AAArchitecture #11: Felix Kießling. Vertikale

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Andrea: Felix, your work also contains that which is unstable, a fragile in-between space. The entire thing could actually potentially break apart at any moment.

Felix: I’m concerned with who we are and how we move on this planet, what scales we are in and what they mean. Consequently, I’m interested in the interplay between space and us. I use a playful approach to such phenomena, such as in Vertikale. It’s fascinating to me that the Earth's rotation gives rise to forces that we cannot see and that things attract one another without touching.

Anne: What I love about this piece in relation to architecture is that one is actually always going around and around of it because of the stairs. It's a bit as if there had always been a negative space there and one has had to ponder how to experience it.

Suza: The materiality of the work – magnets and stainless steel – echoes modern and the contemporary architecture, and it reminds me a lot of the increasingly homogenised landscapes of inner cities. When so many cities in the East of Germany were being modernised in the 90s, it was all about adding stainless steel whereever possible, everything becoming ultra clean, hygienic and safe. Why this materiality, these sleek surfaces?
 
The installation Vertikale is accompanied by the artist made zine Horizontalgespräch über Vertikalwirkung, Magnetismus, Industrierepräsentanz, den prosaischen Raum, Edelstahlminimalismus und Nachbarschaftsökonomien with a conversation between Felix Kießling, the District curators Suza Husse and Andrea Caroline Keppler and the architect and Malzfabrik’s construction manager Anne Peters.