in: “Ideal City / Invisible Cities”
Part 1 in Zamosc, PL
Part 2 in Potsdam, DE
curators: Sabrina van der Ley / Markus Richter

The New Town and Recycling Utopia, have been realised for the exhibition “Ideal City / Invisible Cities”. The first part of the exhibition took place in Zamosc in eastern Poland in summer 2006. The New Town was located on a city´s market square for two months. Out of the component parts of this installation the shelter Recycling Utopia, has been built for the second part of the exhibition in Potsdam in autum 2006.

Daniela Brahm adresses the construction of ideal cities directly, by declaring a plot of already built-on land a building site. Staying withing the formal language of post-war modernity, and relating in terms of content to a civic model of participation, she rattles the intactness of the ideal city and proclaims the possibility of change. Thus she points the way to an as yet invisible city, arising from the ideas of modernity, which would not however here represent salvation, but destruction. Daniela Brahm has thought the present situation through to its logical conclusion; up to and including the scrutiny of today´s attitudes to the idea of an ideal city.

At the 2007 Art Cologne, the work Recycling Utopia, bears traces of its earlier appearences in the urban space, which have been transfered to the protective artistic surrounding. As a hybrid of painting, sculpture and installation art, Recycling Utopia poses a question on authorship, process and links between art and life.

“Recycling Utopia” 2007
in: OPEN SPACE, with Mirko Mayer Gallery, Art Cologne, DE