»Museum Off Museum« wird begleitet von Vorträgen und einem Blog mit künstlerischen und wissenschaftlichen Beiträgen. Bis Januar 2014 werden wir hier in regelmäßigen Abständen visuelle Statements, Texte, Interviews und Dokumentationen veröffentlichen. Mit dieser Plattform möchten wir über die Ausstellung hinaus zu einer Reflexion der Thematik anregen und andere Sichtweisen von Künstlerinnen und Künstlern, Kuratorinnen und Kuratoren, Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftlern präsentieren. Von besonderen Interesse sind dabei Aspekte, die von der Ausstellung gar nicht oder nur am Rande verhandelt werden. Zum Abschluss des Projektes wird ein Katalogbuch (Deutsch-Englisch) erscheinen, welches die einzelnen Ausstellungsphasen dokumentiert und alle Beiträge zusammenfasst.

»Museum Off Museum« is accompanied and thematically contextualised by lectures and this blog with artistic and scientific contributions. Until January 2014 we are publishing regularly visual statements, texts, interviews and documentations. With this platform and through the presentation of other perspectives by artists, curators and scholars we would like to encourage an ongoing discussion of the topic. Furthermore we are interested into the aspects, which are not negotiated by the exhibition at all. Finally the project then culminates in a catalogue (German-English) summarising the individual phases of the exhibition and all of the contributions to it.

Redaktion / Editing:
Cynthia Krell, Thomas Thiel

Beiträge von / Contributions by:
Luis Jacob, Nikita Yingqian Cai, Steven ten Thije, Eric Baudelaire, Chus Martínez , Kader Attia, Karl-Josef Pazzini, Lucie Fontaine, Ricardo Valentim, Nora Sternfeld, Dainius Liškevičius, Anna Jehle, Antonia Marten, Cathy Carpenter, Sam Durant, Dirk Fleischmann, Barbara Steiner, Philippe Pirotte, Kevin Schmidt, Peggy Buth, Doreen Mende, Özlem Altin & Juana Berrío.

Kerry James Marshall

Kerry James Marshall, Garden Party, 2003, painting, acrylic, paper, canvas, 304.8 x 304.8 cm, courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, NY, and Koplin Del Rio, CA

A Contribution by Philippe Pirotte

Kerry James Marshall is known for large-scale paintings, sculptures, and other objects that take up African-American life and history as their subject matter. His work often deals with the effects of the Civil Rights movement on domestic life, as well as working with elements of popular culture. But Kerry James Marshall’s main artistic project is a much more bold and ambitious one and has museums in mind from the outset. »

21. Januar 2014

Do Not Touch Intimacy

The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, photo: Dirk Fleischmann

A Contribution by Dirk Fleischmann

Participatory and processual art practices represent challenges for museums, and these have become an issue over the past decades in occidental art. The Do Not Touch imperative affects how visitors may experience art in museums. »

07. Januar 2014

Lenka Clayton: Das Allen Steinheim Museum

Lenka Clayton, Intact, »Chinese«, 2008, Installationsansicht, Cohen Gallery, Alfred/New York, Courtesy die Künstlerin

Ein Beitrag von Antonia Marten

Während eines Residency-Aufenthalts an der Alfred University in Alfred, New York State, stößt die britische Künstlerin und Dokumentarfilmerin Lenka Clayton (*1977 in Derbyshire, UK) auf die Geschichte des Allen Steinheim Museum, die sie zu mehreren künstlerischen Projekten animiert. »

06. Dezember 2013

Anatomy Fiction

A contribution by Yuki Okumura

In this on-going series of workshops organized by artist Yuki Okumura, children from four to seven years old are invited to make a life-sized drawing of their own anatomy−an »inner« self-portrait visualized through their imagination and interpretation, free from conventions of the anatomical science. »

30. November 2013

Involvierungen

Installationsansicht, »Frisch zum Kampfe! Frisch zum Streite!«, kuratiert von Ljubomir Bratic, Nora Sternfeld im Rahmen des Projektes »Verborgene Geschichte/n Remapping Mozart«, Wien 2006, Foto: Lisl Ponger

Ein Beitrag von Nora Sternfeld

Sehr lange stand außer Frage, dass Museen Identität produzieren, »Eigenes« und »Fremdes« zum Thema haben, nationale Unterscheidungen (re-)produzieren, wertvolle Objekte und objektive Werte zeigen. Und obwohl dies geschah, wurde gerade davon in den Museen selbst nicht gesprochen. So war das Museum moderner Kunst zunächst und zumeist ein Akteur, der sich selbst mit seinen scheinbar neutralen »white cubes« unsichtbar machte. »

