The foyer is the centre of the centre for open questions, its beginning and its end. It is revolving stage and arrivals hall. From here you go into the individual rooms. Examples of “questions about asking” are displayed in the foyer. Above all, the introductory text, the so-called A-text for the entire installation, can be found under its own lamps on large posters in four languages, as well as the questions and most of the texts can be found in the four languages German, Czech, Polish and English:
Centre for Pending Questions (ZFOF.EU) – from so is that to is that so
How can we endure contradictions? With questions? Are questions the first steps to getting answers? And as long as the answers are not enough for us: Keep on asking?
In the ZFOF you can ask and exhibit any question that the phenomenon and keyword „Corona“ raises, in a narrower or broader sense. These are often not only practical questions, but also philosophical, political, ethical, existential, very fundamental questions.
When introducing new questions, the usual laws and rules of decency and mutual respect apply: no hate messages, no calls for violence, no insults or slurs. „Why am
I angry?“ would then be the question that comes into force for those impulses. But questions that violate these few and simple rules will not be published, but removed.
So be welcome and invited to make each and every one of the seven rooms of the ZFOF your own in your own way as an expanded thinking space, as a working space, as an inspiration space as a resting space, as a research space. The greatest success would be if you feel comfortable here and come up with new ideas and new questions.
The question and the culture of questioning is one of the oldest achievements of our language and culture. Answers and ever more questions are its descendants. The question underlies science. And also art. It can be born of doubt, curiosity or the drive for knowledge. Without questions, we would not have come this far.
The ZFOF is an exhibition and a usable installation that will never be complete, because it is a process and the exhibition of that process: a constantly growing and progressing institution, shaped by the influences and participation of all visitors and capable of widening our spaces of conversation. This will be evident both here in the building and in the lively display of the emerging question landscapes around the clock on the internet.
The questions from the most diverse filter bubbles, belief camps and echo chambers that are continually exhibited here form the foundation, inspiration and beginning to inspire a culture and climate of questioning from a small gravitational field.
The first glance when entering the Centre for Open Questions falls on the luminous bouquet in the blue bay of the foyer, a kind of flower altar – the “bouquet full of questions” is also a symbol of diversity and tolerance: this apse or light niche of the foyer, with the stone column on which the wide bowl with the luminous bouquet stands, is the first message here and the eye-catcher for all those entering – the real atmospheric and visual welcome, a warm welcome: The small secular house chapel with its delicate sky blue and the prominent color fireworks as a view and room-wide round and background of the bouquet. Especially in the dark season, when the already cyclical topic of corona becomes louder again in daily life, this bouquet is strongly illuminated.
Wolfgang Georgsdorf, 2022
From the foyer, the following additional rooms can be entered, with titles above the doors, handwritten with charcoal and marked with question marks by the artist:
These question marks behind the door headings call into question the titles of the rooms themselves.
Your one opinion?
Fraginator?
Your one view?
Your other view?
Serious?
Fun?
Research and conference?
Let the questions in all these rooms sink in. Perhaps some of these questions hit something that is also important to you. In all moments of the Centre for Pending Questions: if you have any questions, please ask!
They have various possibilities to add their own questions, even their own comments, wishes, criticisms and suggestions to the growing collection and the forum, and thus also to exhibit them to the wider audience.
Here you will find numerous, selected questions as starting material and basic stock.
The different patterns of arrangement and empty spaces between the questions symbolize the space and the spaces that are reserved for further additions by Besucher_innen throughout the entire duration of the exhibition. These gaps stand, so to speak, for the “air” that is still upwards, to the left, to the right, and downwards, and surrounds each of these questions.
How did the basis of the first questions come together in all the rooms?
The artist used various methods of surveying, formed teams, personally addressed or wrote to people from various areas and opinion landscapes in order to receive questions directly on the one hand or suggestions on the other hand, in order to then finish formulating those questions that were in the statements of the interlocutors.
Above all, the Centre for Pending Questions wants to stimulate your inner dialogue.
