The Great Repair: A Catalog of PracticesARCH+ #253. Florian Hertweck, Christian Hiller, Markus Krieger, Alex Nehmer, Anh-Linh Ngo, Milica Topalović (eds.)
The Great Repair is an oxymoron. the title captures the convergence of two seemingly contradictory principles: the revolutionary ambition for systemic change and the evolutionary act of repair. Despite the justified (postmodern) skepticism toward revolution as a concept of rupture, we must not abandon our aspiration to bring about profound transformation. The philosopher Eva von Redecker formulates this thought along similar lines in this issue: "We face such an enormous need for transformation that it would be downright absurd to disregard the most radical term for change that we have in our political vocabulary. The question is how to fill it with meaning. I understand revolution less as a break and more as an interstitial change, a change that creates the new through and out of the in-between spaces if the old."
The Great Repair: A Catalog of Practices introduces practices of repair and will be published on the occasion of the exhibition’s opening as a catalog. It succeeds the first issue (The Great Repair: Politics of the Repair Society, May 2023), which serves as a theoretical introduction to the topic.