Sitzen stehend Leute

People run around the world blinkered. They look neither to the right nor to the left. They appear to be fleeing. Contact with unknown people is like taking a step into the unknown.

"Sitzen stehend Leute" is a place which offers the opportunity to meet. A chain whose links mean that it can change shape in order to do justice to different forms of human communication. The flexibility supports all conceivable situations of most varied conversations and imparts a form on them. Just like gestures or facial expressions the seating underlines the conversation. Thus, it becomes formally visible and continues to exist for a moment after it has ended. The form is so to speak the legacy of the conversation and should be an invitation to begin a further conversation and to confer a new form on it.

Sometimes only a small impulse is enough to give people the reason to interact or talk with one another. "Sitzen stehend Leute" will be this impulse. With its constantly changing form it does not only move in a thrilling way through the context in which all the conversations take place but also induces people to give it a new form itself.

„Sitzen stehend Leute“ was developed by Amélie Ikas and Chris Walter. At the moment the object is exhibited at the GRASSI Museum für Angewandte Kunst in Leipzig.

»Finster war's, der Mond schien helle
Auf die grünbeschneite Flur,
Als ein Wagen blitzesschnelle
Langsam um die Ecke fuhr.

Drinnen saßen stehend Leute
Schweigend ins Gespräch vertieft,
Als ein totgeschossner Hase
Schnell an ihn'n vorüberlief.

Und ein blondgelockter Knabe
Mit kohlrabenschwarzem Haar
Auf die grüne Bank sich setzte,
Die gelb angestrichen war.«

– Peter Ringeisen

The GRASSI Museum of Applied Arts added the artwork to its museum collection in 2017. Since then, "sitzend stehend Leute" has been part of the permanent exhibition and can be experienced by the public.