Offspace and project space in Stuttgart, various formats, since 2018

The HuMBase is a transdisciplinary non-profit platform, that can be adapted to various spaces. This artistic off- and studio space aims to create an atmosphere in which it is possible to work apart from established structures and which encourages collaboration and networking between the cultural workers who encounter each other there. It is designed to be a place that makes it possible to work on visions and to develop, test, and establish new formats without the institutional pressure to produce a somewhat successful result. A process for which, in an increasingly efficient cultural landscape, new space must be provided time and time again. Since 2018, the HuMBase has established itself in the facilities of a former church as a well-frequented location for various formats and individual exhibitions, as well as a temporary opportunity to work for cultural professionals of any practice. The idea of using an open space without programmatic restrictions and a mixture of spontaneous projects and concepts planned over a long period formed a lively artistic habitat and cultural safe zone.

Funded by the city of Stuttgart (2019, 2020 and 2024).

Exhibition at the Foundation Centre Culturel Franco-Allemand Karlsruhe, 01.12.2023—19.01.2024

The work Taking Part: CCFA is dedicated to artistic research into cross-border strategies of participation. Through installative interventions, a temporary public, participatory laboratory— the cultural center for anyone*—grew within the foyer of the foundation during the exhibition period. A designed space whose purpose should constantly elude both the designers and the users. Visitors were invited to take possession of the space casually and intertemporally in order to question the power of interpretation of designers and the aggressive potential of well-intentioned decisions, and thus become part of a possible so-
lution through negotiability.

The first temporary possession of the cultural center for anyone* took place at the opening through a joint dinner within rooms created for this purpose.

*what is up for negotiation

Funded by the MWK Baden-Württemberg, the BB Bank, the city of Karlsruhe, Akademie Schloss Solitude and the city of Stuttgart.

Open Studio at the Cité Internationale des Arts Paris, 2023

This open-access laboratory of the permanently impermanent negotiated the socially and culturally learned rulebook that is veiled yet deeply interwoven into the coding of art institutions and their gallery spaces. Through its disclosure and transformation into an installation reminiscent of board games, which invited interaction through haptics and aesthetics, the visitors were empowered to change this coding and adapt it to their own needs.

A simulation of a constantly transforming and negotiable space, which offers exactly what is demanded and only as long as it is needed— a servant to all and property to no one.

Archive, website and permanent installation at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, 2022

On drawing open circles is an attempt to design a platform that allows current and former fellows of the Academy Schloss Solitude to view and read about each other’s work. It is meant to be read as an invitation and possibility to continue thinking about those positions both with and further. This archive of books—consisting of publications, all created in collaboration with or in reference to former fellows—is designed to flow through the individual studios as well as the common areas, unobtrusively and casually, imitating a naturally grown component of the Academy’s infrastructure. The funding and support offered by the Academy, which is inherent to all the publications contained therein, is thus to be brought back to life and merged into a shared, adaptive and open cosmos of knowledge and iteration. In addition, a website that maps the entire platform allows users to expand and update the Archive through comments, tags, and new entries.

Funded by the NEUSTART KULTUR program of Stiftung Kunstfonds (2022), Akademie Schloss Solitude, Holz-Hauff GmbH and Rosspartner GmbH.

Text and book object, 12 pages, offset, 15×15 cm, edition of 100, 2022

A poetic, self-reflexive journey of exploration through design, its surface, core, and its social ambivalence.

From the dead end of the ideal in a void to a way out through the luck of the dice. I designed. is a self-published book and an installation at the same time. It deals with the complex path dependencies of design decisions and designed decisions and sheds light on the potential of design in an escalating tale of failure.

Artikel: Experiments On The Surface: HuM Collective’s »I-designed.«

Weekly intervention with coffee and artistic printed matter at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, 2021—2022

Let’s draw open circles and move them around!

With

Akademie Schloss Solitude
Nino Bulling
Ted Fendt
Charlotte Warsen
Krasimira Butseva
Florian Model

Artistic research workshop and exhibition at the Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, 2021

Can we authentically reproduce perception?
Does documentation have the potential to be more than just a fixed image?

As if I had been there is a workshop on shaping what is narrated and what is experienced. Collectively we explore how subjective experiences of an event can be bundled and preserved and which role design plays in this process.

Part of the workshop program Affairs, Chapter II by anorak, 20—22 August 2021
Photos by Jule Brandhuber (1&2)

Publication, 246 pages, offset and silkscreen, 21×29,7 cm, 2021

The artist’s book as a collective practice.

The project When the seed considered planting itself is an attempt to detach the character of the experimental space of the HuMBase from its physical location and make it transferable. Instead of escaping into the digital sphere, the project aims to preserve and communicate its content in its physical form still, to enable comparison, the interconnection of different positions, and manual work on an equal basis. The central part of the publication is the contributions of the participating cultural workers and artists. The various individual positions, initiatives, and collectives decided independently how they would like to use the “Platform Publication”, given all a frame of eight DIN A4 pages. This book-shaped exhibition is completed by a written introduction by the editors, a text contribution by the Berlin-based curator Lukas Ludwig and a photo section documenting the program from 2018 to 2020.

HuM-Collective and Sophia Sadzakov (ed.)
published by Distanz Verlag, Berlin
ISBN 978-3-95476-416-7
Text contributions by Lukas Ludwig (Donkey), Sophia Sadzakov, and HuM-Collective (On Failure)

Funded by the NEUSTART KULTUR programme of Stiftung Kunstfonds (2021), LBBW Foundation and the city of Stuttgart.

Ongoing publication series, since 2018

A HuMBook about is a book series, in which we bring diverse content, that seems to be relevant to our work, into a suitable form. Without losing the series character, each book is individually designed and is only bound to the other books in format and cover material.
To support our idea of a shared cosmos of knowledge, cultivate relationships with our collaborating partners, and initiate new conversations, the books are designed to be mailed out as easily and economically as possible, with no further envelope or packaging required.

Content by
Max Grau
Niclas Funk
David Foster Wallace
HuM-Collective

Installation at the exhibition amarok–friends of anorak at HuMBase, approx. 200×200 cm, 2019

A cave, a castle, a meeting place, a platform, a safe space, a base.

Furniture system, 2018

The HuM-Studio is a furniture system designed to meet the requirements of our nomadic yet spatial work. To combine the advantages of an almost entirely digitalized working environment with the necessities of one, adapted to our way of working together with different collaborators in changing locations, it is possible to reduce the entire space into two rollable containers, in which the office can be stored. The compact size of the containers, which is tailored to the dimensions of standard transport facilities and architectural bottlenecks, allows us to access and adapt spaces simply and at a low cost.
The furniture system consists of two parts, which are adapted to different work requirements. Construction type A, with its 90˚ folding sides and a warm wooden surface, is intended as a work- and meeting table, while construction type B, with a cutting mat surface and 180˚ folding sides, is intended as a production space.

In cooperation with Markus Bock.