Based in Düsseldorf, Germany, the Institut für Zeitgenossenschaft (Institute for Contemporaneity) is an independent, scientific and artistic institution selflessly committed to the detection and evaluation of socially relevant phenomena beyond commonly established social sciences. Thus, the institute’s latest research project is dedicated to The 100 Most important Things.

What is important? And why? Which things are designated to enable life as we do experience it day by day? Which things in life are important, anyway?

Since The 100 Most Important Things have been journalised, they were presented to the public in many different ways: in book-form, as subject of academic lectures and at several exhibitions at renowned institutions of art and culture. But what good does it bring if the most important things are not moved globally? And after all, what if this isn’t done on time and also in an economic as well as ecologically efficient way?

The concept

In close cooperation with Riege Software International, the IFZ will ship The 100 Most Important Things – 100 exhibits, framed, packed and wrapped separately, stored in the fractional lacunae of containers and shipped around the world.

The project

The 100 Most Important Things shall be recognised as the first worldwide travelling logistics exhibition. Though in step one, the exhibits will not be presented to a wider audience. The special effect of this undertaking will be the documentation of this event in terms of films and photographs taken during the entire supply chain. Our target is to make the invisible world of logistics visible to the rest of the world – thus enabling “access” to goods, freight, devices and things in order to provide a new understanding of logistics while creating a hype by inventive context and spectacular public activities.

Cooperation partners: any motivated, engaged company and institution involved in logistic processes.