“Answering the contemporaneousness of the world with presence. Empathetically, ephemerally and energetically. But how present can an idea be? How tangible can a moment be? How constant can a fleeting experience be? The now has always been and at the same time nor is it past. […] If i think of utopia as a way of being able to escape the ordinary, then I experience it progressively. It happens. It is in constant flux. It doesn’t stand still. In the same way that the self is an ongoing process, the utopia of a community is constantly in motion. With every entry, visit or act, it updates itself and rewrites everything that has gone before.
I was asked to imagine a New World as a concrete space. That is a very large task and one which I would like to test and examine in microcosm. A work space and free space which can be filled and emptied in equal measure. A cosmos of light, sound and movement which shifts on a daily basis and constantly opens new utopian worlds. A growing meeting space of processes and fleeting atmospheres.
UUUUU(topia) is thus conveyed by way of the senses and positions itself and us specifically in the here and now. Mist, sound, growth and light. Our energy fills the space and manifests itself in emerging and constantly changing ways. We are now free to experience and learn in the space and built up a social sculpture. Together. But how? Close your eyes! Lie down! Switch your senses on! Get up so that we can fill the room with utopia which, in the here and now, as a community, recognizes the force that worlds are made of. As a fake. As a paradise. As a hyper-space.”
Ben J. Riepe: UUUUU(topia),
in: Planet B. Ideas for a New World, exh. catalogue (June 1 – August 21 2016, NRW-Forum Düsseldorf),
ed. by Alain Bieber and Lukas Feireiss, Cologne 2016, pp. 182.