Brenda Tempelaar : the exhibition tower

The Exhibition Tower is a publication that features a series of four exhibitions staged inside a scale model of a tower designed by OMA for Lafayette Anticipations in Paris. The exhibition catalogue focuses on the concept of an 18-metre-high void and architectural/curatorial flexibility. The central question throughout the publication is what OMA’s design offers its prospective exhibitioners. Is it just mobile, or does it actually mobilise something? The editorial essay Animating the Ghost Sonata draws a parallel between the tower’s design and a 1907 screenplay by August Strindberg that is about expectations, dreams and house rules. All exhibitions took place behind the closed door of a studio at the Van Eyck academy in Maastricht. The catalogue therefore is not a keepsake but the only form in which the work ever existed.