The Institute for Applied Heterotopia is an independent project team consisting of experts from the fields of architecture, sociology, media and cultural studies, design, and journalism. Together, we explore the transitional space between the present and the future using artistic methods, with particular attention to the past.
_ perspectives
The space around us becomes reality through our perception. We move and interact with each other within this space, which is culturally imbued with meanings that we interpret. In today’s world, there are no unknown territories as everything is culturally interconnected. However, there are places that are particularly dense and complex, where discourses and fictions converge. Michel Foucault called these places Heterotopias because they have specific rules and meanings that reflect social orders. We are interested in observing and identifying these places to understand their significance and creation.
_ concepts
What we perceive around us shapes our reality. The Institute for Applied Heterotopia (IFAH) uses the concept of heterotopia as an artistic principle. This means that the IFAH focuses on places and spaces that are particularly significant and that we reflect on and analyze. The goal is to develop new ideas for the future and to implement them in these heterotopic environments. These places should design and make a future that has already happened. The IFAH aims to contribute to making us collectively actors of a positive utopia, inspired by wishes, hopes, and desires. Ideally, actors and recipients become one in the midst of a present revolution of personal and societal identities and self-descriptions.
_ methods
How? The means with which we work on and produce heterotopias are based on cultural techniques of contemporary reality construction linked to direct perception. You can find more on this under the header theory and publications.
With what? Common cultural techniques such as images, writing and numbers should be mentioned here, but also language and techniques of perception, especially in their accelerated conflation. See the previous projects under practice and map.
In concrete terms? The applied techniques and methods are tailored to the competencies of the members of IFAH, who act as experts in individual modules of workshops and can put them together depending on the specificities of the location and the aim of attention, reflection or construction.