Current WorkMaxim Damian Weirich

all the things you are. The Signs of Life by Wolfgang Schmidt

WorkshopExhibition ReaderSpatial InstallationLecture Talk

University of Arts and Design Karlsruhe

withPhilipp NielsenOmsk Social ClubDaniel IrrgangDiane HillebrandKlara DomröseBruno JacobyMoritz AppichGunter Rambowet al.

2019

Re-Reading the Manual of Travelling Exhibitions

Symposium Spatial InstallationPublication

published bySpector Books

withAndreas MüllerAaron WerbickLydia KähnyLena ThomakaJohannes HuchtTina KöhlerJochen EisenbrandMartin BeckClémentine DelissJan Wenzelet al.

2018

[maetsen] the art funding collective

Artist Video InterviewsFair StandProject Launch

University of Arts and Design Karlsruhe

withYannik NussJohannes HuchtPatrick Alan BanfieldNicolas GeisslerJilian SieberMerle RichterTomasz Skibicki Leoni Börgeret al.

2015

31,2 laufende Meter zur Geschichte des Badischen Kunstvereins

Archival ResearchExhibition Design

Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe

withAnja CasserNadja QuanteOliver KrätschmerMoritz NebenführGloria HasnayAntonia Wagneret al.

2017

© 2020 Portfolio made by Diane Hillebrand & me maximweirich.info

all the things you are. The Signs of Life by Wolfgang SchmidtWorkshopExhibition ReaderSpatial Installation

Reproduction of the sculpture series Anton & Berta, 2019Archival material of the Signs of Life for Pro 24 Magazine, 1974 Signs of Life file modifications, 1973

For the workshop format, I worked together with the Berlin-based drama teacher Klara Domröse and 16 kids in the age from ten to twelve from Karlsruhe. On two days we had body-related performative activities, discussion sessions about the usage of signs and their meaning, and made dream trips to develop new signs as a collective body. These exercises were based upon archival material I found during my research sessions at INTeF Darmstadt and Kunstbibliothek Berlin.

Games, talking session and physical activities of the workshop, 2019

Link Film Workshop:vimeo.com/342431586/63d7014e4f

all the things you are. The Signs of Life by Wolfgang Schmidt

Archival material, sketch for a wall surface for an exhibition at INTeF, 1981

all the things you are. The Signs of Life by Wolfgang Schmidt

Exhibition Reader with a selection of digitalized Signs of Life, 2019

all the things you are. The Signs of Life by Wolfgang Schmidt

In conversation with OMSK Social Club, Philipp Nielsen, Gunter Rambow, Giesela Brackert and others, I developed an interview reader format to frame the installation while offering perspectives on the surrounding topics and the persona of Wolfgang Schmidt. His companions were talking about encounters with him, while scientists and artists talked with me about the socio-anthropological history of emotions (Nielsen) and the relations of emotionality to the artistic practice of real-life gameplay (OMSK).

Exhibition Reader front page, 2019

Link Exhibition Reader:www.dropbox.com/s/di4njps9sq76twr/Reader_Lebenszeichen.pdf?dl=0

all the things you are. The Signs of Life by Wolfgang Schmidt

all the things you are. The Signs of Life by Wolfgang Schmidt, 2019

all the things you are. The Signs of Life by Wolfgang Schmidt

Archival material of a Signs of Life exhibition, date unknown

all the things you are. The Signs of Life by Wolfgang Schmidt

My diploma and ongoing research is about the graphic designer and artist Wolfgang Schmidt (*1929;†1995). He created signs named “Lebenszeichen“ (Signs of Life) and used them as a visual vocabulary to express his sentiments. Overall there are more than a thousand sketches of the symbols he made during a time-lapse of ten years starting in the early 1970s for the designer Dieter Rams.

I see him as a trailblazer who used his icons in a way that has similarities to modern-day usage of emoticons. By differentiating his assembly of signs and using them in many different formats like posters, editions, performances and more, Wolfgang Schmidt was shifting from a functional modernist design language to a new form of personal and emotional related form of expression.

His cosmos is interesting for a reflec-tion on our modern-day usage of signs for expressions, while we are constantly confronted with the same topics of identity, emotionality, and disclosure as Schmidt was at the beginning of the 1970s.

all the things you are. The Signs of Life by Wolfgang Schmidt, 2019

all the things you are. The Signs of Life by Wolfgang Schmidt

SymposiumPublication

Re-Reading the Manual of Travelling Exhibitions

Symposium on the Manual of Travelling Exhibitions, 2015 Manual of Travelling Exhibitions published by Elodie Courter Osborn and UNESCO, 1953 onto the new publication, Re-reading the Manual of Travelling Exhibitions, publised by Spector Books, 2018

The Manual of Travelling Exhibitions is a book published by the UNESCO in 1953 as a guide to design and organize the new format of travelling exhibitions. In the beginning of our book project about the Manual, we held a symposium and invited Yvette Mutumba, Jochen Eisenbrandt, Jan Wenzel, and Nader Vossoughian to speak about their work in relation to the Manual.

