1. Identity Land
Droog Lab's are exhibiting Identity Land: Space For A Million Identities at Z33. A great looking project that brings together individual interventions from various designers at dismantling the focus of national identity. There's a newspaper as well as a site where you're invited to submit a square meter of land into a homogenous post-nation nation to be shared by everyone.
In a similar way to Israel's Aircraft Carrier at this year's Bienniale, they have a little shop selling partly satirical toolkits and gifts about Identity Land. It's a real shame that the least accessible stuff is the work itself. As for the projects, there's stuff from a team of mismatched footballers, a mirrored coin, a national anthem (all national anthems simultaneously) an identity-less vehicle and some contradictory opinions.
2. German Pavilion
Every year it seems there is a debate about the future of the German pavilion at the Giardini in Venice. This year the spat over the presence of overtly Nazi architecture in an event ostensibly aimed at international harmony is fired up again. A lot of Germans want to see it taken down and replaced by something more generic. As a friend pointed out to me - Germany doesn't have a unique architectural aesthetic apart from it's Speer period of Nazi roman classicism. The image below shows Hitler visiting the Giardini
in 1934 at the opening of the pavilion.
I think the pavilion should stay. Germany did a consummate job of erasing it's Nazi history from it's own city-image after WWII and the pavilion, as it is supposed to, marks an analogical symbol of the ideals of the period and the minds that built the building.
Rather than dwelling on what that meant at the time, perhaps Germany could do some cheery exhibitions in there for a change and try to show how it's progressed and got over its Nazi stigma.
3. Auger Loizeau - Sublime Gadgets
New exhibition from James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau featuring a couple of things that they've updated but we've seen before like the domestic fly catchers and a couple of new gadgets. It looks great and their clever little gadgets speak volumes about our domestic and consumer drive for useless junk but also connect us to more existential things like the threat of meteor disasters, counting ripple or filming our last ever journey.
It's on in Switzerland though.
4. Unicorns
North Korea announces that it's proved the existence of the Unicorn. Nice one.
4. Unicorns
North Korea announces that it's proved the existence of the Unicorn. Nice one.
