The city, with its 40.000 inhabitants and industrial complex, was to be the product and the very incarnation of the industrialisation of the 50s, of the forms of socialist-realist architecture, and of the utopian dream of a totalitarian regime. The same architectural elements, it's just the dimensions that are different. A general problem within our discussions proved to be the Western gaze on what the 'West' calls the 'East'. The authors of this publication apparently tried to put together something like a 'Who is who in the East European art scene' - basically, an interesting intention. Through controlling the discourse one can possibly change the existing power situation.
Discourse relies on words and notions.
That's why, as our first collaborative project for 1998, we decided to produce a dictionary. Usually, dictionaries set and define 'norms' and 'standards'. We are very well aware that it will be virtually impossible to give a 'standard' or 'Duden-like' definition of these problematic terms, which, due to their very nature, will remain oscillating and in constant flux. Nevertheless we think that it can be very productive to question these notions, and to discuss the important aspects which they contain or reveal. The dictionary will be published in mid 1998.