Curators:

Marion von Osten (b.1963, Berlin, Germany; lives and works in Berlin), Serhat Karakayali and Tom Avermaete in collaboration with Mogniss Abdallah, An Architektur, Wafae Belarbi, Madeleine Bernstorff, Casamémoire Casablanca, Elsa de Seynes, Jesko Fezer, Kanak Attak, Brigitta Kuster, La Scource de Lion Casablanca, Labor k3000, Andreas Müller, Remember Resistance, Peter Spillmann, Anna Voswinkel, Daniel Weiss and students at the Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, the faculty of architecture at the Delft University of Technology, the École Supérieure d’Architecture de Casablanca.

Description:

Project exhibition at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 29 August to 2  November 2008.

“Through close examination of exemplary architectural and urban projects IN THE DESERT OF MODERNITY reveals that North Africa and the Mediterranean region functioned as catalysts for European modernity, which is not inconceivable without colonialism. Key-notions of post-war modern architecture are firmly rooted in the logics and perspectives of colonialism. Generally there seems to exist an ambivalent kinship between the emancipatory promises of the modernists and the domination systems of colonialism. Moreover, the architectural and urban projects for Casablanca and Algiers that offices like ATBAT Afrique conceived –in a laboratory-like condition– played not only an important role in colonial modernisation, but subsequently also provoked a postmodern critique of architecture in Western Europe and the USA.” – Haus der Kulturen der Welt website

Images: exhibition installation shot (top); Marion von Osten, The Desert of Modernity, 2009 (bottom)