A temporary destination for functional objects

BLOW SHOP is an ever-evolving store concept connecting creatives from various backgrounds under the umbrella of a unique retail experience.

It is an independent, self-initiated stage that focuses on presenting collectible designs and limited edition objects whose functionality gives way to their aesthetics. Reinventing traditional retail experience lies at the heart of the concept, therefore all exhibited objects are for sale during temporary opening hours. The jointly organized format stems from the idea of creating a place for networking and the positioning of up-and-coming designers. After the first edition in Düsseldorf in December 2021, and five following editions in Berlin, Antwerp and Cologne, BLOW SHOP continues to gather an extended list of participants from various disciplines ranging from fashion to jewelry to object design.

Many-to-Many is a group of 9 female designers, Anne-Sophie Oberkrome, Clara Schweers, Delphine Lejeune, Hannah Kuhlmann, Jenna Kaes, Juliana Maurer, Kurina Sohn, Lisa Ertel & Tatjana Stürmer.

The collective of 9 female designers hold a residency as part of the exhibition “EAST to WEST” at Schloss Hollenegg.

Each of them have a different background within their own practice, a different approach in their own story but in a way, they all share similar interests.

As a collective, they aim to explore new approaches for an interdisciplinary exchange and a symbiotic design process. Many–to–Many's approach is to give space to female realities and to facilitate moments of collective dreaming that broaden our imagination and will lead us into alternative futures.

The better version of ourselves is born with storytelling. May it be in a job interview, our instagram feed or an artist statement. The image we present to others evokes trust. Trust in us, trust in our assets. And with their rise, also our stock price is growing. So we build our narratives to be ready for a stand up elevator pitch. Of course, the most promising story wins. And the winner goes home with the money.

Ursula Le Guin describes in ‚The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction‘, how the first tool of humans wasn’t a spear but must have been a bag or some form of container. Nutrition was covered by seeds and other foods that could be collected, which they needed a storage for - the container. But what everyone remembers and what made it into art was the glorious stories of the hunters with their spears. The heros and heroines of the party after a long day. Not that the meat was needed to cover nutritional needs, no, it was just the better story.
Todays act of storifying ourselves was recently given the name ‚Lorecore‘ by Shumon Basar, who describes this phenomenon as one of late capita- lism. A stage in where we are all characters.

The commodification of self and self-branding though has always existed. It is part of communication within a society. According to what surrounds us and what is seen as worthy, you present what you have. The commodi- fication of self was there, the hunters and their stories were there, Lorecore was there. Just in another dress. The process didn’t really change much since the Middle Ages for example, there are just more social rights now thankfully, and more words. Thus, more options to define ourselves. The realm of language is expanding with every neologism, until it allows infinite identifications.

We learned a lot from social media about us and the image of ourselves. We are aware that we do storytelling. The stock market is thriving, cras- hing, thriving, crashing. The question is what drives the story in the end, what values make the story a good story?

Apophoreta are festive gifts that were raffled or distributed on special occasions in Roman households.

Martial wrote his Apophoreta in view of the Saturnalia, the main occasion for the distribution of such gifts. Not only at the banquet of Trimalchio of Petron but also outside the Saturnalia festival such gifts were raffled off.

The stylish awarding of the gifts apparently included that they were announced by a short original poem (in Martial's case a two-liner). Martial distinguishes between gifts for the rich and for the poor, which are often presented alternately in the Apophoreta. In their quality and value they can differ considerably. For example, Martial poems both to a golden decorated drinking bowl and to drinking utensils made of clay.

«Speculum» is a cross-disciplinary project aiming to create a space for reflection about intimacy, nakedness, sexuality and gender identity. Since too often the term «body» is contrasted with «mind» and thus used to designate a separate reality from the rest of our «being», this project concerns the (re)discovery of the body as an integral part of self-identification.

Refusing the notions of indecency and shame, we want to promote a climate of curiosity and acceptance around nakedness. What relationship do you have to your own genitalia? How do we feel in our skin in the moment of exposure to someone else’s gaze? Is there a clear-cut line between empowerment and oppression of our bodies?

Bringing together various fields of artistic practice, this exhibition strives to explore the physicality of our bodies without reducing them to flesh, asking what it means to be naked in a hypersexualized world.

