To convene. To converge. To compare. To combine. To compose.
To collectively act.
To assemble. To accumulate. To aggregate. To amass. To arrange
(and rearrange). To actively collect.
All of these actions are part of the practice of collection. This is a material, spatial, and social practice. Collections are more than just accumulations of multiples. A collection reveals a meaning in each of its elements that emerges never in isolation but always in relation. Through rules of engagement and arrangement—of objects, places and actions—these elements accumulate emergently into a system of their own. With a process of pattern recognition, and the logic of the edited montage, a successful collection reveals coincidences that surprise us; offers interpolated and interpreted narratives; and reveal a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Our new times require new ways of coming together. The word Collection comes from the Latin colligere, “to gather together into one place or one group, ” an act of location and co-location, of radical juxtaposition that integrates material, spatial and social experience.
For its 2025-2026 fellowship program, dieDAS will invite practitioners from contrasting but complementary disciplines (architects, performers, artists, writers, scenographers, sociologists), a community of designers as activators of space. The proposal for this residency consists of active collection and collective action, placed into dialogue with one another, in order to create new encounters.
Three actions are proposed.
1. REPAIR
To repair is to retrieve the useful, as well as to resignify what can no longer sustain its former use. Part of the art of collection is conservation: acts of mending and sustaining. Throughout current renovation and construction of the former Saalecker Werkstätten -that now houses dieDAS Design Akademie-, a selection of materials, fixtures, and details—what some might see as debris, diverted from the waste-stream—will be set aside and conserved reserved as a resource for fellows. Fellows will work with this object archive recovered during restoration and renovation of the historic building. An “as found” attitude will identify abundance in apparent scarcity, and usefulness in apparent uselessness. This will be the implement of a “Material Harvest”—preserving memories and making meanings. Deconstruction of the house will activate a reconstruction of architectural fragments—into a new setting of gathering together. Temporary displacement from the house will activate a placement into a new installation.
2. RECOLLECT
Our second collective action is the act of re-collection (objects, subjects, and stories), in an ongoing process throughout the fellowship, to develop a practice of looking closer, drawing together and acting upon our observations. We will learn by doing, while we collect individually, within a social collectivity. Open to coincidence, to happenstance, to serendipity, each fellow will develop assemblage, collage, and montage, capable of recombination with every other fellow’s collection.
3. REACT
As a closure, the traditional dieDAS “Walk and Talk” will be transformed into a collective action. Our third collection is a forum for gathering, a symposium for sharing, a gymnasium for practicing, a space in time to extrapolate meaningful relationships between the dieDAS community. A placemaking event. An eventful and purposeful ritual to build relationships and exchange ideas. The “theater” of convening a community into an installation piece where all of us—fellows, staff, curators, guests—play an active role in the placemaking practice.
A happening will be staged that draws on strategies of political and theatrical assembly, to choreograph a “theatre-in-the-round” where the boundary between performance and audience, walker and talker, is bridged and blurred into a common ground.
We collect ourselves in order to act.
We act in order to collect ourselves—and one another.
Rozana Montiel
dieDas Akademie Artistic Director 2025-2027
supported by
