Empty Vitrines with Headphones

Empty Vitrines with Headphones is a minimum "island of objects" constituted by a number of headphones and a system for curating audio material. The installation is completed by selecting the fronts of the abandoned shops where the Empty University is planned to be deployed. The listeners are informed about the proceedings in the buildings they visit or have an edited version of the happenings in the building, while they propose their own presence as a spectacle. The showcases are visitable for people to listen freely to the provided content of the channels.

An exemplary installation of Empty Vitrines with Headphones was realized for documenta 14 in the former store Leder Meid, in Kassel. Even if the setting was realized in Kassel, there is a reference to the Athenian empty shops and to all the declined traditional city centers where alternative Universities can be organized. The specific reference to Athens concerns a series of shops in big commercial avenues in the city center; these shops are abandoned while their vitrines ask for a way to communicate a possible implementation of the Empty University. Mostly found in the ground floors of problematic building blocks, such abandoned shops can show a possible generalization of the Empty University principle. We could expect a new understanding of knowledge as a new system of strategies for curating the network.

The vitrines could be used by the Empty University to initiate its open program, to inform about recent fragments of recordings that took place in its realm, to select live recordings from a multitude of events happening now, to edit or communicate special upcoming events.