T: Katharina Stahlhofen

„Et les rites sont dans le temps ce que la demeure est dans l‘espace.” – Antoine de Saint–Exupery

Thus the writer attributes to the ritual a potential for conveying a feeling of security and defines it further as a symbolic technique of containment. „They transform being in the world into being at home. They make the world a reliable place. They are in time what an apartment is in space. They make time habitable. Yes, they make it walkable like a house. They arrange time, furnish it.“ (*Byun Chul Han, 2019)

In uncertain times, people usually conjure up history, tradition and cultural heritage. Thus a ritual can also be understood as a reflection on a common identity.
The design of the >ritual habitus< is constantly bound to social influences. They transmit and represent those values and orders which carry a community. Rituals often amortize a community without linguistic communication, but through their very own semiotic system. With a view to a society that is growing together more and more, but at the same time individualized, which allows the individual to be isolated from himself and his environment, new forms of community life - new rituals - are needed. As soon as the constitution of space changes, the home must be adequately adapted.

In the ritual framework, things are not consumed or consumed, but needed. Ritual practices ensure that we deal and resonate not only with other people, but also with things. Rituals possess the ability to make accessible the unmistakable aura of earthly material that radiates incessantly from its core. Conversely, the earthly material gives the ritual an anchor to which transcendent experiences can be tied. Thus the ritual connects man and material, space and time.

If we want to understand rituals as „cunstrui humanitas“, spaces must be created in which ritual forms can be spoken about. The exhibition „Pantheon Phantasma“ revolves around the many varieties of our identitary obsession in inhabited space: from rediscovered rites and invented rituals to inflation from the irrational idealization of living and back to the absolute authenticity and originality of the home.

T: Anna Maria Merkel

The theme of this year‘s exhibition builds on the recent publication of Byung-Chul Han essay “Vom verschwinden der Rituale” where the philosopher discusses societal and individual isolation processes caused by technical progress and the colonization of time. Increasing egocentrism and narcissistic authoritarianism are causing the urgent necessity to build spaces to explore new forms of shared life and social cohesion.

PANTHEON PHANTASMA DEPENdance, is a microcosm of artistic-experimental togetherness, located right in the underpath gallery space Gold+Beton under the “Ebertplatz”. In contrast to the object focussed main exhibition (which is based in an old fire station only 300 meters away) this venue relies on body based performances, physical- and emotional matters. At this location, interdisciplinary performance art is linked with the retrieve of ritual practices to explore new visionary narratives and socio-political discourses. Doing so Gold+Beton transforms for a week into a temporary territory for an experiential antithesis to normative instructions for action, contemporary production and consumer behavior.

The cultural program invites artists and performance makers from 12 different disciplines to explore the sphere of the ritual as a physical practice. The public will be actively involved in the programme through workshops and participatory actions. Through spoken word and poetry, dance and movement practice, short film screenings, sonic acts, music shows and reading salons, the gallery space and its urban surrounding will alter into a venue for transdisciplinary and participative performance art in the broadest sense. Performers* and audiences become inevitably the shaping factor for various social scenarios in space.

With a focus on the search for a redefinition of social coexistence in the public urban space of Cologne, Ebertplatz with its current socio-political situation is the ideal location for a one week show, dealing with the emergence of new narratives. The aim is to give space to non-binary realities and to explore other forms of community living to facilitate moments of collective dreaming of alternative futures.

Analogue, digital, female, male, solid, fluid: once again, Jana Manfroid and Hannah Kuhlmann will be presenting young design talents at Kunsthaus Rhenania. After its predecessor Homo Ludens (PASSAGEN Prize 2017), Aggregat is the curators’ second PASSAGEN project. Designers and artists explore the pushing of boundaries and test the resilience of clear structures with exhibits at the intersection of furniture and installation.

T: Jana Manfroid

Playing brings temporary wholeness into our imperfect world and our complicated lives. In playing, we discover our individual qualities and develop our personality. The exhibition presents young talents that discover their personal vision of a playful use of products within the framework of a humorous, multi-sensory and interactive exhibition architecture.

Homo ludens - the playing human is an explanatory model according to which humans develop their abilities primarily through play: The human being discovers his individual characteristics through play and becomes his personality through the experiences made there. Playing is thereby equated with freedom of action. It requires own thinking. The model says: "Man needs play as an elementary form of finding meaning." Into the imperfect world and into the confused life, play brings a temporary limited perfection. The game is the return to the infantile self and lets us be children again in everyday life. Although play is associated with naivety and carelessness, it still requires absolute order.

On different levels the game is framed in basic conditions which manifest themselves through a temporal and spatial limitation. The slightest deviation from the set of rules causes the collapse of a meticulously worked out set of rules. The human being discovers his individual characteristics in the game and becomes his personality through the experiences made there. Within the exhibition "Homo Ludens", young product designers are invited to present their personal visions in the framework of the Passagen framework programme at the Imm, the international furniture fair.

The exhibition is intended to enable young talents to expose their individual vision to playful people by designing the products they show. The focus here is on a humorous and interactive exhibition architecture that frames the curatorial concept "Homo Ludens" in a multi-sensory exhibition.

T: Jana Manfroid