„The beauty of convenience. Healing structures. Perfect guidance.“

The urban world is designed. Architecture and design are becoming platforms for public living together. But what exactly characterizes these designed realities? Who shapes them and for whom? What influence do they have on society and the individual?

In “WE PLUS YOU - Guided Tours”, Andreas Schmitten and Marcus Herse develop an immersive tour in the spacious halls of the WELTKUNSTZIMMER, a former baking factory - a site-specific setting of auratized objects, urban stagings and consumer choreographies between glamour and everyday dreariness. 

Constructed worlds of experience and escapist places of beautiful appearances advertise with permanent promise of happiness. The staging of things and spaces lends them meanings that go far beyond the satisfaction of needs. Developed for emotions, distraction and storytelling, they not only provide the bare essentials, but also appear as an escape from everyday routine, emptiness and alienation. They promise identity and belonging, tell stories of seemingly unlimited possibilities and form concepts of a guided public sphere.

The artists examine movement patterns and gaze strategies, play with seductive attraction and relentlessly confront trivial everyday routines. They condense the most diverse formal languages and spatial psychologies between aura and functionality in a situational wandering.
The staging itself is staged. How do these spaces and worlds of things communicate? What image of man is concealed behind city dwellers and consumers? What is the relationship between public space, consumption and urban design? How much further can the urban world and consumption grow and what could an alternative “Urban Tomorrow” look like?