate, the Afro-Brazilians had a strong impact on the built environment of their new homes in Africa. Their edifices in Lagos and Southwest Nigeria exemplify the life and work of these individuals across ethnic and social boundaries. The institution of slavery influenced the architectural interventions of the Àgùdà and the indigenes of Southwest Nigeria in consequential ways. Once abolition was promulgated, the British Navy and American West Africa Squadrons increasingly intercepted transatlantic slave shipments, freeing the human cargo and resettling them in Sierra Leone (Lloyd 1949, 175–176). There, some of the freed slaves attended missionary schools and Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone, established in 1827 by the Church Missionary Society and Durham University to educate freed slaves before they were relocated to Lagos. Yet the Sàró and Àgùdà’s ancestral ties to Southwest Nigeria did not prevent Lagosians from despising them. The historian Spencer Brown cites an instance when both groups had better relations with the British colonists (Brown 1964, 56). In one of his dispatches to Lord Clarendon, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in London in 1854, Benjamin Campbell, the British Empire’s envoy to the Bight of Benin (1853-1859), wrote:

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The addition of these self-emancipated Africans from the Brazils and from Cuba to the population of Lagos is a great desideratum, as, by their habits of industry and their semi-civilized manners and condition, they form a good counter pose to the leaven of the Old Slave population of this place, as they will remain apart and unmixed with its old feuds and animosities (Verger 1976, 544 f.). Moreover, the Lagosians called the Sàró ‘Òyìnbó Dúdú’, meaning ‘White Black’ because they thought that the Sàró’s manners, dress and buildings showed a disdain for local cultures (Brown 1964, p. 38). The Lagosian Afro-Brazilians established commercial networks with their Gold Coast and Dahomean counterparts, and the construction of the Catholic cathedrals in Elmina in modern Ghana and Ouidah in present-day Benin was among the results of such partnerships.4 Little is known about these two churches beyond the fact that two Lagos-based Afro-Brazilian master masons, Lázaro Borges da Silva and Francisco Nobre, worked on them (Vaughan-Richards 1993, 265). In addition to da Silva and Nobre there were other Afro-Brazilian artisans, builders, architects, blacksmiths, goldsmiths, painters and stonemasons. Some of these people acquired their training as slave construction workers in Brazil. Others learned their trades from one another. In Lagos, they used an idiosyncratic Neo-Baroque architecture – mosques, inspired by the churches and houses that they had worked on, repaired or seen in city centers in Brazil. Not limiting their settlements to the West African coast, they also migrated farther to inland kingdoms, and built structures for monarchs, merchants, contractors, chieftains and soldiers who found the new architecture of the Lagos foreigners attractive. These buildings constituted the second wave of an architectural revolution started by the Brazilian settlers (Akinsemoyin/ Vaughan-Richards 1977, 16ff.).5 This new architecture differs in many ways from the local architecture that had existed in colonial Southwest Nigeria 4

See Quayson 2014, 47–48 and Vaughn-Richards 1993, 265. A Dahomean was an inhabitant of the kingdom of Dahomey in present-day Benin.

5

Additionally, the Afro-Brazilians introduced cuisine such as feijao de coco and mingao; some were tailors, while others organized classical music concerts and dramatic performances.

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before and during the emergence of the returnees’ built environment. Another question would be how the Afro-Brazilians’ architecture differed from the colonial structures also present in the region at the time. To answer these questions, Cordelia Osasona (Osasona 2005, 4–18) argues that the building typologies of the two types of architecture were distinct. Some Afro-Brazilians had multistoried buildings, while the Yorùbá restricted themselves to structures with one floor. Yet the outlines of the Afro-Brazilians’ floor plans in the hinterland of colonial Southwest Nigeria show the architects’ preference for basic geometrical shapes such as squares and rectangles. The labyrinthine plans of Yorùbá palaces and houses, on the other hand – allowing for the gradual addition of spaces that, according to John Vlach (1976), were central to Yorùbá architectural planning in former eras – were a method of design that the Afro-Brazilians did not pursue. It is possible that the Àgùdà erected multistory structures as an icon of power in height that rivaled – on a different level – the horizontal sense of grandeur that the clusters of conglomerations of spaces around courtyards created in Yorùbá traditional architecture. One other difference between the Afro-Brazilians’ homes and Yorùbá traditional architecture was in the design of doors.6 Yorùbá builders created bas-relief sculpted doors in their palaces, while some of the Àgùdà style homes had doors with incisions of shields. The doors of the latter had entablatures above them, architraves, mullions on the surface and shield-like engravings. Perhaps the Afro-Brazilians used such symbols to communicate a visual form of power that the indigenous people of the kingdoms were unfamiliar with because they had not seen those icons on doors before. A cursory look at the Afro-Brazilians’ houses in colonial Nigeria may lead one to conjecture that the structures had spaces that reflected the decreasing size of families and the increasing importance of the nuclear family as a single unit (Vlach 1984, 14). Nonetheless, the plans of the multistory colonial residences reveal a progression from spacious public foyers to narrower spaces in the rear (Akinsẹmoyin/Vaughan Richards 1977, 12 ff.). It 6

The Yorùbá mentioned here differ from the Lagosians and typically refer to residents of the Ọ̀yọ́ Empire.

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seems that the Àgùdà houses, in contrast, maintain basic shapes such as the square and rectangle as the foundational form for the floor plan – a compact form that allows for a centralized atrium where families can perform semi-private, perhaps familial activities. The Àgùdà have moldings on their structures, while such features are nearly absent on the colonial houses. Before the Àgùdà resettled in Africa, they renamed their Brazilian neighborhoods after their hometowns in West and South Africa for nostalgic reasons. Examples include Ìj ẹ̀ṣà-Tẹdo and Nago after the names of cities in Colonial Nigeria. Saúde in the Nazaré borough of Salvador, for instance, was formerly known as Ìj ẹ̀ṣà-Tẹdo in the slave trade era just like its older counterpart in Lagos (Cid Teixeira, personal communication, March 2012). Additionally, Candomblé, the Afro-Brazilian religion, has a temple entitled Ilê Axé Opó Àfọ̀ njá, which is translated as the “House of Power sustained by Àfọ̀njá” in honor of the Ọ ̀ yọ́ general who warded off the Fulani kingdom’s attempt to invade the Ọ ̀ yọ́ Empire in the nineteenth century (Lovejoy 2004, 55ff.). These place names attest to the manumitted people’s desire to claim West African polities and heroic personages as part of their history and heritage. Paradoxically, these settlers did the reverse when they established themselves in Lagos by, for instance, naming one borough Pernambuco, after a state in northeastern Brazil (Da Cunha 1985, 44).

“THE HOUSE THAT MAKES YOU REMOVE YOUR HAT WHEN ADMIRING ITS HEIGHT”: THE Ẹ̀ BÙN HOUSE BY BALTHAZAR DOS REIS AND HERBERT MACAULAY

Some of the immigrants’ unease with colonial rule fueled a sense of alienation within their new urban environment and influenced their use of Àgùdà artisans to create interpretations of pediments and other curved exterior elements found on Brazilian Baroque cathedrals. The Àgùdà may have used the latter to create ornate façades that were a contrast to the rectilinear quality of most of the Europeans’ structures, such as the German House, which may have been built in the latter half of the nineteenth

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Fig. 1: Ẹ̀ bùn House’s front and South façades in Lagos built in 1913. Photo taken by Pierre Verger in the 1970s

century (Vaughan-Richards 1993, 253). Only in the highly decorative structures that the Àgùdà and Sàró built – and that showcased their modernity – could they be themselves and feel centered. But houses too carried a lot of weight, as representations of their patrons’ ideals and aspirations, cultural and religious choices, as well as historic circumstances. One Sàró, as will be seen, created a place that embodied his religious faith and his ancestry.

