Spaces of Uncertainty International Exhibition Series Space – Time – Energy By Kenny Cupers and Markus Miessen
Venues: Framework Gallery, Berlin Urban Drift, Berlin Architectural Association, London Recyclart, Brussels 66 East – Centre for Urban Culture, Amsterdam Aedes, Berlin Spaces of Uncertainty Publication

When does the action of a few individuals start to create urban space? Demonstrating how urban space is divided, conquered, left over and occupied again, the exhibition intends to show how marginalized social processes find their distinctive spaces in different cities. The visual research on these cities shows that the urban margin does not only exist in its very physical urban condition – in spaces outside the traditional understanding of public space – but in a number of phenomena that emerge in the actual social fabric of our everyday environment, outside the hierarchical organisation of space, time and energy. The exhibition focuses on the unforeseeable urban landscape: the continual emergence of phenomena, which escape the restraints of organised public space and time. Although always manifested in space, the phenomena have been investigated according to three constituencies: space, time and energy. In Berlin, we have focused on leftover spaces, as the phenomenon occurs in the margins and vacant spaces of the urban landscape that serve as catalysts for experimentation. In Brussels we have portrayed marginal activities that not necessarily appear in marginal places, but at certain times in the city’s dynamic everyday texture. In London, the intense density and spatial pressure of a complex urban field, which is highly defined by economic power, challenge their existence. Nevertheless, in London, where space and time overlap and different uses interact, kinetic energy rules their appearance, as marginal phenomena are located in the small transitions of urban life, orchestrated by the individual and collective energies. This particular reading of the three cities shows how - through the marginalized social processes that constantly question the restraints of stable organisation - urban space remains fundamentally a space of uncertainty. International Feedback: A-Matter (Alexander Kluy) “ Forty years ago, in 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities', Jane Jacobs wrote that a vacuum was boring because monotony itself was boring. It is not monotony but everyday variety that is captured by Cupers and Miessen in seemingly casual photographs of couples and passers-by, of parks and desolate areas, of gloomy industrial wasteland in absurd constellations. (...) The subversive margins, strips of land that have continued to be ignored, and architectural discomposita are documented by Cupers und Miessen, as archivists of the discontinuous. (...) In contrast to the arranged, enigmatic photos of Jeff Wall, the photographic images of Cupers and Miessen are text-bound. They are a conceptual antidote to the text. They imply something without actually being that something.” The Big Issue (Ann Lee) “ According to Kenny Cupers and Markus Miessen, 'big stories, architects, historic characters, or any such clearly identifiable influence are irrelevant. The identity of a city lies in its struggle to administer everyday activities'. Ignoring famous cultural landmarks, the exhibition looks at the mundane and everyday.” Centre for Urban Research, Goldsmiths College London (Paul Halliday) “ (This book) has a transporting and transformative quality. Transporting because it sucks my gaze into a space beyond my experiential particularity. Transformative because it will change the way in which I think about my office chair. (...) One of the things I know now is that Robert Capa, like so many anthropologists also, was wrong when he made a necessary link between closeness and epistemological or aesthetic value. Some of the most engaging and challenging images I have seen have been concerned with the alienation and fragmentation of the modernist nightmare. Where the human condition is reduced to little more than the illusion of grandeur and where the vicissitudes of time and physical corruption reduce all of our monuments, be they architectural, historical or political, to stories of absence and insignificance in our own private worlds that we call the collective memory.” Deutsche Bauzeitung “ Da machen zwei einen Spaziergang durchs gegenwärtige Berlin und sie entdecken eine Stadt. Die sie in Bilder, Zitate und Reflektionen über Geschichte, Architektur und Städtebau auflösen, mal spielerisch tastend, dann wieder zupackend auf den diskursiven Punkt gebracht.” TAZ – Die Tageszeitung (Harald Fricke) “ Die Architekten Kenny Cupers und Markus Miessen kümmern sich mit Video-Installationen um schwer definierbare Räume in Berlin, London und Brüssel. Der Mix schmiegt sich zwar oft der Faszination für urbane Kaputtheitsästhetik an, zeigt aber auch, wo der Metropolenkult endet: in der Auflösung urbaner Räume, als Brachfläche der Ökonomie.” TAZ – Die Tageszeitung (Sandra Loehr) “ Der wunderbare Fotoband "Spaces of Uncertainty" lässt die Freiflächen Berlins von den Brüchen und Verwerfungen des 20. Jahrhunderts erzählen und zeigt die Stadt als poröse Landschaft, die Stille ausatmet. Dem Buch gelingt es, als eine Art Reiseführer im Negativ, diese wüsten und vernarbten Orte in der Poesie der Leere zu inszenieren; vom repräsentativen Berlin sieht man nichts. Und so wird man, solange die Stadt ihre Mitte sucht, Berlin vielleicht am ehesten zwischen den Buchdeckeln von Spaces of Uncertainty finden.” Blueprint (Grant Gibson) “ ...in their investigations of Berlin's voids or the undesigned areas in-between architecture the book finds its feet. Spaces of Uncertainty is punctuated throughout by some wonderful images of undiscovered parts of Berlin - areas that have nothing in common with the gleaming brand of Potzdamer Platz and have managed to avoid regeneration. Once you've got through some of the academic speak it becomes clear that these are two incisive minds.” BBC London “ An exact examination of the nature of public urban space.” (Stadt)Bauwelt (Wolfgang Kil) “ Kenny Cupers und Markus Miessen, zwei aus der ganz jungen, transatlantischen Architektengeneration, haben ein Berlin-Buch der Postneunziger geschrieben: 'Ein Gegengift gegen all die Nostalgie und das Gerede von den Verlusten, welche die gegenwärtigen Diskurse der Stadt dominieren', so Hilde Heynen im Anhang. Das Buch stellt die Macht der Architektur infrage, es übt exemplarisch Bescheidenheit. Indem das Buch sich fuer die positive Variante der 'eröffneten Möglichkeiten' ausspricht, hilft es die gängige Wahrnehmung von Stadt zu verändern.” Architect's Journal (Andrew Mead) “ ...and one message of their book, as far as architects are concerned, is - for goodness' sake, tread gently. The authors call for ‘an increased sensitivity of the professionals involved in our urban environments towards the hidden possibilities that lie within the margin’ - and who would argue with that? Berlin may have such spaces of uncertainty in profusion, but every city needs them, and this timely little book helps to demonstrate why.” Hilde Heynen (author of Architecture and Modernity. A Critique, MIT Press) “ A few years ago Liane Lefaivre characterised the work of Rem Koolhaas and kindred architects as ‘dirty realism’. Kenny Cupers and Markus Miessen have given a personal twist to this strategy and have developed their own version of dirty realism by looking at the marginal and interstitial spaces that Berlin – like probably no other Western city – possesses in such abundance. By focussing on these seemingly insignificant left-over spaces, they manage to provide an antidote for the nostalgia and the rhetoric of loss that seem to dominate the contemporary discourse on the city. In relying upon photography and textual arguments, the book denounces the power of architecture. It is, finally, an exercise in modesty.” Harvard Graduate School of Design (Prof. Margaret Crawford) “ Kenny Cupers and Markus Miessen present themselves in a disarmingly humble way, as young architects who lived in Berlin for a few years and who have some questions about public space. But this publication demonstrates an extremely sophisticated understanding of the theoretical and empirical realities in which current debates about public space exist. The rendering of the possibilities of voids and margins inspires me. This is a wonderful book, both poetic and intellectually convincing. I hope it finds a broad audience.” Open Source Architecture “ With "Spaces of Uncertainty" the architects Kenny Cupers and Markus Miessen have analysed the psychology of the in-between spaces of London, Berlin and Brussels, and the ephemeral architecture, which occupies such marginal urban territories. An urban investigation that embraces 'dirty realism' rather than representational architecture.” Deutsche Bauzeitung “ TRANSFORMERS zeigt in dichter Reihenfolge drei Gruppenausstellungen und bildet einen sozialen Raum, ein Labor für den Austausch mit internationalen Teilnehmern und eine Produktionsstätte für Kooperationen. Hier präsentieren und diskutieren Künstler, Architekten, Autoren, Theoretiker und Filmemacher Entwürfe für neue urbane Konzepte und Strategien, die ein neues Licht auf bestehende Bedingungen werfen.”