ATMOSPHERE 9
BEAUTY MEMORY ENTROPY
- KEYNOTE -
GABI SCHILLIG
DIALOGICAL SPACES
Spaces of Communication
ABSTRACT
Not only our objects are becoming more virtual but also our spaces. For as Mercedez Bunz argues in her book “The Silent Revolution”, the algorithms "create a new digital public sphere and fundamentally transform how we gather as a mass.” 1 To share with the public, we obviously no longer require physical or corporeal presence. But despite digital media’s potential to bring people together, it also isolate them. Genuine common action and communication, on the other hand, is closely linked to corporeality and to materiality, to the direct experience of the impact and significance of an action. Humans, as sensual and living beings, and their relationships and interactions with space of which they are a part and which they influence through their actions, are at the core of my artistic investigations. The question of body, materiality and physicality becomes an important criterion: the choice of material and the development of structure not only affect the geometric and spatial properties of objects and spaces, but also transport sensual and atmospheric aspects that can be used to enfold spaces of communication: exhibition and interior spaces, instruments, urban space and landscape. 'Dialogical Spaces' are performative spaces that invite the viewer to become an active participant. Through interaction not only corporeal, time-based, spatial or object-based relationships are established but also communicative and social relations between people. They enable another kind of perception of space and enfold potential spaces in which experimental spatial constructs act as mediating structures and surfaces.
BIO
Gabi Schillig (*1977 in Coburg, Germany) studied Architecture in Coburg and completed her postgraduate studies in Conceptual Design at the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste - Städelschule Frankfurt am Main (Class of Prof. Ben van Berkel, Prof. Johan Bettum) before founding the Studio for Dialogical Spaces in Berlin. In 2012 she was appointed as Professor for Spatial Design at the Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences / Peter Behrens School of Arts at the Faculty of Design. Before she taught at the Städelschule Architecture Class - Advanced Architectural Design - and in the Class of Space-Related Systems and Exhibition Design at the Berlin University of the Arts` Institute of Transmedia Design. Since 2015 she is a member and vice chairwoman of the Institute for Research in Applied Arts (IRAA) at the Peter Behrens School of Arts.
Since 2005 she has been teaching and lecturing in transdisciplinary contexts, has exhibited internationally and received several fellowships and prizes, amongst others: Akademie Schloss Solitude Stuttgart (2007-08), Van Alen Institute New York (2009), Nordic Artists´ Centre Dale (2010), Weissenhof Architekturförderpreis (2010), KHOJ International Artists´ Association New Delhi (2011) and Largo das Artes Rio de Janeiro (2015). In 2016 she was a resident fellow at the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau.
In her artistic practice and teaching she investigates contemporary and future questions of spatial design such as the relationship between space and body, the evolution of spatial systems, the potentials of materiality and the experimental use of analogue and digital design methodologies. Her conceptual approach results in multi-sensorial, dialogical structures and spaces of communication on multiple scales and in different contexts within spaces, cities and landscapes that leads to the emergence of spatiality that is based on social and physical processes and connect materiality and interaction in an immediate way.
Gabi Schillig lives and works in Berlin and Düsseldorf.