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In 1913, the auctioneer Andrew Wilkinson Thomas hired his cousin, Herbert Macaulay, a Sàró architect/surveyor, and Balthazar dos Reis, an Àgùdà carpenter, to build his Ẹ ̀ bùn House in Lagos7 (fig. 1, 3). Kunle Thomas, the patron’s descendant and author of his biography, notes that the auctioneer ordered the inscription “Ẹ ̀ bùn House” to be engraved on an arch leading to the entrance because he saw it as a gift from God (Thomas 2007, 65). The house was destroyed by fire in the 1980s (Alongẹ 1992, 45). Its owner entertained King Akίtóyè’s successor and his chiefs in the house (Abraham 1958, 358; Thomas 2007, 67–68). Born in 1856, Andrew Thomas was the grandson of the Alààfin, the king of the Ọ ̀ yọ́ Empire, and his father was an ex-slave who resettled in Ibadan from Sierra Leone (Thomas 2007, 19) (fig. 2). In 1881, Herbert Macaulay worked as an indexer and clerical assistant in the Public Works Department in Lagos (Tamuno 1976, 14). Three years later he was promoted to the rank of draftsman and clerk of Crown Grants and drew the attention of his superiors, who sent him to England on a government scholarship for further training (Thomas 1946, 3). The Crown Grants office earmarked land in Lagos Colony for various functions, and Macaulay’s expertise in developing land surveys of the city served as a foundation for the engineering and architectural skills he would later acquire. In fact, he may have been the most accomplished architect practicing in the colony in that era. From 1890 to 1893 he studied civil engineering under G. D. Bellamy, a Briton in Plymouth. The man in charge of the construction of the Ẹ ̀ bùn House was Balthazar dos Reis, who also built the Balógun’s House in Ìjẹ̀bu-Òde, a kingdom 70 miles north of Lagos.8 Adept at many construction trades, dos Reis received a medal for cabinetmaking at the Colonial Exhibition of India held in Kensington, England, in 1887 (Da Cunha 1985, 74). His membership in the Black Catholic Brotherhood of Artisans in Salvador before resettling in Lagos showed a concern for the plight of ex-slaves in that city (Nishida 1998, 339). He also built the bishop’s throne and the high altar piece in the Holy Cross Cathedral in Lagos that was inaugurated in 1881 (Thomas 2007, 66; Láotan 1943, 14). 7

Pictures of Balthazar dos Reis have not survived.

8

Balógun is a Yorùbá chieftaincy title.

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Fig. 2: Andrew Thomas, owner of Ẹ̀ bùn House (1856 –1924) Fig. 3: Columns of the arcade of Ẹ̀ bùn House at the corner of the North and West (front) façades. Photo taken by Pierre Verger, 1977

The caption beside A.B. Láotan’s image of Ẹ ̀bùn House in his article entitled ‘Brazilian Influence on Lagos’ says: “This fantastic plaster work at Ọdúnfá Street was executed by the last of the Brazilian craftsmen about 1913” (Láotan/Bascom 1943, 163) (fig. 3). Contrary to Láotan’s claim, I argue that it was Balthazar dos Reis, not João Baptista da Costa, who supervised the construction of the Ẹ ̀ bùn mansion. First, the historian Olúyọmi MacGregor, the head of the Brazilian Descendants Association, told me in an interview in 2011 that local oral history suggests that dos Reis executed the project. According to him, Àgùdà oral traditions are clear about the legacies of dos Reis and João Baptista da Costa (O. MacGregor, personal communication, November 26, 2011).9 If MacGregor’s testimony is true, dos Reis took care to clad the Ẹ ̀ bùn House with brick dressed in stucco and used wooden louvers on the win9

João Baptista da Costa was another Afro-Brazilian master mason who started the Central Mosque in Lagos.

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dows.10 Its west-oriented façade had a five-sided projection like a three-story oriel window flanked by two receding equidistant walls. The five-sided projection also had three rows of large Venetian windows facing Ọdúnfá Street. The arched windows on the upper floors had plaster bas-reliefs with floral motifs. That pattern recurred on almost all the windows, including one molded on top of an arch built along the fence, which also faced Ọdúnfá Street. A Star of David molding and an excerpt from the Twenty-Third Psalm in Yorùbá written on the wall next to the front façade’s left flanking wall underscores Thomas’ translation of a Judeo-Christian heritage into a local context. The writing on the building envelope says: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” Other walls were clad with ashlar stone facing and had moldings of other star designs, a reference to the fact that Andrew Thomas had Ìràwọ̀ – that is, royal ancestry (B. Lawal, personal communication, July 20, 2010). The crowns of the Ọ ́ ọ̀n   i, monarch of Ifẹ̀ , the ancestral land of the Yorùbá, have Ìràwọ̀, as seen in fourteenth-century busts of the ruler. Embedded in the center of each window jamb was a flower, and different bas-relief flower patterns adorned other parts of the building as well. Pilasters flanked the windows on the receding walls of the front façade; on top of these walls there is a small parapet, meeting at the foot of another receding wall above. A terrace edged with a balustrade crowned the central wall and once enshrined a cupola that was later removed. Dos Reis erected an arcade of three columns and a pilaster, with spherical bases of chamfered rusticated plaster (fig. 3). The columns’ composite capitals (part Ionic and part Corinthian) had volutes jutting out at four corners; in between them was a flower with two leaves, partly resting on the cornice above. The shafts of the columns had thin grooves that joined the capitals to the bases while each end terminated with a leaf decoration. Below the volutes were leaf-like shoots interspersed with petal-like features. Some of the windows had pilasters of rusticated plaster that mirrored the pattern of the columns’ bases. The arches of the arcade originally had fanlights, although only one was still in existence when pictures of the edifice were taken in 1977. The stair10 There is no evidence to suggest that dos Reis supervised a team during the construction of the house. Yet the structure’s size leads me to suggest that he did not work alone.

