Project
Contested Modernities is part of the long-term programme Encounters with Southeast Asian Modernism, with exhibitions and events in Phnom Penh, Jakarta, Yangon, and Singapore. Five curatorial teams in the respective cities dealt in different ways with the significance of local architectural modernism. The exhibition brings together these contributions in Berlin. Documentary projects, interviews and artistic research works provide an exemplary insight into the debates as they are being conducted in the respective cities.
Contested Modernities is part of the long-term programme Encounters with Southeast Asian Modernism and is based on a multi-year exchange between the Berlin curatorial team and scholars, architects, artists, and curators from the region.
In 2019, intensive explorations of postcolonial architecture in each city were made possible by research, exhibitions, and events taking place in Phnom Penh, Jakarta, Yangon, and Singapore. The exhibition in Berlin will present these contributions that examine narratives of postcolonial modernism and approaches to its built heritage in works spanning architecture, art, and academic research. By interweaving postcolonial architecture, contemporary perspectives, and highly topical urban issues, the exhibition will advance the discourse on alternative uses for modernist structures and concepts able to withstand the challenges in urban development today. The exhibition section of Poelzig’s Legacy and the Highrise in the Tropics: German Influences and Projects in Southeast Asia examines bilateral relations between Southeast Asia and the East and West Germany from the 1950s to the 1970s. This project reveals the different connections and transfers to the region from the formerly separate German countries.
Contested Modernities is an initiative by the curators Sally Below, Moritz Henning, Christian Hiller, and Eduard Kögel. An issue of ARCH+ on Southeast Asian modernism was published in April 2021. An English edition will be published in September 2021.
Commissioned by
Seam Encounters
Design
Peter Zuiderwijk
Spatial translation and building
ConstructLab
Alexander Römer
Patrick Hubmann
Jan Stricker
Curation
Sally Below
Moritz Henning
Christian Hiller
Eduard Kögel