In the Basement, 2019

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are sitting here in the heating cellar of the university, because that is how it should be. We simply usurped this beautiful room, it was not intended for any use and it has now become our largest lecture hall. [...] As a temporary measure, like so much here, as a temporary arrangement, you can come to like it.” (Heinrich Klotz/Rector's Speech)

On October 18, 1995, the winter semester was opened for the first time in the former IWKA hall building, an ammunition factory built during the First World War on Brauerstraße in Karlsruhe. Since the building was still under renovation and neither its exterior nor interior were completed, the semester openings took place in the heating cellar of the building.

The cellar; it is substructure, projection surface and storage room, houses pool, people, long-lain ammunition, hides chairs made of chocolate, potential objects, infrastructure. The cellar can be described psychoanalytically, metaphorically, cultural-theoretically, constructively. In its new special edition "In the Basement" consisting of guest contributions, the university magazine Munitionsfabrik deals with – the basement. In particular, the substructure of the University of Design and ZKM Karlsruhe – located in a former ammunition factory – the zone with the cellar as a phenomenon, symbol and place of longing. What are we built upon? Further, what is in the cellar? What is the cellar? In order for the publication to clarify these facts, we asked external and internal people, enthusiasts and expeditionists who were not afraid to go down in advance. We let them lead us down to their stories and inventions, their speculations and conjectures on the cellar.

Relevant questions were answered by Markus Grob, Matthias Bruhn, Clemens Lauer, Cécile Kobel, Hanna Jurisch, Daniel Hornuff, Elvira Heise, Victor Fancelli Capdevila, Richard Brunner, Jana Hofmann, Susanne Kriemann, Igor Hardt, Tobias Kraft, Stephan Krass, Louisa Raspé, Mustafa Emin Büyükcoskun, Isabel Koch, Johan Frederik Hartle, Monika Theilmann, Judith Milz and Anton Stuckardt.

124 pages, softcover with flaps, 5 Euros, special edition of the ammunition factory. Available in the ZKM museum shop.

The university magazine Munitionsfabrik was first published in the winter semester 1997/1998, initially under the direction of Adam Seide – every six months in order to meet the demands of a university magazine. They were awkward, oversized formats to start with, forming a cross-curricular stage for experimental design and publication. Later they decreased in size, on thin newsprint, high-gloss, fine-striped, hardcover, on university internal matters, recipes, on failure, on Karlsruhe, over 200 pages. Since 2004, Munitionsfabrik has been published by changing student editorial offices. The latest special edition of Munitionsfabrik “Im Keller (In the Basement)" was published under the editorial supervision of Cécile Kobel and Judith Milz. Cécile Kobel studied graphic design at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences before continuing her studies at the Karlsruhe University of Design in 2015. Kobel's first neighbor always sat on a plastic chair outside the basement stairs for reasons of age – until she fell. Judith Milz studied media art at the University of Design Karslruhe. From 2010-2013, she moved the two atriums of the university within the entire hall construction of the ammunition factory by one cm to the east. This shift also affected the basement.