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case in the interior justifies the claims of a contemporary Àgùdà who said that Àgùdà freemasons built grand staircases in the center of their houses at the turn of the twentieth century (K. Gançallo, personal communication, August 20, 2011). One can infer, despite the absence of the house’s floor plans, that there might have been a central corridor running along the staircase’s axis. What cannot be questioned is the popularity of central staircases in the homes of the Àgùdà and the Sàró. It is possible that it is a reflection of the fort architecture on the shores of the Gold Coast. The Àgùdà’s plasterwork on Ẹ ̀ bùn House reveals the continuous acceptance of classicism even as the columns in the arcade deviated from all classical norms and orders. The homage to Corinthian capitals evident in the volutes was not extended to the shafts, which were not fluted. The pillars show how immigrants distinguished their buildings from the Greek-Revival style buildings of the European residents, such as the aforementioned German House. Neighbors called Ẹ ̀ bùn House “Pẹ̀tẹ́ si Anduru” (“Andrew’s upstairs” in Yorùbá) and “Ilé Àwòṣίfìlà” (“The house that makes you lose your cap when admiring its height”) (Aradeon 1976, 44). They even coined the aphorism “Alamoga bi Pẹ̀tẹ́si Anduru” (“If something is great it will be like Andrew’s House”), implying that the structure’s height fully expressed the importance of authority in Ifá (Thomas 2007, 66). Most of the surrounding houses consisted of one-story structures capped by steep roofs. Thus, the contrast with these houses must have reinforced the grand impact of the Ẹ ̀ bùn mansion on the street. Thomas capitalized on his neighbors’ perceptions of the Sàró to communicate his way of life to the public, melding his religious (Christian) beliefs with his royal roots in the process, and showing that he was indeed unique among them. His house’s idiosyncrasies embodied his uniqueness, that exotic and exalted persona that the locals bestowed upon him due to his connection to a Yorùbá monarch. Unlike other Sàró, he was thrilled at the idea that neighbors thought he came from another place, even as he also embraced his roots. Thus, the history of Ẹ ̀ bùn House reveals how the Àgùdà and Sàró created a building that visually captured a struggle to embrace their status as immigrants as they also tried to reconnect with their ancestral pasts. In other words, the archi-

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tectural design was further proof of the Àgùdà and Sàró’s permanent search for a home in Lagos Colony, while relying on habits, artistic practices and technologies they came to learn in the diaspora.

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Local Architect. Global Architect. Migrant Architect. Ancestral Architect. Binational Architect. Spanish Architect. Colonial Architect. Diasporic Architect. Transnational Architect. Displaced Architect. Chinese Architect. Émigré Architect. Expat Architect. Indigenous Architect. International Architect. Senegalese Architect. Mobile Architect. National Architect. Postcolonial Architect. Japanese Architect. Post-migrant Architect. Regional Architect. Immigrant Architect.

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Writing about architects very often makes use of adjectives. Architects are introduced to the reader by way of very specific adjectives. These are discursive tools, as they place architects in architecture discourse at large, including architectural history. Tracing and analyzing such adjectives, like national, émigré, local, diasporic or immigrant, in the writings on architecture history, in particular in survey histories of architecture, uncovers the epistemic regimes constructing the subject position of the architect. Measured against the local-regional-national-international-global scale, architects are placed in territories of meaning, significance and relevance. Such adjectives are the semantic infrastructure in support of the epistemic regimes that marked the beginnings of architecture history as a discipline bound up with the formation of nation states and patriarchal-colonial-extractive capitalism.

TELLING ADJECTIVES

Adjectives are telling. We might want to call them telling adjectives. They construct the way in which the nouns they precede are understood. They are the driving discursive force behind the orientations toward the noun. Such orientations are powerful. Such orientations are ideological. What expectations are raised? What meanings are produced? What kind of knowledge is valued? Telling adjectives are extremely effective. They convey what someone or something is like. More than that, they express what someone or something is really like. What, then, do adjectives such as local, national, international or global tell us about the architects they describe and define? What do adjectives such as ancestral, diasporic, émigré, immigrant or post-migrant tell us about the architects they describe and define? And what do these adjectives tell us about the way discourse is governed by specific epistemic regimes? What are the architectural histories they promote? What are the long stories such adjectives are able to tell through just a single word?

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The following essay is an exercise in critical thought and discursive inquiry on the power of adjectives in architectural history writing. In particular, the interest here is on the way in which the subjects of architectural production, i.e., architects, are produced discursively through the long-standing practice of using adjective-based orientations.

PLACING IN ARCHITECTURE HISTORY: DRAWING EPISTEMIC BORDERLINES

While the above list of telling adjectives ranging from global to post-migrant might seem fairly exhaustive, it is merely a beginning. When it comes to placing architects in architectural discourse, it only scratches the very surface of long-standing and continued “epistemic violence.” (Spivak 1985, 251) This list seeks to raise awareness for the use made of such telling adjectives, as they result in constructing the position of architects and placing them in architecture history. Such listing points to conventions and traditions, very often tacitly acknowledged and reproduced when it comes to the choice of adjectives. Yet these choices are not fully understood in epistemic terms, they are not thoroughly questioned when it comes to the knowledge traditions they continue. This speaks to the importance of critical discursive inquiry, new and radical histories of epistemology of architecture history, and the search for new models of thinking, writing, theorizing and contextualizing the subjects of architects in architecture discourse. Listing such telling adjectives is a first methodological step as to how such a beginning of a critical reflection of the discursive field of architecture history at large could take shape. Frequency and infrequency of use, and the near-total absence of some adjectives are, of course, very telling. Introducing new telling adjectives will differentiate and expand the stories told through them. Yet this might not be enough. Merely adding adjectives might not fully change the underlying and still powerful semantic structure of the often used and much repeated adjectives, such as international ar-

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chitect or global architect. Telling adjectives are used to draw borderlines. They function much like gatekeepers and shape the master narratives and their canon formation in architecture history.

HOW THE WORLD IS SHAPED IS ARCHITECTURE

All the adjectives chosen in the above list are a response to this shaping. They are all spatial. They are all territorial. This is acknowledgement of the power of architecture in shaping the world, but also recognizes that the discursive construction of its history relies on a fully spatialized and territorialized apparatus, what I call semantic infrastructure, in its attribution of meaning and allocation of importance. Telling adjectives are most potent for constructing the narratives in which architecture history is told, taught and reproduced over time. While some of these adjectives, such as international or global, form part of the staple discursive elements in the writings of architectural historians, architectural theorists or curators of architecture, others, such as émigré or immigrant, are less frequently used in canonical architecture histories, and still others, including some that are new concepts in research, such as diasporic, postcolonial or post-migrant, are rarely used at all, as the author of this text has observed over a period of the last thirty years. This brings the implications of the archive of power stored in these adjectives and the legacies of epistemic violence in the hegemonic construction of architecture history to the forefront. Such adjectives act as epistemic drivers. They have been used as hegemonic strangleholds, which have informed and shaped hierarchies and exclusions when placing, misplacing or not placing the subject of the architect in the history of architecture. Therefore, telling adjectives are powerful tools to intervene into and, ultimately, change and transform the way in which architecture history is shaped and told. All the adjectives listed are, as noted before, spatial and territorial. This acknowledges that architecture, as is commonly held, results in the production of spatial properties and therefore has much to do with how space

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is occupied and identified. Therefore, architecture is bound up, in material just as much as in immaterial terms, with the production of space. Going beyond the single architectural object, architectural effects extend to processes of territorialization. This includes the spatial organization of territories just as much as their identification through the power of cultural signification and representation. Spatial properties therefore are intrinsically associated with temporal qualities, with cycles of innovation and tradition. Spatial properties are ordered along timelines, resulting in the production of historical time. Spatial properties appear as temporal ordering. Such spatiotemporal ordering in canonic and hegemonic Western architecture history has been strongly connected to the concept of style. Banister Fletcher’s 1896 A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method was formative for the professional field of architectural history rooted in a linear evolution of historical styles and a prehistory of so-called ancient styles outside of the very concept of history. The imperial gaze of coloniality’s epistemic violence excludes certain periods and architectures from history and locks Ancient American or Egyptian architecture, to name two of Fletcher’s examples here, to a temporal void outside of historical time. This will concern us in more detail later in the section on territory, epoch and style, which examines the epistemological dimension of such ordering as it was foundational to the formation of architecture history as an academic discipline and scholarly field.

