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CONTENT

Positionality

Mapping The City Learning from Kaserne

Hospitality

Charged Void or How do we “mix up with strangers”?project thesis

Pavilion for A (Very Special) Kitchen

Cooking as assembling people

Cost Estimate

A (Very Special) Team

A (Very Special) Menu

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A (Very Special) Interior ingredients28

Contact and references31

Superstudio - The Continuous Monument (1969)

How do we cross the distances?

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POSITIONALITYthe production of space

The French sociologist Henri Lefèbvre distinguishes between political, economic, and cultural functions and uses of space in relation to society. For Lefèbvre, space is a means of production, a supplier of raw materials,

and a product of everyday social practice. Its structures and functions are in a permanent process of reciprocal exchange. The city creates urban situations “where different things occur one after another and do not exist

separately.” Social realities take place in predetermined spaces, while, in turn, bodily practices constitute new spaces. Lefèbvre understands the creation of space as a process, a `production de l`espace`. Action conditions the emergence of space and transforms static spaces into

dynamic points of materialisation. Everyday actions produce space, which is determined by the structures that direct those actions. Urban space

“is grasped in terms of its fixed structures, staged, hierarchised, from the apartment building to the urban in its entirety, defined by visible limits or the invisible limits of administrative decrees and orders. The construction

of space is thus dependent on actions carried out with the body. Public space consists of superimposed spatial and temporal partial spaces with different functions and meanings, which are conditioned by their social

historicity. Societies appoint particular spaces for particular contexts, which, however, are also used in a way that lifts them out of the everyday

and requires a specific kind of behavior and perception.

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Learning from Kaserne

Kaserne Basel, situated in a city center, was founded in 1863 on a place of former monastery Klingental, as training space for Swiss military. Swiss Army stayed in Kaserne until 1966. Back then, it was the institution closed for the eyes of public, but in the `70., as the city center developed, Kaserne changed its function and content. Type of use turned from military into civil and Kaserne became cultural center. It opened up and started to grow into a important and big public cultural place, nowadays the most prominent cultural/art institution in Basel. As part of Kaserne are Cultural centre Kaserne (for free theater, dance, performance and music), University of Arts (Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst, HGK Basel), art gallery, art ateliers and many more.

Kaserne represents a place where shifting from private into public happened and therefore a good example how we can make other institutions and people more opened for “the eyes of public”.

The main aim of this project is connecting Kaserne with public institutions which exist at the border of Basel (Bürgerspital Basel, UPK Basel and deportation jail / Ausschaffungsgefängniss). Wildwuchs Festival and “Wir stören!” Project bring a need for opening-up, coming close to “the Other”, becoming aware and feeling more integrated with periphery of our city(-ies). It demends a place where periphery comes to the city center, takes the city center and use it in order to erase the boundaries and bring all people together.

MAPPING THE CITY

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Reference: Alison and Peter Smithson

In their work, Alison and Peter Smithson used mapping as evident and material proof of curent situation and diagnosis of urban structures and landscapes. Many of their concepts concerned the theme ‘poetry of movement, the connection of the city’, which went deep in the relationship between life and its environment.

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Hospitality, noun:

1. Cordial and generous reception of or disposition toward guests.2. An instance of cordial and generous treatment of guests

The word hospitality derives from the Latin hospes, which is formed from hostis, which originally meant “to have power.”

