Lars Lerup

Strange Objects/Strange Conversations

Lecture will be held in English

Beginning with the emergence of »making strange« (Shklovsky), Lars Lerup (Rice School of Architecture) will explore its evolution in work from »traps« (Duchamp), »rotations« (Marx), »leans« (Bredekamp) to »readymades« (Duchamp)—all under the auspices of the »paranoid critical method« (Dali).
Using examples of furniture we will enter into the adjacent field of »strange conversations.« The salient feature here is distance. We can distinguish at least three distances between humans and objects ranging from peripheral and analytical distance (covered by Walter Benjamin) to »paranoid distance.« 

In a recent turn to »interactive distances« between designers we enter the realm of cultural distances (E. T. Hall). Using a series of newly produced »readymades« the team Lerup, Hartmann and Schmidgall from the Experimental Zone at the Cluster of Exellence at Humboldt University will demonstrate how a set of new conversations can be introduced to everyday design dialogues. 

Beyond the instrumental, these new devices are entirely speculative and disruptive when thrown into the darkness of the emotional and the strange. 

Lars Lerup is a designer & writer. He is a Professor for Architecture at Rice School of Architecture. He is an Associated Member of the Experimental Zone at the Cluster of Excellence »Image Knowledge Gestaltung« at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.