During four weeks, Stephanie Kiwitt resided in 019 in Ghent, visited the surrounding parking lots on a regular basis, stayed to observe the dynamics within a very defined and universal space. Starting, halting, moving – presence, leftovers, absence.
‘Close in open’ is the fifth instalment of P, a series of exhibitions and events on the idea, the functioning and the aesthetics of the parking lot, curated by De Cleene De Cleene. As an area where cars or other vehicles can be left temporarily, the parking lot is a site that stockpiles potential. It is an aside to the road and to the romantic idea of travel, and a necessary counterpart to the modern preoccupation with speed. It is a secondary place that often goes unnoticed, a landscape at the service of a department store, an amusement park, a factory, a journey. Once an ‘enclosed preserve for beasts of the chase’, it has become an increasingly questioned, regulated yet volatile landscape. It is a patchwork incessantly formed by aesthetic, functional, ecological, political and economic strategies. It is a place of temporary stagnation at the service of movement, a grid that gathers and structures objects, people and stories in a continuously changing puzzle.
The line that connects A to B, pauses at P.
The Aanwervingslokaal (recruitment office) is a building in the old harbour area of Antwerp. It was constructed in 1936 on the initiative of the trade unions by the Central organisation of employers in the port of Antwerp (Cepa) in order to regulate job search and recruitment. To this day, the dock workers are still day laborers.
The Aanwervingslokaal was the meeting place between dock workers, casual employees, employers and the trade unions. Workers registered there when seeking work, presented themselves in person to companies, and where selected. This recruitment took less than ten minutes. Just before, dockworkers and employers met at the hall or in nearby cafes, standing around and talking.
On the first of June 2018, the building’s function has been discontinued. In order to save costs and to be able to control job search and recruitment even better, workers have received iPads from Cepa. From now on they get hired and have to register daily via an app.
The work was photographed in the last weeks before the closure of the building. Is shows the waiting (Wachten) and hiring (Aanwerven) of the dockworkers, the party in the bar (Afscheidsparty) on the last day, the empty building (Gebouw), and the workers’s introduction to digital hiring (Digitale aanwerving).
The title ‘Máj/My’ is inspired by the name of a department store in Prague, which was called ‘Máj’ –
Czech for ‘May’ – from the 1970s until the collapse of the communist regime, and which is run under
the name ‘My’ since 2009. Both words are pronounced identically. The phonetic consonance becomes
a marketing strategy: the old name resonates inaudibly in the new one. The spring month as well as
the socialistic May both mutate into the neo-liberal use of ‘My’, the English possessive pronoun of
the first person singular.
Flächenland (2020 – 2022), Spector Books, 2023
448 + 16 pages supplement, 492 colour images, hardcover, 23 x 30 cm
text: Jonathan Everts, Daniel Herrmann, german/english, design: Markus Dreßen, Spector Bureau
ISBN: 9783959057929, https://spectorbooks.com/book/stephanie-kiwitt-flaechenland
The title Flächenland is a reference to the geographical term, alluding to the urban sprawl in rural areas that the majority of people in Saxony-Anhalt live in. Stephanie Kiwitt took these atmospherically dense photographs while travelling through the state: on walks, from her car, or from the train. They show glimpses of towns, villages, and landscapes, often put together as sequences that communicate a shift in perspective or convey movement or a sense of getting closer. Kiwitt’s images describe a living space that has been hugely influenced by economic and social processes and is in an ongoing process of transformation. The photos give visual expression to political statements and signs of continuous structural change.
In the booklet accompanying the images, Jonathan Everts and Daniel Herrmann use Kiwitt’s photographic work as a means to reflect on the present and future of urban agglomerations and rural areas in Saxony-Anhalt.