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HOSPITALITY

Come in. Welcome. Be my guest and I will be yours. Shall I ask, in accordance with the Derridean question, “Is not hospitality an interruption of the self?” (Jacques Derrida, Adieu, trans. by Pascale-Anne Brault and Micheal Naas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 51.) What is the relationship between the interruption and the moment one enters the host’s home? Derrida calls us toward a new understanding of hospitality—as an interruption.Hospitality, as absolute, is structured as a universal singularity, without imperative, order, or duty. It blankets over all and is not bound by any other ethical imperative except for itself. The law of hospitality is absolute in that it requires one to give all one has to another without asking any questions, imposing any restrictions, or requiring any compensation. Absolute hospitality involves neither the governance of duty nor the payment of debt.Operative between the self and the other, hospitality governs all human. According to Levinas, hospitality is “the concrete and initial fact of human recollection and separation.” (Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, trans. by Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969))First, there must be an opening, a desire for contact and togetherness. What Levinas reclaims and makes central is the very receptiveness of one person to an Other, that capacity an embodied self has to take its inspiration from what it perceives as the needs of an other self, an other body. His hospitality, we might say, proceeds from that vertiginous moment when one feels bound to the other — the moment that makes possible the ever risky tipping together of unfamiliar lives. At the heart of Levinas’s work is this idea that our openness to the ‘advent’ of the Other carries with it the potential to nudge us out of our familiar patterns and pathways, thus offering the very possibility of a future undetermined by present conditions. Taken up, revised, extended by Derrida, this sense of the Other as a figure of futurity is what constitutes the ‘unconditionality’ of a welcome, an act of friendship or giving or forgiving or any generous gesture which goes forth without immediate consideration of how it will come back to the one who performs it.

In “Hostipitality,” Derrida claims, “Hospitality is the deconstruction of the at-home; deconstruction is hospitality to the other.” (Derrida, Acts of Religion, “Hostipitality,” 364.) The master of the home, the host, must welcome in a foreigner, a stranger, a guest, without any qualifications, including having never been given an invitation. Such an invitation as a host offering his or her home to a guest implies a sort of exchange between the two—“the most inhospitable exchange possible.” (Ibid., 398.) Derrida, in Of Hospitality, writes the beginning of “formulation”: To put it in different terms, absolute hospitality requires that I open up my home and that I give not only to the foreigner, but to the absolute, unknown, anonymous other, and that I give place to them, that I let them come, that I let them arrive, and take place in the place I offer them, without asking of them either reciprocity (entering into a pact) or even their names. (Derrida, Of Hospitality, 25. Italics by Derrida)A new arrival, or guest, stands at the door, at the border, and is welcomed inside without condition. “A host is a guest,” writes J. Hillis Miller, “and a guest is a host.”( J. Hillis Miller, “The Critic as Host,” in Deconstruction and Criticism (New York: Continuum, 1985), 221.) The host becomes the guest. Likewise, the guest becomes the master of the home. The “formula” continues: . . . the hote who receives (the host), the one who welcomes the invited or received the hote (the guest), the welcoming hote who considers himself the owner of the place, is in truth a hote received in his own home. He receives the hospitality that he offers in his own home; he receives it from his own home—which, in the end does not belong to him. The hote as host is a guest. (Derrida, Adieu, 41. Italics by Derrida.)In other words, Derrida claims that “we thus enter from the inside: the master of the house is at home, but nonetheless he comes to enter his home through the guest—who comes from outside.”( Derrida, Of Hospitality, 125.) In welcoming the guest, the self is interrupted.

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Office 15 - Border Crossing (2005)

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Where exactly are we, spatially and temporally, when we encounter strangers? Is the stranger simply or primarily one who is recognizably “out of space” or is there more to being estranged than being dislocated or relocated? Whether explicitly or implicitly, encounters between self and other tend to be conceived of in spatial tropes of openness and closure, inclusion and exclusion, border patrolling and boundary crossing, while the ‘stranger’ who might be welcomed or turned away is most often characterized as one who has been spatially mobilized or displaced.

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How could we make visible those lives that tangle with our own even as they maintain their distance: eye to eye but worlds apart. This is the society in which dense and far-reaching connections weave their way around blunt disjunctures and built differentials.

How do we meet and mix with `strangers`?

This project seeks to unlock/break boundaries and intolerance amongst us, inevitably contributing to the manufacture of union.