SCALING: LOCAL, REGIONAL, NATIONAL, INTERNATIONAL, GLOBAL

Let me now turn to such terms as local, regional, national, international, global. On the most general level, the local-to-global scale seems to provide some basic information about the where of an architect’s work. When the work of architects is described in these terms, architects are placed according to the territory their work occupies. While some architects’ work can mainly be found locally, very often in the urban or rural environment where the architect lives, other architects’ work is spread over many different sites

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and can be located in different parts of the world. Referring to someone as a local architect, a national architect or a global architect renders architects legible as both territorializing and territorialized producers. Their work is measured through the local-to-global scale. Yet things are not just merely about the physical territory, the square meters or cubic meters an architect’s work occupies. As categories these telling adjectives are rating and ranking devices placing architects on a scale of importance within architectural history. And they can be complexly mixed, or even be used in productive tension. A local architect’s work might be considered of global significance. An architect praised as a global architect might not receive commissions locally. To illustrate what I am thinking about, I will give two examples of architects who have both been awarded the most prestigious prize in architecture, the Pritzker Prize. One of them was celebrated globally precisely because he was a local architect. One of them was celebrated globally yet was rarely considered the architect of choice to build anything locally. Wang Shu was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2012. “Shu is a local architect,” ArchDaily writes in February 2012, and the article argues that Shu’s appreciation for “smaller regions where cultural identity still runs strong” forms the basis for his architecture’s significance. (Cilento 2012)1 In 2004, Zaha Hadid was the first woman ever to be named for the Pritzker Prize. Four years earlier, Hadid, who had established her London office in 1980, was invited to design the Serpentine Pavilion. Hers was the first of the Serpentine Gallery’s annual temporary summer pavilions commissioned in Kensington Gardens, all by international architects who had not realized a building in England at the time of invitation. These two examples show that telling adjectives don’t just speak about the location on the map where one builds or the extent of physical territory occupied by an architect’s work. These adjectives are very much employed to define territories of importance, reach, significance, value and meaning. There might be architects with very little built work, yet they are still considered international architects. Or there might be a local architect who 1

It is important to remember here that Amateur Architecture Studio was founded in 1998 by Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu, partners in architecture and in life, yet the prize went to Wang Shu only.

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is never even referred to as a local architect, with the work remaining below the architecture history radar. Or there might be architects who commercially produce architecture on a global scale, yet are never included in the global architect category as employed in the discourse of architecture history. Building on each other and referencing each other, such telling adjectives enforce the power dynamics within much of academic architectural history writing, but also in architecture criticism, journalism and, more recently, blogging and PR materials. They effectively measure the subject of the architect as it appears in architectural history against the territory in which their architecture is important epistemically and discursively. Inquiring more closely into these epistemic and discursive dimensions of the local to global scale moves us to better understand that these adjectives not only speak to space and territory, but equally to temporality and to style. This, then, brings us to the triangulation of territory, style and epoch effectively underpinning much of canonical Western architectural history writing. Time to turn to the history of architectural history.2

ARCHITECTURE HISTORY: TERRITORY, STYLE, EPOCH

The early days of instituting architectural history as an academic discipline date back to the mid and late 19th century. Anchored in the structures of thought and the intellectual tools developed in tandem with the formation of the nation state, colonial imperialism and extractivism, and industrial capitalism, architectural history was developed in tandem with art history, archeology and the preservation of monuments. These formed part of 2

The historiography of architecture history, in particular a discursive inquiry into its ideological orientations, is still a nascent field. Important contributions include Alina A. Payne’s 1999 essay “Architectural History and the History of Art: A Suspended Dialogue,” Andrew Leach’s 2010 book What is Architectural History? and the 2014–2015 research project “Mapping Architectural Criticism, 20th and 21st Centuries: A Cartography” funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche in France, http://www.agence-nationale-recherche.fr/Project-ANR-14-CE310019. Accessed 4 December 2018.

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a host of new academic disciplines specific to the epistemic orientations of knowledge power the nation-state was built on. Its foundations were as much physical-territorial as they were immaterial-epistemic-narrative. I would like to introduce here the spatial metaphor of the cage. “The national cage is a term, first used by political economist Ronen Palan, to describe the combination of geographic, constructed, and legal forms that define the parameters of the nation-state, forming a spatial cage, […]” (Axel et al. 2018, 28). The cage helps us understand how academic scholarship and knowledge production according to newly formed disciplines acted as a form of containment holding together certain types of knowing while effectively excluding others. This follows the spatial regime of the nation-state as a cage. The formation of disciplines such as art history, architecture history or literature history, to name just a few, can best be described as caging with spatial cages of nations, locales or regions, and temporal cages of epochs, eras or periods. These newly instituted academic disciplines of knowledge power formed part of the epistemic and cultural infrastructure of nation-building. Cages, understood as structures of containment and as ordering frameworks, informed how nation-states and colonies were shaped. As Michael Mann has observed, the European territory was increasingly “caged” by nation-states throughout the 19th century. (See Mann 1993, xi) Such caging extended to non-European territories and to the spatial formation of the colony, the reservation and the plantation.

CAGING: NATION-STATE, CITIZENSHIP, AND THE FORMATION OF ARCHITECTS

Nation-state caging is a governmental process through which lines of territory are drawn, and procedures and measures of statistics and taxation are employed to make inhabitants, trees or properties countable and taxable. Architectural objects were placed and accounted for just as much as human subjects were put in their place. New academic disciplines, such as

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architecture history, formed part of such inventorial narratives bound up with nation-state cultures, histories and legacy making. These disciplines formed part of such placing and ordering on an epistemic level. Caging impacted on the idea of the architect as a shaper of territory, important to building the nation-state and to producing colonial space. Modern architecture education, as architecture historian Ulrich Pfammatter has argued in his 2000 book The Making of the Modern Architect and Engineer. The Origins and Development of a Scientific and Industrially Oriented Education, links the making of architecture to the idea of citizenship. The birth of this new and modern architect during the period of the Enlightenment was rooted in the introduction of polytechnical education. “The invention of a systematic and universal teaching model that was to serve the general public, its first institutionalization at the Parisian École Polytechnique in 1794/95 […] brought about the modern architect.” (Pfammatter 2000, 8) The École Polytechnique in Paris, which first opened in 1874/75, remained an all-male institution until 1970, which has much to do with the concept of citizenship that formed the ideological basis for the idea of the modern architect. The concept of citizenship as developed by the French Revolution informed the idea of the modern architect as a model citizen who serves the common wealth and the public good. It is crucial to remember that the very idea of universal citizenship was based on exclusionary premises. Classed, gendered and racialized subjects were not citizens. Feminist citizenship historian Joan Wallach Scott has analyzed the exclusions characteristic to the modern idea of citizenship. “Slaves, wage-earners and women were initially ruled out of active citizenship because they were considered dependents, and autonomy was a prerequisite for individuality. Even when dependency was redefined, when slaves were freed and wage-earners enfranchised (in 1848) women remained unacceptable as citizens” (Scott 2005, 37). The architects whose work shaped the nation-state, the common wealth, the public good were considered model citizens. The idea of citizenship was the premise for the education of the modern architect. Therefore, from the very inception, the profession was classed, gendered, racialized. Architecture was fully implicated in the nation-state and colony-building, and the idea