The surrounding exhibition was designed by Lydia Kähny and myself. We wanted to cast a sensitized glance at the Manual and its suggestions for modern exhibition design. From a system of aluminum pipes and connectors, we constructed several detached forms. Text and picture material of the book itself was printed on paper roll to hang it onto the constructions. For example, a drawing showing a way to hang a tapestry was printed on a paper roll in the size of a real tapestry. With this method of enhancement, we wanted to make illustrations and approaches of the book visible and give visitors an insight into the design language and ideological position the book represents.

Detail of the exhibition accompanying the symposium, 2015Final discussion of the Symposium with Yvette Mutumba, Jan Wenzel, Jochen Eisenbrand and Andreas Müller, 2015

Re-Reading the Manual of Travelling Exhibitions

We examined the Manual with regard to Western universalism, exhibiting of cultures and subliminal intentions of Cold War politics.In my contribution, I talked with Tina Köhler from Haus der Kunst Munich about the machinery and politics behind modern-day traveling exhibitions regarding a Louise Bourgeois show that took place in Russia, Spain, Germany, and the United States.

Re-reading the Manual of Travelling Exhibitions, published by Spector Books, 2018

Re-Reading the Manual of Travelling Exhibitions

The original Manual commented by one curator, graphic designer and exhibition designer, Re-reading the Manual of Travelling Exhibitions, publised by Spector Books, 2018

Re-Reading the Manual of Travelling Exhibitions

My interview with Tina Köhler on contemporary travelling exhibitions, Re-reading the Manual of Travelling Exhibitions, published by Spector Books, 2018

Re-Reading the Manual of Travelling Exhibitions

[maetsen] the art funding collective

Project launch [maetsen], booth with visitors and personnel, 2015

Six young artists, which just have received their degrees, were inter-viewed about their experiences with common ways of art funding. Issues like the allocation of scholarships and the financing of artworks were part of this survey. The questions about the living and working con-ditions brought the interviews to a final query: What do artists need today for working and living after graduating from art university?

Following the research, a new method of art funding was conceptualized that acknowledges the demands of artists and art supporters. Deriving from an older name for art patrons, it was called [maetsen] the art funding collective.

During the annual summer exhibition, the new platform was opened and presented in the format of a fair stand. Visitors were invited and asked to donate an arbitrary amount of money to support the project ideas of the artists.

The artists were presented through five image films shown inside the fair stand. The booth itself was made out of recycled multi-colored wooden panels and timber.

Concept rendering for [maetsen] booth, 2015

Artist Video InterviewsFair StandProject Launch

[maetsen] the art funding collective

[maetsen] booth, 2015

[maetsen] the art funding collective

The graphic design and overall CI of handouts, the website, and giveaways referred to startups aesthetics. The staff acted as highly motivated promoters, trying to acquire donors at all costs. The intention was to overdraw common codes of modern displaying and advertisement noticeably to deconstruct them. The donation period ended and not enough money was collected to realize even one of the drafts made by the artists.

[maetsen] the art funding collective remains as an ambiguous comment to usual project-related encouragement practices. It falls behind as a utopian version of a new social way of art funding by acquiring money through liberal methods of emotional addressing and exposition.

[maetsen] handouts, project outlines and postcards, 2015Launch poster [maetsen], 2015Project launch [maetsen], 2015

[maetsen] the art funding collective

31,2 laufende Meter zur Geschichte des Badischen Kunstvereins

Table landscape of the exhibition 31,2 laufende Meter. zur Geschichte des Badischen Kunstvereins, 2017

31,2 laufende Meter zur Geschichte des Badischen Kunstvereins was an exhibition project that started in 2012 as a collaboration between the University of Arts and Design Karlsruhe and Badischer Kunstverein.

It retells the history of the art society, which extends over 200 years. Working in the research team, I prepared a section that showed the supra-regional collaboration of the clubs and their behave on buying and exhibiting history paintings as a collective in the 1850s. Likewise, I was involved in the design process of the exhibition furniture, which is a landscape made of MDF tables and pedestals. We decided to work with replicas, to give visitors the possibility to interact with the huge amount of scripts shown in the exhibition. It was important for us to find display strategies that are interactive, but not pretentious.

Detail of hands-on archival material, 2017

Archival ResearchExhibition Design

31,2 laufende Meter zur Geschichte des Badischen Kunstvereins

Reading corner of the exhibition with a selection of publications published by Badischer Kunstverein, 2017

31,2 laufende Meter zur Geschichte des Badischen Kunstvereins