Book part:

Grapschend betrachten. Immersion und Opazität bei der Vermittlung eines interaktiven «DEMONSTRATIONSRAUMS» via Augmented Reality im Museum

In the summer of 2016, a digital exhibition format addressing the reconstruction of a historical exhibition space, El Lissitzky’s ABSTRACT CABINET (1927), was shown at the Sprengel Museum Hannover. An iPad app titled DEMONSTRATIONSRAUM presents visitors to the space with a virtual panorama of historic photographs depicting the Cabinet, and invites users to inscribe themselves in the history of the exhibition space by taking a selfie. The app considers the political claims that have historically been linked to the Cabinet, the discontinuities in its material presence, as well as the role photography has for the state the space currently is exhibited in, and actualizes these aspects with the aid of augmented reality technology. The article first delineates the function and use of the space assessed by the app, positions them in relation to recent debates in the field of media studies, and deducts guidelines for the design of the software. Attention is given to the dialectic of opacity and transparence that characterizes processes of remediation: Lissitzky’s Cabinet is here conceived of as a device of viewer engagement, the particular agency of which lies in its capacity to create experiences of media opacity. Thereupon, the article describes the DEMONSTRATIONSRAUM app with regards to its functionality and its underlying motivations, situating it in the context of contemporary debates on cultural politics. The app is presented as an expression of the intention to actualize subject positions that have historically been connected to the Cabinet, thus abstracting from conventional concerns for historical authenticity, to open up the museum’s archival holdings for new uses, and to re-assess opacity as a category both relating to media and the social sphere. The project has been conceived by Carolin Anda, Yvonne Bialek, Cornelia Durka, Alexander Karpisek, Natascha Pohlmann und Philipp Sack, PhD candidates in the postgraduate program «The photographic dispositif» at Braunschweig University of Art. (Project web site: www.demonstrationsraum.de)