Máj/My, Spector Books, 2018
co-published by Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and Camera Austria, Graz
128 pages, 87 black-and-white photographs, softcover with flaps, 18,5 x 26 cm,
czech/english, typography: Markus Dreßen, Spector Bureau
ISBN 9783959052399, https://spectorbooks.com/book/maj_my
On the Národní Třída (Avenue of the Nation) in Prague stands a department store that opened in 1975. Until the fall of the socialist regime it was called “Máj”: the month of May. Nowadays the fifth month of the year is referred to in Czech as “květen”. “Máj” is an older word that has a romantic quality and is closely associated with a famous poem of the same name by Karel Hynek Mácha written in 1836.
In 1996 the British supermarket chain Tesco purchased the store, renaming it “My” in 2009. If this name is interpreted as an English word, then it refers to an individual. It is surely no coincidence that this English name sounds much the same as the old Czech one. If pronounced, however, according to Czech phonetics, which no one ever does, it sounds quite different. Then it means “we” and refers to a collective.
Since 2017 Tesco has been selling off some of its stores in the Czech Republic because of financial losses. In spring of 2018 the department store “My” was also sold.
Photographed in Prague from November 2015 to June 2018
Four Oranges, Some Office Buidings, Woman’s Legs
30 color plates, offset
selfcovering, 32 pages, 21 x 29,7 cm, ed. 500
editing and design with Jurgen Maelfeyt, with a text by Steven Humblet
Between August and November 2014 Stephanie Kiwitt was commissioned by Team Flemish Government Architect to make a photographic work about the outskirts of Brussels: Diegem, Haren, Zaventem, Sint-Stevens-Woluwe, Kraainem, Sint-Pieters-Woluwe, Oudergem, Ukkel, Vorst, Drogenbos, Ruisbroek, Sint-Pieters-Leeuw, Anderlecht, Dilbeek, Groot-Bijgaarden, Sint-Agatha-Berchem, Ganshoren, Jette, Strombeek-Bever, Grimbergen and Vilvoorde. These neighbouring but extremely different areas cannot be conceived in terms of a single unequivocal image. The composition and order of the double pages in this publication do not refer to their geographical origins, but introduce a new order and create a connection related purely to aesthetics of form.
CHOCO CHOCO
16 plates in colour offset print and 19 black and white plates printed from photopolymer plates/ clichés
paperback, 32 pages, 21,2 x 30,2 cm, ed: 500
Lubok Verlag, Leipzig 2015
ISBN 978-3-945111-11-6
Wondelgemse Meersen
406 color plates, offset
softcover, 52 pages, 22,5 x 32 cm, ed: 700
editing and design: with Till Gathmann and Winfried Heininger
ISBN 978-3-03747-044-2
Kodoji Press, Baden 2012, in association with School of Arts Ghent
The marshes of Wondelgem are situated in the north of Ghent, in close proximity to the old docks. The former swamp area is about 100 hectares in size. It is surrounded by the municipality of Wondelgem to the north, an industrial zone with nineteenth-century factory buildings to the east, the ring road and a canal to the south, and a residential and small commercial zone to the west. A large part of the area consists of wasteland that is traversed by railroad tracks.
As a result of the local urban development scheme, a business park will be built here as well as a bus and tram depot, a forensic psychiatric centre and parking lots.
Capital Decor
black and white inkjet print on blueback paper
leporello fold, 1273 x 50 cm
clamshell box, 37 x 52 cm, ed: 10 + 2 A.P.
Kodoji Press, Baden 2011
ISBN 978-3-03747-039-8
Capital Decor
12” vinyl disc
reading 20:56, voice: Christophe Piette
edition of 300
Kodoji Press 2011
ISBN 978-3-03747-041-1
53 black and white plates, offset
hardcover, 32 x 24 cm, 112 pages, ed. 500
editing and design with Nicola Reiter
Editions GwinZegal, Plouha 2008
ISBN 978-2-9528099-4-8
During a one-year stay in Marseille (2006/7), I observed the changes in urban everyday life that came about as a consequence of the massive redevelopment and construction measures that were taken in the context of the ‘Marseille Euroméditerranée 2010’ project. Taking Marseille as an example, Cornerville shows an urban area whose ‘common’ architecture is being changed permanently, both by economic interest groups and individual inhabitants; it is deformed, destroyed or reproduced from scratch.
