Soft Interventions

Barrier tapes are used to section areas off from one another and to control access. Hannes Priesch and Herta Kramer-Priesch were commissioned to explore the topic of barriers, and in particular accessibility and inaccessibility both in the foyer and throughout the building.

With a wry touch they invoke and transform street signs, industrial barrier fencing, prohibition signs:
 

• Dog chains with spikes, usually intended to intimidate, lose their function and hence their power to frighten us.
   
• A crowd barrier becomes a cartoon-like woven fence in gleaming blue, the textile signs take a playful approach to prohibitions, mixing up meanings such as “Warning, closed! Dog bites!”
  
   

Summary: 
Militant seeming barriers become absurd sculptural objects made of unusual materials whose tactile quality actually encourages us to touch them.