22. November 2013

On Museums

Lucie Fontaine, Search for the Fountain, 2012, installation view, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, photo: Åsa Lundén/Moderna Museet, photo: Åsa Lundén/Moderna Museet

A Contribution by Lucie Fontaine

EMPLOYEE: Lucie Fontaine has been invited to contribute to a blog related to an exhibition called »Museum Off Museum«, which is taking place at the Bielefelder Kunstverein. Instead of writing a formal text, it might be more fruitful to accept this invitation and engage with the issues that it raises through this sort of conversational format. »

08. November 2013

There is no hierarchy in Art (André Malraux)

Research material, vintage newspaper, courtesy of Kader Attia

A Contribution by Kader Attia

Considered at the time to be the capital of Negro Art, Paris was soon to meet its rival. In 1935 the Museum of Modern Art organized an important exhibition on African Art. Greatly influenced by the European avant-garde scene, this young institution was driven to become a major player on the modern art scene. However, in the early 20th century long before this occurred, private art galleries in Paris were already displaying Western modern art beside African art. »

24. Oktober 2013

Going Somewhere

Hannah Hurtzig, Flight Case Archive of Mobile Academy, 2003-2010, © Peter Cox, Eindhoven - Van Abbemuseum

A Contribution by Steven ten Thije

In the light of the issues that preoccupy me at the moment, reading the previous contribution to this blog by Luis Jacob and Nikita Yingqian Cai, it seems to me that one of today’s more urgent topics is the position of museums in civil society. Yingqian Cai gives a detailed description of the museum boom in contemporary China. »

04. Oktober 2013

Groundless in the Museum / Show Your wound

LUIS JACOB, CABINET (MÖNCHENGLADBACH) (2009), EXHIBITION VIEW, STÄDTISCHES MUSEUM ABTEIBERG, MÖNCHENGLADBACH

A Contribution by Luis Jacob

In 1967, the two artists Allan Kaprow and Robert Smithson had a conversation focused on the question »What is a Museum?« They began their dialogue by tackling the relationship between Art and Life — how close, or how distant, can Art and Life become within the context of the art museum? Kaprow stated... »

10. September 2013

Shaping the Void

Özlem Altin, Meditation (frozen river), 2014

A contribution by Özlem Altin & Juana Berrío

History is not only the record of the past; it is also a series of interpretations and narratives that are relevant to a present moment. Functioning as a system that selects, filters, and contextualizes information, history works as a bridge that connects and updates the past through the present and the present through the past. It preserves what it considers needs to be remembered and discards what it considers needs to be forgotten. However, there are events in history that not only resist being forgotten but, simply, resist temporality in general. »

11. Februar 2014

DISPLAYCING PRACTICES

Herman Asselberghs, Capsular, 23 min, various stills, 2006, courtesy Auguste Orts, Brussels, © Herman Asselberghs

A Contribution by Doreen Mende

What are we to think about the current state of »the exhibition«? I would like to return to the question as to what making an exhibition means, and what that can do for us in the era of globalization. Basically, our present era is characterized by two principles: firstly, an excess of information regulated via standardized distribution systems that jeopardize and conceal alternative ways to include the vast variety of processes for generating knowledge. »

06. Februar 2014

All OF US

Peggy Buth: Opening speech of Bernhard Hagen on the occasion of the opening of the Völkermuseum in Frankfurt am Main, held in the house Münzgasse no. 1 on the 22nd of October 1904, performance by Peggy Buth, video stills, HD video, 16:9, 37:57 min, in collaboration with the Weltkulturen Museum Frankfurt am Main, 2013

A Contribution by Peggy Buth

The Weltkulturen Museum’s invitation to create an artwork as part of an encounter with its collections came at an anxious time for German ethnographic museums. Some described the institutions as crisis-ridden and outmoded, others as facing the challenge of new beginnings. In the past ten years, many ethnographic museums in Germany have reconceptualised and restructured their permanent exhibitions, rebuilt them completely or even dissolved them. Often, the museums’ names and leadership have changed. »

31. Januar 2014

How To Make a Large Format Camera for Weather Balloon Near-Space Photography

High Altitude Balloon Amateur Radio Experiment, digital scan of 4" x 5" transparency taken at 25,000 m on May 15, 2013, intended to be shown as a large scale projection in a museum, 2013, courtesy of the artist

A Contribution by Kevin Schmidt

The goal of this blog post is to demonstrate how to build a cheap, lightweight large format camera. It is part of a larger project that will enable you to launch this camera on a weather balloon to take a single 4x5 picture of the horizon from the top of the stratosphere, and then subsequently recover the camera and film. »

