Based on her exhibition “In the Desert of Modernity – Colonial Planning and After” at the House of World Cultures (Berlin, 2008) Marion von Osten´s lecture focuses on the transformation of colonial North Africa into a laboratory for European modernization. The car-oriented city, the underground car park and other projects were intended as a blueprint for Europe’s metropolises, too. The lecture presents works of architecture and urban concepts and provides insight into the relationship and dependencies between the European modernity and colonialism.

Marion von Osten works with curatorial, artistic, and theoretical approaches that converge through the medium of exhibitions, installations, video and text productions, lecture performances, conferences, and film programs. She is a founding member of Labor k3000, Kleines Post-fordistisches Drama, and the Center for Post-Colonial Knowledge and Culture, Berlin. Since 2006 she is Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Von Osten co-curated Atelier Europa (Kunstverein München, 2004), “Projekt Migration” (with Kathrin Rhomberg, Kölnischer Kunstverein) on the history of migration in post-war Germany and was artistic director of Transit Migration (2003–2005).