“In these difficult times, the best thing we have is a network of friends scattered across this shaky planet” (Walter Gropius to Helena Syrkus, 1956)
We would like to cordially invite you to the reading by WIRKUSPRIES on April 6, 2025 at the Kasseler Kunstverein. The artist publication WE ARE MILLENIUM STARS was created as part of the exhibition ARBUZ at the Kasseler Kunstverein, which we would like to present on this day. On the occasion of the presentation, WIRKUSPRIES will read from the publications “CIAM Archipelago. The Letters by Helena Syrkus” and ‘We Are Millennium Stars’. The text collage reflects the extensive correspondence of the Polish architect Helena Syrkus, one of the pioneering personalities of modernism and at the same time one of the many underrepresented women of her time, which Maja Wirkus and Eric Pries researched for the first time in many archives around the world.
The correspondences within the international movement for modern architecture CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne) are the basis of WIRKUSPRIES’ artistic research work; they allow a look at the characters behind the well-known names of architectural history such as Walter Gropius, LeCorbusier, Carola Giedion-Welker, László Moholy-Nagy and others, their professional, transnational network and the friendly relationships that developed in this intense struggle for modernism. They are testimonies to a complex period in world politics, as represented by the anti-Semitism of the 1930s, the tragedy of the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War up to the 1980s.
Always with a view to a Europe of similarities, WIRKUSPRIES paints an exciting picture of Helena Syrkus, a Polish architect at the center of the pan-European and later global modernist movement.
Both publications will be available on the occasion of the reading.