Modulverantwortung: Didier Balissat und Joni Kacani
Lehrteam: Didier Balissat und Joni Kacani
Assistant: Shehrie Islamaj

Spaces of Labor

«Tourism, human circulation considered as consumption, a by-product of the circulation of commodities, is fundamentally nothing more than the leisure of going to see what has become banal. The economic organization of visits to different places is already in itself the guarantee of their equivalence. The same modernization that removed time from the voyage also removed from it the reality of space.» – Guy Debord: La Société du spectacle, 1967

The tourism industry is a major employer in Lucerne and as such it contributes to the production of physical spaces as consumable goods. Buildings like the KKL are specifically constructed to be spectacles performing in an economy of attention. However, within today’s society of singularities even buildings initially designed for other purposes, such as the Jesuitenkirche, are spectacularized and commodified to perform economically. Consequently, these and other architectural icons have become production facilities with various forms of labor.

Our studio aims at shifting the perspective away from their spectacular frontstage, regularly gazed at by numerous visitors. To reveal the invisible interplay of social and spatial aspects in these architectures we will perform an ethnographic analysis of the labor conditions that (re-)produce their spectacle and map their actor networks. Focusing on these sights as spaces of labor allows us to demystify and re-evaluate them. We will materialize and redesign the unveiled social realities by constructively transforming the backsides of the analyzed buildings, dissolving the modern separation of serving and served spaces i.e. front- and backstages.