Covermotiv: Iannis Xenaxis, study for Polytope de Cluny (light trajectory diagrams), c. 1972. With kind permission by les Amis de Xenakis. All rights reserved. For the cover, the original drawing was processed by Beton.
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.