Landvermessung Babylon: die Welt als Maßstab (Geodesic Babylon: The World as Scale) continues the cycle of projects known as les artistes décorateures, which Bettina Allamoda initiated in the 1990s with research into East German design, presentation strategies in the spaces of the enterprise, and concepts for displaying art during the postwar period. She works with so-called event barricades, which function like breakwaters for controlling space in sensitive areas that are potentially subject to high pressure from audience members, such as music concerts. In Landvermessung Babylon, they serve as a display in the form of an installation, a freestanding combine where the background photographs and wall paintings of the Optisches Museum Jena can be assembled. These set pieces are from the exhibition space for geodesic instruments, which survives today only in the form of a photograph. Reappraising the background design as an exhibition piece expropriates the principles of value that separate the backstage from the stage, focusing instead on the interactions of social, cultural, and economic differences in the space, whether it is a concert hall or a museum.

Installation View, Halle 14, Leipzig 2012 
© Produzieren/ Armin Linke

Landvermessung Babylon (Die Welt als Maßstab)
(Geodesic Babylon: The World as Scale), les artistes décorateurs
2012, room installation, PVC, alluminium stage-barricades, photographs and different wall fragments from the interior design of the Optisches Museum Jena