Series:

Sternberg Press / Solution

3 total works

Cover of Solution 275–294 – Communists Anonymous
The members of Communists Anonymous (COMA) share an extreme sense of empathy and justice, and therefore detest more or less any form of private property. COMA members restrain themselves from any effort to overcome capitalism before there is a new convincing model at hand of how to actually implement communism. The speculative self-help of COMA understands the historical incarnations of communism as substantially incomplete in thought and practice, and places communism where it originated—in the realm of fiction. Only as fiction can communism manifest itself again beyond doubt.   

Solution 275–294: Communists Anonymous is a document of some imageries of communism and a testament to the current predicament of our political imagination. Atomized, privatized, and deprived of any infrastructure for solidarity—without any internationalist project, with moralizations compensating for the disappearance of political organization, with micro-politics replacing macro-politics—communists can only be anonymous in this world of ours. Edited by writer Ingo Niermann and curator Joshua Simon, this collection of essays and stories—written from the fields of art, literature, law, philosophy, activism, design, and science—proposes resolutions to current social contradictions, covering topics such as bacteria, bliss, immortality, queerness, interculturality, poetry, transportation, childhood and motherhood, and all-encompassing sensual love.

Solution Series edited by Ingo Niermann

Contributors
Santiago Alba Rico, Heather Anderson, Ann Cotten, Fiona Duncan, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, Boris Groys, Elfriede Jelinek, Georgy Mamedov and Oksana Shatalova, Metahaven, Momus, Ingo Niermann, David Pearce, Frank Ruda, Georgia Sagri, Joshua Simon, Alexander Tarakhovsky, Timotheus Vermeulen

Cover of Solution 264-274 - Drill Nation
What is luxury? Anything that is not essential to life and that, once everyone has it, is rather annoying.  
—Solution 264, “Public Poverty”   

Having furnished solutions for Germany and Dubai, Ingo Niermann takes a new look at what nationhood can mean and accomplish today, finding inspiration, of all places, in North Korea. Now that the promise of global prosperity and abundance can technically be fulfilled, the time has come for a minimalist rethink of society. By relying on drills and a principle of reduction, the individual can be granted a freedom for experiences and ideas that are not possible otherwise. The more we simplify, the lighter the ballast we'll have to carry.    

The twelfth volume in the Solution series includes an account of Niermann's travels through North and South Korea, accompanied by the author's photographs. The eleven solutions in Solution 264–274: Drill Nation build from insights culled while on the trip.  

Published to coincide with the Real DMZ Project 2015, curated by Sunjung Kim and Nikolaus Hirsch
   
Solution Series edited by Ingo Niermann

Cover of Solution 257 – Complete Love
Ingo Niermann's provocative new novel imagines a Berlin alternative to the activist occupation of public spaces in 2011. The completists, gathered at Alexanderplatz, aspire for justice through intimacy. They believe that only when the redistribution of material wealth includes equal chances of finding sex and love—no matter how elderly, disabled, or ugly you are—communism will become real. This volume of the Solution series is a revolutionary erotic fiction.

Karl, a freelance writer and young stay-at-home dad in Berlin, first dismisses the completists as a bunch of as fringe weirdos and burnouts. But over the course of one summer day, his outlook changes after a series of encounters both virtual and physical. Contacting him on Skype, an attractive and mysterious stranger tells him she has only three hours left to live. Their video chat starts a game of seduction and intrigue and turns into a vivid debate on the decorum of modern relationships and fantasies. Instead of satiating him sensually and emotionally, Ava enlightens him about the real completist challenge of justice through sex and intimacy. Karl must join ranks with disabled sex-rights activist Oskar Patzer before his day's journey—culminating in an improvised public orgy prefaced by a choreographed group performance—can indicate the possibilities for completing love. 

For further completist efforts, go to www.thearmyoflove.net.

Solution Series edited by Ingo Niermann