all the things you are. The Signs of Life by Wolfgang Schmidt

The Signs of Life were shown in exhibitions in Berlin (1977) and Frankfurt (1979), but they were also utilized in the commercial graphics of Wolfgang Schmidt, who used them as early as 1971 in a preliminary stage for the catalogs of designer Dieter Rams. The symbols also appear later in different formats, alternating between art graphics, commercial graphics, and concrete poetry. For Schmidt, the question of the scope of the signs does not arise. Rather, they show an attempt, starting from Schmidt himself, to capture one's own life in signs.

In this sense, his Signs of Life defy the idea of ​​the pictogram as a seemingly universal-functional communication medium and paradigmatically represent the transition from the rational-abstract pictogram to the post-modern, emotionally charged emoticon. Rooted in the zeitgeist of the early 1970s, Schmidt's signs are a process-like approach to the human body as the barrier between the inner self and the outside world.

The exhibition includes graphics of the Signs of Life as well as a large number of manuscripts and plans. The show focus on the transfer of this peculiar system of signs into space and other media such as performances, lectures, sound, and moving images. The works exhibited were accompanied by research formats that pursue the questions raised by the Signs about identity, emotion, and communication in different ways.

Workshop

Spatial Installation
Exhibition Reader
Lecture Talk
Workshop

University of Arts and Design Karlsruhe

with
Philipp Nielsen
Omsk Social Club
Daniel Irrgang
Diane Hillebrand
Klara Domröse
Bruno Jacoby
Moritz Appich
Gunter Rambow
et al.

2019

For the workshop format, I worked together with the Berlin-based drama teacher Klara Domröse and 16 kids in the age from ten to twelve from Karlsruhe. On two days we had body-related performances, discussion sessions about the usage of signs, and made dream trips to develop new signs as a collective. These exercises were based upon archival material I found during my research sessions at INTeF Darmstadt and Kunstbibliothek Berlin.

Results of the dreamtrip

Exhibition Reader

In conversation with OMSK Social Club, Philipp Nielsen, Gunter Rambow, Giesela Brackert and others, I developed an interview reader format to frame the installation while offering perspectives on the surrounding topics and the persona of Wolfgang Schmidt. His companions were talking about encounters with him, while scientists and artists talked with me about the socioanthropological history of emotions (Nielsen) and the relations of emotionality to the artistic practice of real-life gameplay (OMSK). Read the interview with OMSK here.

Archival source material of Wolfgang Schmidt from the 1970's.

The exhibition all the things you are includes graphics of the Signs of Life as well as a large number of manuscripts and plans. The show focus on the transfer of this peculiar system of signs into space and other media such as performances, lectures, sound, and moving images. The works exhibited were accompanied by research formats that pursue the questions raised by the Signs about identity, emotion, and communication in different ways. In 1979, 262 of the planned 893 signs were finished by Schmidt, making over 394 variations possible. The characters share the same peculiar formal language, based on modernist design principles: The square grid underneath offers the possibility of endless combinations.