23. Januar 2014

Mögliche Museen

Ein Beitrag von Barbara Steiner

2007 habe ich zusammen mit Charles Esche das Buch »Mögliche Museen« herausgegeben, das sich der Entwicklung von Museen für moderne und zeitgenössische Kunst widmet. An Hand von zehn Beispielen aus den letzten 50 Jahren untersuchten wir gemeinsam mit verschiedenen AutorInnen das öffentliche Museum hinsichtlich seines Potenzials für Erneuerung und Bildung sowie für die (kritische) Reflexion sozialen Wandels. »

14. Januar 2014

Sam Durant: »What #isamuseum?«

What #isamuseum?, Sam Durant, Getty Artist Program, photo: Cathy Carpenter

Five questions for Cathy Carpenter by Cynthia Krell

»What #isamuseum?« is a call-and-response project that invites public reflection on and response to expectations and preconceptions of what a museum is. Five deceptively simple questions initiate the engagement: Is a museum a school?, Is a museum political?, Is a museum truthful?, Is a museum fun?, and Is a museum for everyone? Museum visitors as well as an expanded global audience activate and re-shape the debate through the strategic use of various technologies and social media platforms resulting in a project that explores innovative models of collaboration and public engagement. »

13. Dezember 2014

»Museum«

National Gallery of Art, Vilnius, Lithuania.

An interview with Dainius Liškevičius by Anna Jehle

In his installation »Museum« Dainius Liškevičius engages with possible forms of political and artistic expression. By using furniture, objects, images, documents and films, he creates a space in which he exhibits protest as an essential form of artistic production. »Museum« sets out to revise Lithuanian art history via a range of associations, as it commandeers discursive gaps through a complex network of personal and historical references. »

29. November 2013

Contents of the Lecture »Models of Democracy«

Ricardo Valentim, »Contents of the Lecture 'Models of Democracy'«, 2012, flowchart, Courtesy of the artist

A Contribution by Ricardo Valentim

Ricardo Valentim presented his project »Contents of the Lecture 'Models of Democracy'« as part of his show »Growth and Culture« at the Serralves Museum, Porto in 2012. He had already shown partial versions of the work as early as 2008, presenting several of the sculptures that comprise the piece in gallery exhibitions. »

15. November 2013

Eis vom Nordpol in Venedig

Tavares Strachan, Polar Eclipse, installation view, Bahamas National Pavilion, 55th Venice Biennale, photo: Tom Powel

Ein Beitrag von Karl-Josef Pazzini

Das Museum ist ein Ort der Artikulation, von hier gehen Geschichten aus, sozusagen die Couch des Kunstbetriebs. Dabei ist klar: Nicht jeder, der sich auf die Couch legt und spricht, macht eine Analyse, kommt in eine Produktion, die Vergangenheit schafft. Museen können an der Produktion von Vergangenheit beteiligt sein, indem sie konservieren. »

31. Oktober 2013

The Rainforest Principle

A Contribution by Chus Martínez

In a recent conversation, Raphael Montañez Ortiz, the artist and founder of »El Museo del Barrio«, said that, at the time the Museo was founded, he thought all of its exhibitions should start with a rainforest. In this respect, he did, in fact, collaborate with the »Museum of Natural History« and produced a rainforest room with their help. Unfortunately, no images of it have survived. »

17. Oktober 2013

Ante-Memorial, 2011

Eric Baudelaire, ANTE-MEMORIAL, 2011, exhibition view, »Void if Removed«, Le Plateau FRAC île-de-France, Paris 2011

A Contribution by Eric Baudelaire

Eric Baudelaire explains the idea of the »ante-memorial« within the context of his curatorial exhibition project »The Museum of Ante-Memorials« (2012) with the following words: »Memorials are usually created after catastrophes, commemorating the dead and reminding us that we should do all we can to prevent such tragedies in the future. »

10. Oktober 2013

If There Were a Museum

Museum of Unknown, Encounter, miscellaneous materials, 2011, exhibition view, »A Museum That is Not«, Guangdong Times Museum 2011

A Contribution by Nikita Yingqian Cai

»The biggest limitation imposed on artists by art museums is that artists want to exhibit their intent and ambition in museums«¹, Huang Yongping made this statement for the project, »Away from the Art Museum« in 1988. At that time, no museums for contemporary art were available in China, except for those existing as imaginings in the artist’s head. It was a call for a museum yet to be realized and the critique of the institutions that were not there. »