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that formed the subject position of the architect was tied to the nation-state, with the architect considered a model citizen. Therefore, telling adjectives construct and reinforce the architect as nation-builder, colony-builder or region-builder, and speak to the ideology of citizenship underpinning the modern professional architect. Not only the education for the professional practice of architecture was, from its very inception, classed, gendered and racialized, but also architecture history. The beginnings of architecture history are closely tied to the systematic and universal model of educating the modern architect at polytechnical schools. In Vienna, the Polytechnical Institute, today’s University of Technology, planned to include art history in its architecture curriculum as early as 1810, with first courses taught in 1849/50 and a first professorship installed in 1867.3 It is important to understand that knowing the history of architecture was seen as pertinent for the practice of architecture. Such a reach into practice can also be seen at the department of art history with regard to the classification and preservation of national monuments. The institutionalization of art history at the University of Vienna dates back to 1847, with the first professor appointed in 1852.4 The department was closely linked to the incipient movement of working toward the preservation of historical monuments and heritage sites. Architectural history, in historical and epistemological terms, established its knowledge production as stylistics. This was very much bound up with the idea of locating style as specific to locale, region or the nation-state. The regime of spatial ordering also extended to time. Epochs, eras, periods are the temporal cages established for stylistic timelines in architecture history. This enforced a teleological concept of time, owed to telos-driven conception as developed in Hegelian philosophy. Style was a method to territorialize and temporalize.

3

Forschungsbereich Kunstgeschichte am Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Bauforschung und Denkmalpflege der Technischen Universität Wien 2018, https://kunstgeschichte.tuwien.ac.at/ forschung/projekte/#id_cpt_item_761. Accessed 2 December 2018.

4

https://kunstgeschichte.univie.ac.at/ueber-uns/geschichte-des-instituts/. Accessed 2  December 2018.

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The German term for stylistics is Stilkunde. This term is instructive to critically understand how style relates to the ‘epistemic violence’ and the archives of regimes of power knowledge. Stil, the first part of this composite word, translates into style. Kunde, the second part, means academic knowledge and teachings. The term originated in the Netherlands and was adopted by the German language from Dutch during the 17th century. (Duden Fremdwörterbuch) Architectural history as Stilkunde is the disciplinary knowledge and the teachings of style. Style is the combination of distinctive and characteristic features. Style not only corresponds with the local-to-global scale, but also with the temporal, and teleological, ordering of architecture history into epochs and eras. Such periods of time are to be understood as forms of temporal caging. They are analogous to spatialized caging as we have seen it at work in the formation of the nation-state or the colony. For these temporal cages called epoch or era, specific stylistic developments are singled out to define the architectural features characteristic to such a temporal period. We might think here of examples such as the Renaissance style or the Historicist style or the International Style. Spatial just as much as temporal cages rely on borders and boundaries. Lines of inclusion and exclusion are firmly drawn through caging. While it has to be stressed that architectural history writing for specialized audiences in the academic context has witnessed much critical change since the second half of the 20th century with a large number of publications introducing and pursuing new lines of inquiry and new sets of questions such as power, economy, coloniality, ecology, labor, gender, class, race or disability, the stronghold of the earlier paradigm of Stilkunde with its traditional conventions which respond to the local-to-global scale and the idea of timelines are still clearly felt when it comes to the curricula of architectural history courses and to the dissemination to broader audiences through media such as architectural guide books, or even today’s online architecture databanks or blogs. Traditionally, the hegemonic cages of style, territory and epoch held a collection of singular architectural objects and singled out architects, either individuals or schools. Such singling out lies at the heart of architecture history. The idea of singularity is bestowed onto the single architectural object just

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as much as onto the individual subject of the architect. Taken together, they serve as exemplars for their specific contribution to a particular territory, a specific time, a style. Therefore, the starting point for much architectural history writing is the selection that identifies such architectural objects and architectural subjects, cages them and ties them to a register of local to global.

UNSETTLING AND DECAGING: TOWARD SCHOLARLY ACTIVISM IN ARCHITECTURE HISTORY

The triangulation of territory, epoch and style has structured and defined much of architecture history, locking architect subjects and architectural objects in epistemic cages tied to the long-lasting effects of the territorial regimes of the nation-state, capitalism, colonialism and imperialism. Therefore, changing the value of telling adjectives is a discursive epistemic practice that calls for critical and activist scholarship in architecture history. Historically, local architecture or indigenous architecture was considered traditional building knowledge, was even called architecture without architects. This very much resembles the art historical distinction between the idea of art as specific to the West and all other forms of aesthetic and artistic expression placed outside this category. Examples of such epistemic violence annihilating the subjects who produced non-Western or traditional architectures include Bernard Rudofsky’s 1965 book and exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, which was titled Architecture without Architects (Rudofsky 1965), or Raoul Hausmann’s book on premodern architecture and traditional habitat in Architecte. Ibiza. 1933–1936 (Hausmann 1990). While non-Western or traditional architecture was considered architecture without architects, textbooks or overviews on architecture by architects were organized according to the territory-style-period triangulation. From Banister Fletcher’s standard textbook A History of Architecture, first published in 1896 (Fletcher 1996), to Hans Ibelings’ overview European Architecture since 1890 (Ibelings 2011), caging determines the way

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knowledge on architecture is constructed and disseminated. The widely used 2010 textbook A Global History of Architecture, written by global architectural history teaching collaborative Francis D.K. Ching, Mark Jarzombek and Vikramaditya Prakash, clearly marks the move away from such caging. Suggesting “time-cuts” (Ching 2010: xii) for their global survey, the authors aim to overcome the mechanisms of regional or nation-state caging just as much as the ordering through style. In their own words, their scholarly and teaching endeavor is about “breaking free of the Eurocentric canonical categories that structure the current historiographical narrative.”5 My concluding argument here is not to give up telling adjectives. Quite on the contrary. They are powerful tools for storytelling and for history making. Much rather, the argument is for critical scholarship and activist architecture history writing, for unsettling and decaging telling adjectives. A broader understanding of the epistemic violence linked to the historical origins of the architect as model citizen important to nation-building, and by extension colony-building, is very much needed. And a move toward expanding telling adjectives is pertinent for moving beyond the local-to-global impasse. Even though, as stated earlier, there have been significant shifts when it comes to knowledge production in architecture history, with new fields of inquiry opened up and new methods and perspectives introduced for analysis, much work remains to be done: Firstly, writing the historiography of architecture history as a transhistorical and transnational account of the discipline since the mid-19th century; secondly, analyzing in-depth the triangulation of territory, epoch and style as spatializing, temporalizing and epistemic caging, and its production of epistemic violence specific to the field of architecture history; thirdly, unsettling the hegemony of currently still much used telling adjectives along the local-to-global scale; fourthly, introducing more and new telling adjectives such as, but by no means limited to, binational, diasporic, displaced, émigré, expat, immigrant, migrant, mobile, post-colonial, post-migrant, transnational; fifthly, expanding and mixing the repertoire of such telling adjectives: the local-activist architect, 5

http://gahtc.org/pages/about-gahtc/. Accessed 2 December 2018.

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the global-immigrant architect, the queer-diasporic architect, the feminist-migrant architect, the international-activist architect …  This would open up a radically different epistemic approach toward architecture history, its narratives and its influence in the practice and discourse of making architecture in the present historical moment. Transgressive and emergent architecture history practices oriented toward unsettling and decaging will make it possible to speak of the subject of the architect differently, and therefore ultimately lead to a different idea of who was, who is and who can become an architect.