“By term The Charged Void, we are thinking of architecture`s capacity to charge the space around it with an energy which can join up with other energies, influence the nature of things that might come, anticipate happenings... What we are trying to offer is an urbanism where the specifity arises from the space-between and the project therefore has to be seen in the light of this ambition.”Alison and Peter Smithson

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Shifting, verb:

1. move or cause to move from one place to another2. to move or transfer from one place or posi-tion to another

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This is how we “ meet and mix with strangers”Project thesis

A pavilion for A (Very Special) Kitchen is a spatial structure which brings the term “shifting” into a practice. Builded in front of Kaserne Basel, it will provide a movement of periphery right into the center. Therefore, the basic idea of “Walk” is transformed into a temporary movement of people who exist on the border of the city, border of society (in this case, patients from Bürgerspital) making their existance more visible to the people they are isolated from.

Disabled people are same as we are, with same abilities, crafts and emotions, just their way is special, unique and that makes them different. Therefore, it is important to introduce them to the society, make them visible and give them a platform and opportunity to introduce themselves just the way they are, special and worth being equal part of the public life of society. A (Very Special) Kitchen brings people together, deletes constructed differences between them and join up their energies into a new one.

This project aims to bring patients from Bürgerspital, but also other disabled people who contribute in many social activities and work (such as gastronomy, production and reparation of furniture, arts and crafts, bakeries and konditorei, gardening, growing plants and vegetables etc).

A (Very Special) Kitchen is a temporary public space with only one huge table inside but with many chairs around it and plates on it, with flowers and colorful light. It is a place where disabled people will cook and serve the most delicious dishes, with ingredients they are producing, home-made pastry, cakes and drinks. A place of good spirit. A place as a charged void - charged with shared work, effort and smiles. Those very special, which we are not so used to...

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“The Content that disturbs”

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Variations of the look / Pavilion for A (Very Special) Kitchen:Wildwuchs Festival is taking place in a period from 24. May-01.June, which opens the possibility of using the space outside and around pavilion (e.g. summer garden)

A Pavilion for A (Very Special) Kitchen would be placed on grassfield in the center of Kaserne`s couryard. It would stay during the whole Wildwuchs Festival.

A (Very Special) Kitchen would represent the central point and symbol for the festival`s motto “WIR STÖREN”. A (Very Special) Kitchen disturbs because it is a new object in Kaserne Areal. It disturbs with its rough form, its size and the place it takes. It desturbs with its otherness.

THE PAVILION FOR A (VERY SPECIAL) KITCHEN / Basic idea

The Pavilion for A (Very Special) Kitchen /front

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A (Very Special) Kitchen would be approximately 5 meters high structure. In further process, it would be developed and built in collaboration with GRUPPE, an emerging Swiss architecture practice.

The Pavilion for A (Very Special) Kitchen /entrance

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BRINGING PEOPLE TOGETHER

ONE TABLEMANY CHAIRSMANY PLATES

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Gordon Matta-Clark, Soup Kitchen

INSPIRATION FOR INSIDE OF A (Very Special) Kitchen:

People as content, meaning. People and action make the building disturbing.

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Assembling, verb:

1. (of people) gather together in one place for a common purpose2. bring (people or things) together for a common purpose

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Cooking as assembling people(Gordon Matta-Clark)

In 1971 in Soho NY, Gordon Matta-Clark opened Food, an artist run restaurant on Prince and Wooster Streets.

FOOD was a pioneer in many ways. Firstly, their cuisine concepts predated anything that was common at the time,

but what has come to be current restaurant trends. The menu was seasonal and local, the kitchen was fully open to the restaurant, and regional and ethnic foods. Giant communcal bowls of fresh butter and parsley were ever

present on the counters, and artisan bakers from Vermont would come down to make Food’s bread. The cooking itself

was seen as a performance art piece. Artists were weekly guest chefs and Matta-Clark was cooking occasionally. Food acted as a sort of arts philanthropist- employing

many struggling artists as waiters, cooks, bus boys- and provided good food for a low price, as well as pocket

money and mutual support between artists. The restaurant was open for only 3 years, and was sold in 1974.

