A large architectural model, based on the Musée
du quai Branly, a museum for non-western cultures in Paris, is floating at eye level, lit, against the backdrop of a monochrome wall. A label-like flatscreen is playing press clippings referring to
the planning of the Paris museum, as of 1996.

The exhibition comprised a representative selection of photographs by renowned German photo-journalist and traveller Leonore Mau. Presented next to a 16 minute audio interview with her, conducted by the artist, a reprint of selected magazine contributions by Mau from 1962–92 was featured.

On an autumn day, within the context of prepa-
ring for an exhibition project, I was standing in an empty factory building in Geneva. The changes associated with the Berlin Wall were still a thing of the future. As I wandered among the regularly spaced columns on the vacant factory floor, I could not help but think of a number of criteria for exhibition spaces presented as necessities: solid walls, the white of those walls, entrances, series of adjoining rooms, and their influence on the act of exhibiting. At that moment it became clear that my own contextual perspective was very much bound up with a booklet Zaugg had published two years previously. In the recurring debate over whether architecture is the artist’s ally or his adversary, or whether, in view of the givens, one would simply could-shoulder it, I have often brought up the incisiveness of the text by Rémy Zaugg. Because that text is an artistic work which intervenes in precisely the debates that characterize the history of the development of artistic practices in and with architectural space to the present day.

A poster, a flyer, and newspaper ads announce an evening of public discussion. The invited participants of the panel are a heartsurgeon, a canyoning professional, a self-employed architect, and a sociologist, who debate risks, and the concept of risk in their respective activities and fields.

Dominique Noah : Vous m’avez invité en qualité de théoricien de la culture pour discuter du champ
de la culture, de ses représentations et des croyances qui la sous-tendent. Qu’est-ce qui préside à votre intérêt pour toutes ces questions ?

Hinrich Sachs : Voilà une question bien difficile pour commencer. Voyons… depuis des années, mon travail a été guidé par un intérêt pour les codes culturels – le second degré des objets, des images, des formes et des valeurs.

A poster, indicating the regular opening hours of the Municipal Museum of Natural History, reads: Litany for voice. Identification of the 858 objects and mounted animals from Miani’s Africa expedition

An iconographic flow – presented as a lecture performance including slides and video material – traces evidence of powerful relationsships between mining industry, space discourse, and educational narratives.