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Text in English & German. The way we sit simultaneously defines privileges, social status, power, and taboos. Parallel to the presentation of China as the guest of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2009, the Museum fur Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt presents a panorama of Chinese sitting culture through a period of five centuries. Exclusive, noble Ming chairs stand side by side with chairs of the 18th and 19th century used by the middle class of that time. Limited sitting sculptures by renowned artist designers such as Shao Fan, Freeman Lau, Kenneth Cobonpue, XYZ-Design and Ji Liwei, who is also in charge of the interior design of the Chinese pavilion at the book fair, are confronted with the bourgeois sofas and sitting of the Chinese middle class of today. The ""Bastard Chairs"" of migrant workers and the homeless, day-to-day seats improvised out of pure need and made of trash and leftover materials, are commented in the sitting contexts of celebrities: emperors and courtesans, politicians and pop stars, athletes and students of product design show how sitting was done formerly and is done today.It ranges from a man of letters from the Ming era to the Qianglong emperor on the throne to Mao and Nixon in characteristic armchairs in Maos best room. The most famous contemporary Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei, will also be represented with an excerpt of his grandiose chair performance at the Dokumenta XII. Of course, product piracy, which -- as the typical Chinese dipping figure ""Shanzhai"" -- has mean-while adopted characteristics that define society, is also dealt with.

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9783936681369

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The internationally known architecture and design historian Volker Fischer was deputy director of the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt am Main for over ten years. Since 1995 he has built up a new design department in the Museum for Applied Arts in Frankfurt; in addition to his museum work he teaches history of architecture and design at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach. Stephan von der Schulenburg studied art history, philosophy, German language and literature, Japanology and Sinology in Munich, Berlin, Tokyo, Kyoto and Heidelberg. After an internship at the Linden-Museum Stuttgart he became the curator of the Asian collection at the Museum für Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt in 1990. He has staged numerous exhibitions and written widely on East Asian art, with a focus on Chinese ceramics, Japanese Art in the early Edo period and East Asian contemporary art. He has taught at the University of Bonn in 2001.

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