[artinfo] On the Spatial Politics of Right-Wing Populism

[DJ Paco]

Para-Platforms 

On the Spatial Politics of Right-Wing Populism

Markus Miessen & Zoe Ritts (eds.)

Sternberg Press 2019 / Merve Verlag 2019

With contributions by Benjamin H. Bratton, Liam 
Gillick, Hannes Grassegger, Mahmoud Keshavarz, 
Angela Nagle, Nina Power, Patricia Reed, Konrad 
Renner, Slavs & Tatars, Jonas Staal, Hito 
Steyerl, Wolfgang Tillmans, Stephan Trüby, and 
Christina Varvia (Forensic Architecture).

Para-Platforms investigates the social, spatial, 
and material reality of right-wing populism. 
Three case studies-presented in a symposium 
organized by Markus Miessen at the Gothenburg 
Design Festival in November 2017-form the core of 
this collection of essays: journalist Hannes 
Grassegger on Trump and Brexit; architectural 
theorist Stephan Trüby on spaces of right-wing 
extremism in Germany; and Christina Varvia on 
Forensic Architecture's investigation of the 
murder of Halit Yozgat, a young German man of 
Turkish descent, at the hands of a far-right 
group in 2006. The presentations are reproduced 
along with the ensuing conversations with Miessen 
and the audience members.

An essay by anthropologist Mahmoud Keshavarz 
opening the book discusses the capacity of design 
to create conditions for certain politics to 
occur. Among the other theoretical, artistic, and 
historical contributions in the reader, editor 
Zoë Ritts interviews artist Wolfgang Tillmans 
regarding his pro-EU poster series, the ongoing 
project truth study centre, and guest-edited 
volume What Is Different? The volume concludes 
with a comic by artist Liam Gillick animating a 
block of granite-culled from the Swedish quarry 
responsible for extracting the red granite 
intended for the Third Reich's architectural 
ambitions-as the messiah of spatial and material 
politics.

Material is never neutral.

Kindly supported by HDK - Academy of Design & 
Crafts, University of Gothenburg, and Studio 
Miessen, Berlin.


<https://interspire.e-flux.com/link.php?M=1300916&N=24587&L=167859&F=H>www.sternberg-press.com
<>