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REFERENCES – Agence Nationale de la Recherche “Mapping Architectural Criticism, 20th and 21st Centuries: A Cartography.” ANR, http://www.agence-nationale-recherche.fr/Project-ANR-14CE31-0019. Accessed 4 December 2018. – Axel, Nick, et al. “Nation.” Dimensions of Citizenship, exh.-cat. US Pavilion Biennale Architettura 2018, Venice, edited by Nick Axel et al., Inventory Press, 2018, pp. 103–105. – Ching, Francis D.K. et al. A Global History of Architecture, John Wiley & Sons, 2010. – Cilento, Karen. “The Local Architect/Wang Shu.”, 2012, https://www.archdaily. com/212424/the-local-architect-wang-shu. Accessed 4 November 2018. – Fletcher, Banister. A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method. Routledge, 1996. – Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative. “About.” gahtc, http://gahtc.org/ pages/about-gahtc/. Accessed 2 December 2018. – Hausmann, Raoul. Architecte. Ibiza, 1933–1936. Archives d’Architecture Moderne, 1990. – Ibelings, Hans. European Architecture since 1890. SUN, 2011. – Leach, Andrew. What is Architectural History? Polity Press, 2010. – Mann, Michael. The Sources of Social Power. Volume 2: The Rise of Classes and Nation States, 1760–1914. Cambridge University Press, 1993. – Payne, Alina A. “Architectural History and the History of Art. A Suspended Dialogue.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 58, no. 3, September 1999, pp. 292–299. – Pfammatter, Ulrich. The Making of the Modern Architect and Engineer. The Origins and Development of a Scientific and Industrially Oriented Occupation. Translated by Madeline Ferretti-Theilig. Birkhäuser-Publishers for Architecture, 2000. – Rudofsky, Bernard. Architecture without Architects. A Short Introduction to Non-Pedigreed Architecture. University of New Mexico Press, 1987. – Scott, Joan Wallach. “French Universalism in the Nineties.” Women and Citizenship, edited by Marilyn Friedman, Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 35–51. – Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “The Rani of Sirmur: An Essay in Reading the Archives” History and Theory, vol. 24, no. 3, October 1985, pp. 247–272.

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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES REGINA BITTNER studied cultural theory and art history at Leipzig University and received

her doctorate from the Institute for European Ethnology at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. As head of the Academy of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation she is responsible for the conceptualization and teaching of the postgraduate program for architecture and design research. She has curated numerous exhibitions on the architectural, design and cultural history of modernism and the Bauhaus. She has been the Deputy Director of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation since 2009. The main focal points of her work in research and teaching are transcultural modernism in architecture and design, and heritage studies. Her most recent publications include Craft Becomes Modern. The Bauhaus in the Making (in collaboration with Renée Padt) 2017, In Reserve: The Household. (in collaboration with Elke Krasny) 2016 and The Bauhaus in Calcutta. An Encounter of the Cosmopolitan Avant-Garde (in collaboration with Kathrin Rhomberg) 2013. ROGER M. BUERGEL is the Founding Director (in 2013) of Johann Jacobs Museum Zurich,

a private institution dedicated to the research and display of global trade routes and their artistic residue. 2018 Curator (with Sophia Prinz) of “Mobile Worlds” at the Museum of Arts and Crafts, Hamburg; 2016 Curator (with Zhang Qing) of “Suzhou Documents” (Suzhou Museum of Art, China), an exhibition about contemporary China’s ambiguous relation to its past; 2012 Curator of “Garden of Learning” in Busan (South Korea), a social experiment of sorts in transcultural curating; 2007 Artistic Director of documenta 12 in Kassel (Germany). BURCU DOGRAMACI is Professor of 20th Century and Contemporary Art at the Ludwig

Maximilian University of Munich. She is the co-founder of the research network “Art Production and Art Theory in the Age of Global Migration” established in 2013. In 2016 she was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council. The project’s focus is on the roles of six great cities, including Istanbul, Mumbai and Shanghai, as workplaces for modern émigré artists. Her research focuses on the areas of: modern and contemporary global art, photography and architecture; exile, migration and flight; fashion history and theory; live art. Her most recent books include: Handbook of Art and Global Migration Theories, Practices, and Challenges, edited with Birgit Mersmann, De Gruyter, 2019; Fotografie der Performance. Live Art im Zeitalter ihrer Reproduzierbarkeit. Fink, 2018; Passagen des Exils/Passages of Exile, edited with Elizabeth Otto, edition text + kritik, 2017; Heimat. Eine künstlerische Spurensuche. Böhlau, 2016. ELKE GAUGELE is Professor for Fashion and Styles at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

She is project leader of the Austrian Center for Fashion Research (ACfFR) and a researcher of the DFG-Network “Entangled Histories of Art and Migration: Forms, Visibilities, Agents” (2018–2021). As a cultural anthropologist, writer, curator and researcher she works internationally on postcolonial fashion studies and the ethics and politics of fashion. She has been

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awarded a Lise Meitner habilitation scholarship (2005/06) and a Maria-Goeppert-Mayer Professorship (2004). Publications include: Fashion and Postcolonial Critique, edited with Monica Titton, Sternberg, 2019; Critical Studies. Kultur- und Sozialtheorie im Kunstfeld, edited with Jens Kastner, VS, 2016; Aesthetic Politics in Fashion. Sternberg, 2014. HANNI GEIGER , Dr. phil., is an art and design theorist, research associate at Zentrum Senioren-

studium of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU). Her career steps include, among others, a university lectureship at the Fresenius University of Applied Sciences (Design Department)/ AMD Munich, Germany, and a research associateship at the Institute of Art History at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. She studied fashion and textile design in Zagreb, Croatia, as well as art history, art education and intercultural communication at the LMU Munich, where she completed her doctorate in 2014. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary art, and the interdependencies between (fashion) design, art and migration. A short selection of publications: form follows culture. Entgrenzungen im Konzept-Design Hussein Chalayans. Böhlau, 2016 (= mode global; vol. 1/ PhD thesis Munich, 2014); “Threads, Fabrics, Ornaments. Wanda Stang’s Textile Anthropologies.” Wanda Stang, exh.-cat. WHITECONCEPTS Gallery, Berlin, 2017. ALEXANDRA KARENTZOS , Dr. phil., is Professor of Art History, Fashion and Aesthetics at

the Technische Universität Darmstadt in Germany. She was previously Junior Professor of Art History at the University of Trier and Assistant Curator at the Alte Nationalgalerie and the Nationalgalerie Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum of Contemporary Art (both in Berlin). She was a fellow at Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA and at the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg Greifswald/Germany. Selected publications: Gottfried Lindauer – Painting New Zealand, Special Issue RIHA Journal, online publication, 2018; Schlüsselwerke der Postcolonial Studies. Springer VS, 2012; Topologies of Travel. Tourism – Imagination – Migration, online publication Trier University, 2010. ELKE KRASNY is a Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She holds a PhD from the

University of Reading, UK. Her research connects architecture, urbanism, contemporary art and feminisms. In 2012, she was a visiting scholar at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. Together with Lara Perry and Dorothee Richter, she organizes a series of international conferences on feminisms and curating. Exhibitions and edited volumes include In Reserve! The Household with Regina Bittner at Bauhaus Dessau and Hands-On Urbanism 1850–2012. The Right to Green at Architekturzentrum Wien and the 2012 Venice Biennale of Architecture. Recent essays include “Modernist Green. Changing Regimes of Labour.” Into the Great Wide Open, edited by Andreas Rumpfhuber, dpr-barcelona, 2017; “Citizenship and the Museum: On Feminist Acts.” Feminism and Museums, edited by Jenna C Ashton, MuseumsEtc, 2017; “Caring Activism: Collections and Assemblies.” Collecting in Time, edited by Vera Lauf and Franciska Zólyom, 2017, https://gfzk.de/2018/deonline-publikationsammeln-in-der-zeit-enonline-publication-collecting-in-time/.

