n-1

Among others, we have been looking at two particular cases that apply the n-1 method:
the kitchenless house (1915) by Alice Constance Austin (1862–1955) and the antirepresentational theater by Carmelo Bene (1932–2002).

n-1 is a crucial method in our work as it opposes minimal difference to maximal destruction and therefore creates an alternative to modernity’s “destructive character” (Walter Benjamin): those utopian aspirations of total reduction and the tabula rasa that have been regarded as bound up with paternalistic, colonial, and totalitarian attitudes.

In our artistic, architectural, and curatorial work that reflects and produces space through various media, n-1 constitutes a fundament; “The house Alice Built” (2018) directly reflects on it in an archival installation.“Köçek Pisti” (2016) produces a dance floor, while subtracting its main figure, the dancer/köçek. “Here and Where” (2019) develops the concept for an exhibition without objects.

As a method that removes a piece, an element, a room, a function, or a protagonist from a given context to reset its relations and structures, we think of n-1 as a politics of form. n-1 are minor interventions that, yet, allow for new connections and potentially more open social, political, and aesthetic concepts and spaces.

We call n-1 an operation of subtraction (1) from a given set (n).