Unknown Pleasure

Pleasure often escapes the framework of culture because it is a difficult experience. As Roland Barthes puts it, pleasure may not only be experienced as frivolous fun and joy within the limits of cultural codes, but also as a transgressive bliss that is non-cultural, unspeakable and lethal for the subject. The project "unknown pleasures" aims to use this theme as a starting point, combining art, architecture, philosophy and psychoanalysis. It brings artists and theoreticians together to discuss and reflect on the topic 'pleasure' on a critical level. It will span over a period of two months and consist of three sub-projects including an exhibition, symposium and a weblog with videos and screenings. The exhibition consists of a combination of existing work and work that has been realized "on the spot". It will be presented as a shop where the works of the artists will reflect on the theme. The works will be on the one hand desirable or fetish objects and on the other hand more critical objects. The project wants to put a society into question where pleasure is no longer repressed but is more and more central to our thinking about man and space. Pleasure is all too often associated with consumption, something the advertisement industry is keen to exploit. By following one's own desires and tastes, the consumer experiences a freedom that does not have to give any justification whatsoever, as the striving for pleasure is the only aim. Nowadays, we are overwhelmed with terms referring to happiness and fun. This turn to enjoyment is, in the cultural world, practically inescapable. Revealing in this matter are books that document and draw up an inventory of shopping, like "The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping", co-edited by Rem Koolhaas. Or as Rhonda Lieberman puts it in her article in ArtForum: "The Guide to Shopping addresses the great stealth campaign of our day -no, not bioterrorism! but the makeover of all human intercourse into Shopping. The privatization of realms that once maintained some posture of autonomy from the market place has recast schools, hospitals, churches--even Art museums!--into retail-or-bust operations, using mall-like ambience and marketing to "control" fickle consumers and keep 'em coming. And while we "shop" for health, government, God, even Art, we've become students, patients, and citizens of... Prada, Nike, or whatever fill-in-the-blank global brand image--looking to retail for, like, everything" . The li nk between pleasure and architecture, which is partially explored in the book “The Architecture of Happiness” by the Swiss-born author Alain de Botton, will also be examined, with the phenomenon of the shopping mall as a perfect example. Almost our entire world has been reduced to the sphere of shopping. Even Ecology [C] becomes Shopping (harnessing "green" purchasing power to save the planet).