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Main inspiration for A (Very Special) Kitchen was

Gordon Matta-Clarks “Soup Kitchen”

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Menu would be created for each day. Guest artists as guides will make proposals and

together with team create entire menu. Ingredients of the menu will be different each day and will depend on supplies of groceries from sponsoring producers, shops

and bakeries.

A (Very Special) Menu will be seasonal, prepared from fresh and bio ingredients. Artistic guides and chefs will be warmly adviced to have at least one veggie-friendly

course.

Contributors:

Haimo Ganz&Bruno Steiner (Kunst&Kochen)Box Club Zürich

GruppeTurbo Folk Kollektiv

ZHdK Master Schauspieland many more...

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A (VERY SPECIAL)

menu

1.day PROPOSAL

Fennel and apple salad with toasted fennel seed and walnuts

Roasted beet, caramelized onion and goat cheese tart

Jamon Wrapped Rabbit roast with boozy Asparagus

Chocolate Caramel Cheesecake

Brennesselsuppe

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Building construction

COST: approximately 5.000 CHF*Material could be sponsored by local timber merchant (Sägerei Nagel Theodor, Basel GMBH

or Pro4You Sägerei, Basel ) or be reclaimed wood material

Kitchen equipment

COST: approximately 3.000 CHF*Equipment would be rented. Dishes and besteck collected or bought.

Furniture

*Furniture would be rented from Hofstetter AG Werkstätten für Möbel und Innenausbau (or any other Werkstatt für Behinderte) or Brocanthaus J. Bollig

Antiquitäten & Secondhand-Kaufhaus (Klybeckstrasse 20)

Groceries, food and drinks

COST: approx. 3.500 CHF (food) + 1.500 CHF (drink)Connecting and joining up different producers, shops, bakeries, where disabled people work

Electricity and waterKindly provided by Wildwuchs Festival and Kaserne

TransportKindly provided by Wildwuschs Festival and Bürgerspital Basel

Lamps and flowers

COST: approx. 600 CHFFlowers from gardens and flower shops where disabled work. Lamps, self made, inspired by Ana Kras,

designer from Belgrade, Serbia

Other (menu cards, menu board, light bulbs, vases etc.)

COST: 300 CHF

COST ESTIMATE

TOTAL COSTapprox. 13.900 CHF

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A (Very Special) Kitchen would be open for the entire Wildwuchs Festival

EACH DAY - ONE five course MENU

PRICE pro Person 50 CHFx approximately 30-35 people each day = 2.100 CHF

Drinks

COST: 1000 CHF per Day

TOTAL INCOME

approx. 3.100 per Day

approx. 21.700 for 7 days

*This project aims to refund all investments. Having the sponsorship of local merchants, producers and shops, especially the ones who employ disabled people.,

A (Very Special) Kitchen would like to connect and join up crafts and work of many special people in Basel. With money earned from A (Very Special) Kitchen all costs would be payed out and the rest would be shared between participants

from Bürgerspital Basel.

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A (Very Special) Interior ingredients

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MAS Spatial Designfor Wildwuchs Festival Basel24.May - 01.June 2013www.wildwuchs.ch

Titel: A (Very Special) Kitchen

Author: Aleksandra Pavlovic

Contact:

Aleksandra PavlovicKlingenstrasse 35CH-8005 Zürich

00 41 (0) 76 256 8974

aleksandra.pavlovic@zhdk.chaleksandrapavlovic.tumblr.com

References and further information:

spatialdesign.chwww.wildwuchs.chgruppe.cxemerson.arch.ethz.chwww.kunst-und-kochen.ch

Many special thanks:

MAS Spatial Design, Stephan Trüby, Alexandra Carambellas, Imanuel Schipper, Wildwuchs Festival, Gunda Zeeb, Karmen Franinovic, Boris Gusic, Gruppe, Christina Pethick, Johanna Berger and many more...

Wir stören! Project