Martin Kippenberger – METRO-Net

In the early 1990s, Martin Kippenberger developed the idea of a global underground network: METRO-Net. Although it is one of the artist’s most fascinating projects, his premature death in 1997 meant that it could only be implemented in rudimentary form. In 1993, a metro entrance was built on the Greek island of Syros, followed by two more: one in 1995 in Dawson City in Canada and the other in 1997 on the new Leipzig exhibition grounds. This created a means of travelling in the boundless space of the imagination. Its usability depends on the imagination: without the willingness to visualise tunnel tubes and moving underground trains, this project remains a 'nonsensical building plan'. But the moment we accept the artwork as a mode of transport for 'mind travellers', then its full power can unfold. Kippenberger’s METRO-Net was intended to counter life’s predictable, rationally oriented parameters with a romantic sense of the world.

144 pages, 17.6 × 23.1 cm, hardcover, Spector Books (Leipzig).