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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES

EDUARD KÖGEL studied at the Faculty of Architecture, Urban and Landscape Planning at the

University of Kassel in Germany. In 2007 he finished his dissertation at the Bauhaus University in Weimar. He currently lectures at the Berlin Institute of Technology and Bauhaus-University Weimar, and works as Research Advisor and Programme Curator for Aedes Network Campus Berlin. Recent publications include: The Grand Documentation, Ernst Boerschmann and Chinese Religious Architecture, 1906–1931. De Gruyter, 2015; “Feng Shui in Germany. The Transculturation of an Exotic Concept by Hugo Häring, Hans Scharoun and Chen Kuen Lee.” Feng Shui (Kan Yu) and Architecture, edited by Florian Reiter, Harrassowitz Verlag, 2011, p. 113–128; “Modern Vernacular – Walter Gropius and Chinese Architecture.” Bauhaus Imaginista Journal, 2018, http://www.bauhaus-imaginista.org/articles/343/modern-vernacular. For further information see www.eduardkoegel.de. BIRGIT MERSMANN is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of

Duisburg-Essen. She is the co-founder of the research network “Art Production and Art Theory in the Age of Global Migration” established in 2013. Her interdisciplinary research covers image and media theory, visual cultures, modern and contemporary East Asian and Western art, global art history, migratory aesthetics, biennials and new museums in Asia, visual translation, interrelations between script and image, and documentary photography. Recent monographs and edited books include: Handbook of Art and Global Migration. Theories, Practices, and Challenges, edited with Burcu Dogramaci, De Gruyter, 2019; Die Ausstellung als “Parlament der Dinge”. Theorie und Praxis der Gedankenausstellung bei Bruno Latour. Avinus, 2019; The Humanities between Global Integration and Cultural Diversity, edited with Hans G. Kippenberg, DeGruyter, 2016; Schriftikonik. Bildphänomene der Schrift in kultur- und medienkomparativer Perspektive. Fink, 2015; Transmission Image. Visual Translation and Cultural Agency, edited with Alexandra Schneider, CSP, 2009. MIRIAM OESTERREICH , PhD, post-doc researcher at the Technische Universität Darmstadt,

Department of Fashion and Aesthetics. Her current habilitation project focuses on the global entanglements of modernist Mexican Indigenism. She studied art history, Spanish literature and ancient American cultures in Heidelberg, Havana (Cuba), Valencia (Spain) and at the Freie Universität Berlin. She was a fellow at the Transregional Academies in São Paulo/Brazil (2016) and Buenos Aires /Argentina (2017). Her current research project was honored with the TU Darmstadt department prize for specifically innovative research. Recent publications include: Bilder konsumieren. Inszenierungen ‘exotischer’ Körper in früher Bildreklame, 1880–1914. Wilhelm Fink, 2018; “Other Archives, Alter-canons and Alter-gardes: Formations and Re-formations of Art-historical Canons in Contemporary Exhibitions Staging Latin American and Eastern European Arts.” The canonisation of modernism. Exhibition strategies in the 20th and 21st century, edited by Gregor Langfeld and Tessel M. Bauduin, Journal of Art Historiography, special issue, 2018, https://arthistoriography.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/ handberg-oesterreich.pdf (with Kristian Handberg).

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES

267

KERSTIN PINTHER is Professor of African Art History (with a special emphasis on Islamic

cultures) at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. From 2010 to 2014 she was Assistant Professor for African Arts and Visual Cultures at Freie Universität Berlin. Her research activities focus on contemporary arts, global design issues, fashion, and architecture in Africa. She is head of the international research group “Fashion and Styles in African Cities” supported by the DFG and a researcher in the DFG-Network “Entangled Histories of Art and Migration: Forms, Visibilities, Agents.” She also works as a curator, most recently for “Flow of Forms / Forms of Flow. Design Histories between Africa and Europe” (with A. Weigand) 2017/2018, a topic that continues to inform her current research on (fashion) design, the meaning of ‘craft’ and new materialism. Among her publications are New Spaces for Negotiating Art (and) Histories in Africa (with Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi), 2015 and “Of Inner Cities and Outer Space: (African) Futurism and (Utopian) Migration,” to be published in Handbook of Art and Global Migration. Theories, Practices, and Challenges, edited by Burcu Dogramaci and Birgit Mersmann, De Gruyter, 2019. She is currently preparing a film on design and architectural histories in Bamako, Mali. SOPHIA PRINZ is a cultural sociologist and cultural scientist. From 2006 to 2018, she was a

research associate at the department of cultural sociology, first at the University of Konstanz, then at European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). Prinz received her doctorate with a dissertation on the practice of seeing (published in 2014 under the title Die Praxis des Sehens: Über das Zusammenspiel von Körpern, Artefakten und visueller Ordnung). From 2015 till 2018 she conceived and coordinated “Mobile Worlds: On the Migration of Things in Transcultural Societies,” a joint project sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for which she was awarded the Brandenburg Postdoc Award in 2016. Since 2018 Prinz has been a Visiting Professor of the Theory of Design at Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) and is also an art histories fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin. Alongside her academic commitments, Prinz has served as a researcher at the Johann Jacobs Museum in Zurich, contributing to many of its exhibitions. ADEDOYIN TERIBA , PhD, is an Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute in the USA who teaches

the histories of art and architecture in West Africa from the 18th century to the present day as well as in the African Diaspora, globally, in the modern era. He took his PhD from Princeton University and has been the recipient of grants from the Center of Arts and Cultural Policy Studies as well as the Program of Latin American Studies at Princeton University. His most recent publication is: “‘The House That Makes You Lose Your Cap When Admiring Its Height’: Creating ‘Home’ in the Lagos Colony (1913)”, Histórias Afro-Atlânticas, exh.-cat. Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo, 2018. ALEXANDRA WEIGAND , Dipl. Des./M.A. is an interdisciplinary designer, curator, lecturer

and researcher based in Munich. Her research on global design issues includes, for instance, the co-publication Virtual Aesthetics. Considering Perception at the Dawn of the 21st Century.

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Kyrene, 2008, and exhibitions for Munich’s Design Week such as Hit the Future. Design beyond the Borders (2014) and Hit the Future. Metropolitan Design (2015) or her latest exhibition and publication project Flow of Forms/Forms of Flow. Design Histories between Africa and Europe, co-curated and edited with Kerstin Pinther (Munich and Hamburg, 2017/2018, published with Transcript, 2018). Currently she is part of the DFG (German Research Foundation) project “Fashion and Styles in Africa” led by Kerstin Pinther at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU).

