In the Desert of Modernity: Colonial Planning and After

Presentation with Peter Spillmann

Presentation of the book "In the Making. In the Desert of Modernity: Colonial Planning and After. A Research-Based Practice" edited by Sabeth Buchmann, Susanne Leeb and Peter Spillmann for Labor K 3000. The book centres on the working method of the artist and exhibition maker Marion von Osten (1963-2020).

Through the genesis of one of her major exhibitions, In the Desert of Modernity: Colonial Planning and After, and other related exhibitions, Marion von Osten recounts modes of research, forms of collaboration, research trips, and encounters. Was the book ColonialModern. Aesthetics of the Past, Rebellions for the Future (ed. by Tom Avermaete, Serhat Karakayali, Marion von Osten) dedicated to the exhibition itself, which deals with the connection between architecture, urban planning, and colonialism, Marion von Osten’s In the Making traces the conceptual and design settings of exhibition making and reveals connections in order to reconnect them where necessary. Almost as if incidentally and yet quite centrally, In the Making establishes walking, talking, listening, meeting, relating asessential components of inquiry-not only in a postcolonial context, but especially there.

Addressing spatial politics, power relations, and social struggles at the time of colonialism, liberation struggles, and decolonization in North Africa, In the Making welcomes unexpected encounters and opens pathways to parainstitutional and feminist exhibition making.