Opening Remarks

The format of this book is central. It both generates and is dedicated to movement. The pocketbook is intended to be taken with you. The motifs invite you to turn book’s pages. The page numbers indicate both the direction of reading and the original page orientation.

The motif depicted in all of the photographs is the hand cart. Each photograph is different. There are groups in which one hand cart is visible from different perspectives, and there are hand carts that are only visible from one angle. Each photo contains a horizon line. This line forms where the wall in the background and the floor meet. The very line of the horizon connects the content of the photographs to the format of the pocketbook, as it is situated in the book‘s fold. You can flatten out the pages at this point if you want to see the motif without the distortion that the arching of the book‘s pages creates. The pages are connected by adhesive binding. Flattened out repeatedly, this binding is weakened and the book finally disintegrates. The wall and ground that form the picture´s background separate neatly and the hand cart is snapped in half: The grips to handle it and the wheels it stands on.

“Art can be understood only by its laws of movement, not according to any set of invariants.” wrote Theodor W. Adorno in the first pages of his Aesthetic Theory. Invariants are those things that have always been considered to be art and that are no longer questioned, for instance specific media (painting), specific rooms in which things become art (museums), or particular people, who are known to make art (artists). The “laws of movement” are behind the continuous desire for innovation in art – its urge to break through established formats and to widen its field. And so, is art tangible when it is mobile. The hand cart is the central motif of this volume – it is tangible and mobile.

The portrait situation releases the hand carts from their purported purpose. Specific differences in their physicalities allow them to become autonomous characters. They become human. The hand cart is a working tool. It makes it easy for its user to optimally use the leverage effect optimally on an object that has to be moved. In this sense it embodies work and optimisation. In the title Wir fördern Wendigkeit (We advance Mobility) the wir (we) stands for us – the society. Wir (we) hand ourselves over to the demands of a predefined system. Wir (we) are always available and ready for action. Wir (we) overstep our own boundaries. And in doing so wir (we) expand the frame of what was previously considered efficient. This book works against that.

Wir fördern Wendigkeit!
148 Pages
German & English
Offset
Design: Ole Jenssen
Text: Marina Rüdiger
Translation: Clare Molloy
argobooks Berlin