Nils Norman: ODE TO CHARLES FOURIER towards a Phalanstery for Manchester

9 July 2011 - 20 August 2011

Late Night Opening: 6-8pm, Thursday 18th August

The Installation specific to CUBE’s main galleries engages Utopia, Play, Public Art and Work. A walk and crawl-through climbable sculpture that will point towards a future studio for the creative industries, inspired by the writing of the Nineteenth Century French Utopian Socialist Charles Fourier  – doubling up as a potential outdoor play structure for a public space in Manchester.

Charles Fourier dedicated his  life to devising a detailed and systematic utopian society –  ‘New Harmony’ in which he described, in detail, its  architecture, social organisation and economy. The special units in which these utopians would live were called Phalanstries – large greenhouse like pavilions that would house a vast array of work related activities based on people’s desires and enjoyment. People were organised by Passionate Attractions, and daily work and pleasures were arranged each morning in the Exchange.

The installation at CUBE will conceptually combine Fourier's ideas with Norman's own research into utopia, playscapes and creative industry workspaces. Creating a hybrid prototype for a future workspace that will have the potential to be adapted to a real playground and public sculpture for outdoor use. The structure will be built loosely around what a Fourier type Group design workshop may   look like in the future. Combined with the idea of a self-sustainable design office for adventure playgrounds and other playscapes ; hot-desking areas, a vermiculture paper shredder, mushroom logs,  nap-zones, white-boarding brain storming areas. There will also be a small library of models – as one would find in an architect’s office – of Adventure Playgrounds.  Most of the installation will be climbable with crawling areas.   

About the Artist: Nils Norman

Nils Norman works across the disciplines of public art, architecture and urban planning. His projects challenge notions of the function of public art and the efficacy of much urban planning and large-scale regeneration. His work is informed by local politics and ideas on alternative economic and ecological systems, merging utopian alternatives with current urban design to create a humorous critique of the discrete histories and functions of public art and urban planning. He exhibits and generates projects and collaborations in museums and galleries internationally. He has completed a major public art project – a pedestrian bridge and landscaping project for the City of Roskilde, Denmark, participated in various Biennials worldwide and has developed commissions for the Sculpture Center, Long Island City, NY; London Underground, UK; Tate Modern, UK; Loughborough University, UK; Creative Time, NYC and the Centre d' Art Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland. At the moment he is developing two small-scale urban farming parks in the Hague, the Netherlands, that test and question the limitations and potentialities of Permaculture as a possible city-wide alternative design strategy for urban centres.
 
He is the author of three publications: Thurrock 2015, a comic commissioned by the General Public Agency, London, UK, 2004; An Architecture of Play: A Survey of London’s Adventure Playgrounds, Four Corners, London, UK, 2004; and The Contemporary Picturesque, Book Works, London, UK, 2000

There will be a curatorial talk on 3pm, Sunday 10th. FREE. booking required.

For more information and press images, please contact: [email protected], 0161 237 5525