Visiting BLESS N° 72 BLESSlet, is possible every Friday afternoon (free admission).

Please contact us in advance via reservations@kw-berlin.de

BLESS N°72 BLESSlet, 2022. Installation view at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin 2022; Photo: Frank Sperling

Since 2017, KW Institute for Contemporary Art has been hosting the residency format A Year with…, a program that facilitates in-depth engagement with an artistic practice through a variety of inward- and outward-facing formats over the course of a year. In 2022, the duo BLESS will take on this program. Desiree Heiss and Ines Kaag have been working together on numerous transdisciplinary projects since 1997. Dubbing themselves ‘situation designers’, their products blend fashion, art, design, architecture, business and social practice, always aiming to create an equilibrium between mental and physical exertion. Driven by the ambition to create objects for everyday use, BLESS defines her practice and products as a way of life, one built on a firm conviction that the future can be shaped in a way that is active and self-reliant.

BLESS N°72 BLESSlet, 2022. Installation view at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin 2022; Photo: Frank Sperling

In 2022, BLESS celebrates her 25th anniversary, which KW takes as an opportunity to put the focus on Desiree Heiss and Ines Kaag’s visionary products and endeavors. A Year with BLESS renegotiates many of the key issues that lie at the heart of her collaboration, creating an innovative format that seeks to connect life, work, leisure, and exercise. The duo rethinks existing processes and workflows and test them out artistically in different public areas. The one-year collaboration unfolds across three key projects: BLESS N° 72 BLESSlet at KW; ; interventions in the form of public events at KW and in the Ernst-Reuter-Siedlung, where the duo has her Berlin-based studio, for example with the BLESS N°72 Saunarider, in collaboration with Sam Chermayeff Office; and the release of the third book of her own publication series, BLESS III.

BLESS N°72 Saunarider in collaboration with Sam Chermayeff Office, 2022.
Installation view at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin 2022; Photo: Frank Sperling

As part of the participatory installation BLESSlet, BLESS takes over KW’s Residency Apartment #11 and reimagine the way it is used, both as a place for living and as an experimental workplace. BLESSlet forms a habitat equipped with objects, furniture, and everyday objects that BLESS has designed, which will showcase the broad spectrum of the duo’s practice and offer unexpected opportunities for everyday activities, for leisure, and for tending to bread-and-butter office tasks. The apartment is meant to be actively used by staff as well as by visitors and visiting artists.

The aim of this repurposing is on the one hand to renegotiate issues relating to the interplay of private and public life, and, on the other, to intently explore health-promoting working conditions—a concern BLESS has been addressing with self-experiments for many years. BLESSlet at KW embodies BLESS’s quest for a daily rhythm of focus and release in which physical exertion, productivity, and leisure can be experienced and self-regulated in a responsible way within a consciously-designed environment. The focus here is on the integration of sedentary and movement-based production processes with communal and anti-hierarchical ways of handling routines, in a new form of “working commune”. Regular changes and additions to the furnishment and the interior will make the BLESSlet evolve throughout A Year with BLESS.

BLESS N°72 BLESSlet, 2022. Installation view at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin 2022; Photo: Frank Sperling

Team

Situation Design: BLESS (Desiree Heiss and Ines Kaag)

Curator: Anna Gritz

Head of Production: Claire Spilker

Technical Management: Wilken Schade

Head of Installation and Media Technology: Markus Krieger

Installation team: KW Installation Team

Public Program and Outreach Coordinator: Nikolas Brummer

Text: Anna Gritz, Léon Kruijswijk

Presse und Marketing: Marie Kube, Anna Falck-Ytter

Proofreading and Translation: Isolda Mc Liam, Tina Wessel, Simon Wolff

Since 2017, KW Institute for Contemporary Art organizes the residency format A Year with…, a program that over the course of a year offers the participating artists the opportunity to pursue activities in the fields of design, research, literature, as well as publication projects within the context of contemporary art.

This project was produced in collaboration with Phileas

With generous support by Federal Ministry Republic of Austria for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport.

The exhibition is generously supported by Kvadrat.