Ruedi et Vera Baur
Hypotheses for a public space
Ruedi and Vera Baur are exploring the space between the museum and the public realm. Set up in the museum’s rear courtyard – where, for the first time, the gates opening onto the street have been opened – they are initiating a dialogue, imagining this new space, conceptualising it and analysing it, thereby collectively reflecting on what design can contribute to the public realm.
The exhibition will be seen as a possible prototype for a public space currently being devised. A place that connects, in Bordeaux, Rue Boulan to Rue Cas-telmoron, the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design to its storage facilities and, who knows, to a future Museum of Design, an interstice between a former mansion and a former prison, a contemporary passageway as Walter Benjamin might have envisaged it, an open space in a very cramped part of the city, a cobbled courtyard possessing real charm, with the distinctive feature of being open by day and protected by high railings when the museum closes. But before drawing up a programme, we must first understand the unique characteristics of the site. Now the rear of the museum, this charming, underused space overlooks the storage area: the storerooms. In the past, the courtyard separated the grounds of a mansion or private townhouse – depending on the term used – from a prison.
Tomorrow, this space could become a crossroads, a passageway not only between the Museum of Decorative Arts and a planned design museum, but also between the two streets.
From 10 to 14 September 2014, proposals for the development and use of this rear courtyard will be drawn up. Eight working sessions will be organised on the theme of ‘the appropriation of public space: between exclusivity and exclusion, between the museum and the prison, between decorative arts and design’. At the end of each of these sessions, proposals for the use and treatment of the space will be put forward. These proposals will be set out in writing and painted by two lettering artists onto tarpaulins, which will be hoisted 25 metres into the air by a crane, making them visible from almost everywhere in the city as an urban signal.
Opening : Thursday 11 September 2014
Practical Informations
Press kit and exhibition guide available on request from documentation.madd@mairie-bordeaux.fr
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Agora Biennale 2014
Exhibition curators
Ruedi Baur and Vera Baur
Ruedi Baur, designer
Having trained in graphic design in Zurich, Ruedi Baur – following various projects, including setting up his first studio in Lyon – went on to work for major cultural institutions in Paris such as the Centre Pompidou, for which he redesigned the signage and wayfinding system in 2000. During this period, he became increasingly involved in the fields of architecture and urban planning, and began to focus more and more on issues relating to identification, wayfinding and the scenography of institutions and political territories. From the 1990s onwards, he has taught transdisciplinary design at various schools, including, as he does today, the Geneva University of Art and Design, where he also heads the postgraduate programme in Civic Design. Ruedi Baur is currently supported by the two studios Intégral Ruedi Baur, Paris and Intégral Ruedi Baur, Zurich, as well as the Labo Irb, the visual experimentation laboratory, and the Civic City Design Research Institute.
His bibliography provides an insight into his research career, notably through books such as *Signs for Peace, an impossible visual encyclopaedia*, co-authored with Vera Baur and published by Lars Müller (2012), and *Face au brand territorial*, co-authored with Sébastien Thierry and published by Lars Müller (2013). He is currently working on a PhD thesis at the University of Strasbourg entitled "Between Identity and Identification: The Civic Values of Territorial Representation Systems".
Vera Baur-Kockot, sociologist, Chair of Civic City
A sociologist specialising in visual anthropology, she holds a degree in social sciences (University of Lüneburg, Germany). Vera Baur-Kockot pursues transdisciplinary research and practice at the intersection of culture, science and politics. To disseminate these ideas, she organises publications and exhibitions, as well as conferences and research projects.
She directed two contemporary art galleries between 1996 and 2002: the Institut für Kunst, Design und Medientechnologie 01plus at the Fachhochschule in Nuremberg from 2000 to 2003, and the Institut Design2context for seven years alongside Ruedi Baur and Clemens Bellut. As a researcher, she is developing a new approach to the sociology of design and is particularly committed to forging links between design, art and science. Since 2011, she has been establishing the new Civic City Institute, which she co-directs with Ruedi Baur. In 2013, she also co-founded the Heterotopia Institute for Transdisciplinary Design at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen with him, and is a regular contributor there.
The Museum of Decorative Arts and Design would like to thank:
With the generous support of Donitian and Château de Reignac
Château Haut-Bailly,
honorary patron
The Friends of the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design
Chapon Fin
Air France
Château de Launay
Château Nairac
Grand Hôtel & Spa
Samsung
Station Ausone, media partner