:: Monday, March 28, 2005 ::
PROJECT: An open database project bringing the idea
of Assembly into knowledge sites.
Fair Assembly: curated by Steve Dietz
http://makingthingspublic.zkm.de/fairassembly/
Making Things Public:
curated by Bruno Latour/Peter Weibel
http://makingthingspublic.zkm.deWe live in rather discouraging times as far as political life is concerned. Just the right moment, then, to make a fresh start by bringing together three modes of representation that are usually kept apart: How to represent people? Politics. How to represent objects? Science. How to represent their collective gathering? Art. The main idea behind MAKING THINGS PUBLIC: ATMOSPHERES OF DEMOCRACY is that politics is all about _things_. It's not a sphere, a profession or a mere occupation; it essentiallyinvolves a concern for affairs that are brought to the attention of a_public_. The public is not cast in stone for all time. We're not talking here about the people as represented by their elected officials. The public has to be created for each new issue, for each new matter of concern. So the question we wish to raise is: 'What would happen if politics were made to revolve around disputed states of affairs?'"
--Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel
MAKING THINGS PUBLIC opened Saturday, March 22nd at ZKM (Karlsruhe, Germany). Artists and other interested parties are invited to submit projects to the FAIR ASSEMBLY open database for presentation in the exhibition and as part of a long term project.
Assemblies have traditionally been forums for disputation,where decisions are made but not necessarily where the knowledge on which the decisions rely is formulated. MAKING THINGS PUBLIC not only brings the idea of the Assembly to sites of knowledge production but insists that the"means, tools, tropes,tricks and knacks," which are integral tools for assembling knowledge, are also useful to the Assembly. In this sense,FAIR ASSEMBLY is a participatory platform to which anyone can submit a web-based or software project, which relates to the thematics of the exhibition, and have it be part of MAKING THINGS PUBLIC.
Steve Dietz
Fair Assembly, a project of Making Things Public:
Atmospheres of Democracy
http://makingthingspublic.zkm.de/fairassembly/
- select "Submit" to add a project to the database
Thanks to Steve Dietz for permitting NAR to republish this information.