IMAGE CREDITS Regina Bittner // Between the Ship and the House: Traveling Light with the Bauhaus Fig. 1:  ©  for  Walter Gropius:  VG  Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2019; picture credit: Bauhaus-Archiv/

Museum für Gestaltung, Berlin. Fig. 2: © Wolfgang Suschitzky, Pritchard Papers, University of  East  Anglia. Fig. 3: ©  for  Walter Gropius:  VG Bild-Kunst  Bonn,  2019; ©  for  Marcel Breuer: unknown; picture credit: Bauhaus Archiv/Museum für Gestaltung, Berlin. Burcu Dogramaci // Forms of Migration, Migration of Forms: Sigmund Freud in Exile and the Dispersion of Things Fig. 1: Sigmund Freud Museum, Vienna. Fig. 2: Edmund Engelman. Berggasse 19. Das Wiener

Domizil Sigmund Freuds. Belser, 1977, figs. 15 and 16. Fig. 3: Freud Museum London. Fig. 4: Edmund Engelman. Berggasse 19. Das Wiener Domizil Sigmund Freuds. Belser, 1977, figs. 28 and 29. Fig. 5: Robert Longo. The Freud Drawings, edited by Martin Hentschel and Klaus Albrecht Schröder, exh.-cat. Museen Haus Lange/Haus Esters, Krefeld, Kerber, 2002, p. 83. © Robert Longo: VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2019. Fig. 6: © Ania Soliman. Alexandra Karentzos // The Tracksuit on the Street. On the Construction of “Migrant Chic” Fig. 1, 4: © Getty Images. Fig. 2: Kanye West. Yeezy 3–4 Zine. Steidl, 2017, no page

number Fig. 3: http://mintfilm.nl/filter/madison-square-garden/yeezy-season-3. Accessed 23. November 2018. Fig. 5: Jens Haaning and VincentPécoil, editors. HELLO, MY NAME IS JENS HAANING. Les Presses du Réel, 2003, p. 63. © Jens Haaning: VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2019. Fig. 6: Courtesy Tobias Zielony/KOW Berlin.

Elke Gaugele // On Global Flight and Migration in Fashion and Fashion Theory: Cultural Performances and Political Frameworks on the European Catwalks (F/W 2016/17) Fig. 1: Virgina Arcaro. Fig. 2: Neil Watson. Fig. 3: Helle Moos.

Alexandra Weigand // Humanitarian, Social and Participative – A New Design Culture in Times of Migration and Flight? Fig. 1: © Design Academy Eindhoven. Fig. 2: © Illustration: Phil Trosien for Jennifer Elze

and Henrike von Besser. Fig. 3: © Francesco Faccin, Photo: Delfini Sisto Legnani. Fig. 4: © Lanzavecchia + Wai, Photo: Davide Farabegoli Fig. 5: © Adidas by Tom Dixon. Birgit Mersmann // Flight Design and Migratory City Planning. The Architecture of the Refugee Pavilions of Western Sahara and of Germany at the Venice Biennial of Architecture 2016 Fig. 1: © Felix Torkar. Fig. 2: © Kirsten Bucher. Fig. 3: https://www.designboom.com/architecture/

venice-architecture-biennale-2016-western-sahara-pavilion-manuel-herz-07-122016/. Accessed 8 September 2018. Fig. 4, 5: © manuel herz architects.

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IMAGE CREDITS

Kerstin Pinther // Design Objects as Tools for Reflecting on Migration and Flight: Works by Studio Formafantasma and Superflex Fig. 1: Photo: Luisa Zanzani. Fig. 2–4: Photos: Luisa Zanzani. Courtesy Gallery Libby Sellers. Fig. 5: © MAK / Katrin Wißkirchen. Fig. 6: © Superflex.

Hanni Geiger // Heimat “to Go”. Migration in the Fashion Design of Hussein Chalayan Fig. 1: Brooke Hodge. Skin + Bones. Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture, exh.-cat.

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Thames & Hudson, 2006, p. 16f., fig. 11. © Hussein Chalayan and Chris Moore. Fig. 2: © Farsen/Schöllhammer and Andreas Velten; courtesy of Farsen/Schöllhammer. Fig. 3: Birgit Haehnel. Regelwerk und Umgestaltung. Nomadistische Denkweisen in der Kunstwahrnehmung nach 1945. Reimer, 2007, p. 203, fig. 41. © Kimsooja: VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2019. Fig. 4: Esin Eşkinat, editor. Hussein Chalayan 1994-2010, exh.-cat. Istanbul Modern Sanat Müzesi, Istanbul, Istanbul Modern, 2010, p. 32. © Hussein Chalayan and Matthew Pull. Miriam Oesterreich // ‘Ethno Fashion’ in Modernist Mexico. Transfer Processes between Anachronistic Recourse, Individual Identity, and the Transnational Conception of Modernism Fig. 1: Emma Dexter and Tanya Barson, editors. Frida Kahlo, exh.-cat. Tate Modern,

London. Schirmer/Mosel, 2005, p. 46. © Frida Kahlo: Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2019. Fig. 2: Claudia Bauer. Frida Kahlo. Prestel, 2005, p. 55. © Frida Kahlo: Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2019. Fig. 3: Mariana Figarella. Edward Weston y Tina Modotti en México. Su inserción dentro de las estrategias estéticas del arte posrevolucionario. UNAM/Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, 2002, p. 207. Fig. 4: http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2015/19th-century-european-art-

n09342/lot.19.html. Accessed 12 October 2018. Fig. 5: https://digital.wolfsonian.org/WOLF 046688/00001/38j?search=iskusstvo+%3dbytu+%3d1925. Accessed 12 October 2018. Eduard Kögel // Erwin Broner’s Exile in Ibiza. The Transformation from Vernacular to Avant-garde in Architecture Fig. 1, 4, 5: Broner Estate at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Eivissa (MACE) Ibiza. Fig. 2, 3:

Photo: © Eduard Kögel 2016. Adedoyin Teriba // A Return to the Motherland: Afro-Brazilians’ Architecture & Societal Aims in Colonial West Africa Fig. 1, 3: Marianno Carneiro da Cunha. Da Senzala Ao Sobrado: Arquitetura Brasileira Na

Nigéria e Na República Popular Do Benim / From Slave Quarters to Town Houses: Brazilian Architecture In Nigeria and the People’s Republic of Benin. Livraria Nobel S.A., 1985, p. 148, 147. Fig. 2: Isaac Thomas. Life History of Herbert Macaulay, C.E. Tika-To[r]e Press, 1946, p. 107.

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IMPRINT Extended publication on the conference “Design Dispersed. Forms of Flight and Migration”, organized by Burcu Dogramaci and Kerstin Pinther as spokesperson of the research network “Art Production and Art Theory in the Age of Global Migration” at the Institute for Art History, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich, 9 – 11 February 2017. Cover: Moulding Tradition (detail) by Studio Formafantasma © Studio Formafantasma Translations into English: Paul Bowman (B. Dogramaci, R. Bittner), Ilze Mueller (E. Kögel) Editing: Ilze Mueller Layout and Typesetting: Claas Möller Student Assistants: Susanna Baumgartner, Maya-Sophie Lutz, Zoe Schoofs Published by transcript Verlag, Hermannstraße 26, D-33602 Bielefeld Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-4705-1 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-4705-5 https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839447055 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de The book was generously funded by the Kulturreferat der Landeshauptstadt München, the Freundeskreis des Institutes für Kunstgeschichte, LMU Munich, and the Ulmer Verein – Verband für Kunst- und Kulturwissenschaften e.V. 2019 © transcript Verlag, Bielefeld

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