Stuttgart Observatory of Urban Phenomena – SOUP

With the initiators Marc-Steffen Bremer, Ulrich Bernhardt, Michael Gompf, Kurt Grunow and Harry Walter

Over the years, the large-scale project »Stuttgart 21« has led to a heated debate on sense of a major, massive transportational and urban-planning intervention. But whether the planned construction can be stopped or not, an additional portion of the former freight train station has become a construction site (the »Library of the 21st century«). For the initiators of SOUP, this offers a unique chance to make a timely phenomenon into an object of an artistic long-term observation, in all of its facets. Without focusing too much on the abstract concepts of large-scale art-urbanism debates, one wants to afford the luxury of continually observing the happenings above and below ground, or reflecting artistically and documenting things in a sustainable fashion. To give this plan an appropriate spatial and logistic basis, an observation and coordination office will be arranged in one of the skyscrapers jutting out from the site: das Begleitbüro (the accompanying office). The initiators are happy for the chance to introduce their project to an interested audience.