Raum, Ding, Projekt. Ilya Kabakov und die Installation Der Palast der Projekte
Thing, Space, Project. Ilya Kabakov and The Palace of Projects

Summary/Abstract: The paper examines Ilya KABAKOV’s statements about thing, space, and project in the light of the grand installation The palace of projects. For KABAKOV, the meanings of these three terms differ fundamentally due to their context: in the West (in Europe and the US), space is determined by things; in the East (in Russia, i.e. the Soviet Union), things are dominated by space; in the West, to promote a project means to bring it forward to a successful ending, in the East a project simply means a deviation from normality that has to be eliminated. The installation The Palace of projects combines features both of the museum (which is associated with death and immortality) and of the socialist palace (which may serve as exposition hall, theatre, cinema and creative space alike). The Palace of projects serves – on the one hand – as a means for the reification of the utopian ideas of a number of people representing a cross-section of Soviet society (ideas become things from a Western point of view); on the other hand it provides them with a spatial frame to make them visible at all (from an Eastern perspective). The projects are exhibited in the protected space of the Museum – and may yet be reproduced outside the museum, for each is accompanied by detailed instructions. The Palace thus provides an ambivalent space where Eastern utopias turn into Western projects, that are bound to be successful – at least as a museum exhibit.

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