Museum Off Museum
Part One: September 7–November 3, 2013
with contributions by Kader Attia, Camille Henrot, and Slavs and Tatars
Part Two: November 9–January 26, 2014
with contributions by Özlem Altin, Isabelle Cornaro, Jeremy Deller & Bruce Lacey, and Simon Fujiwara
Opening (Part Two): Friday, November 8, 7pm
Bielefelder Kunstverein
im Waldhof
Welle 61
D-33602 Bielefeld
www.bielefelder-kunstverein.de
From September 7, 2013 to January 26, 2014 the Bielefelder Kunstverein presents the two-part exhibition Museum Off Museum. The exhibitions together with its accompanying programme have devoted itself to the current interest among artists in the »museum« as a concept for reflection and a space of opportunity within changing global circumstances. The exhibition provides examples of seven contemporary artistic positions that broach and extend the issue of central principles in museums’ practise, such as collecting, ordering, presenting and mediating. The projects take up topics from global and popular culture. They oscillate between an appropriation and dismantling of the museum display. Over a period of five months, Museum Off Museum investigates the museum as a form of taking action in the global world and as part of the 21st-century mediascape.
Museum Off Museum is formulating questions as to the current meaning of artistic practice and how it understands itself, as to the form and function of exhibiting, the future of knowledge generation and cultural mediation. The interest additionally circumvents the processes of analysis and translation as well as an investigation of static forms of representation in times of mobile communication. Expanding the contexts of knowledge, the history of cultural identity, the materiality and cultural codes of collections as well as artefacts play a central role in this regard. The process of differentiating between works of art and historical documents, images and reproductions, exhibits and displays, installations, stages and filmic setting will be shifting within the exhibition. In this process, the exhibition reflects, on the one hand, the subjective potential of museums’ narratives and academic methods. On the other hand, the symbolic order of knowledge defined by museums is being questioned, fictionalised and expanded. Besides, the project focuses on the influence of artistic interventions within museums and on exhibition concepts in the present day.
Museum Off Museum is interrupting the regular rhythm of exhibitions to present the artistic initiatives on an appropriate scale and in favour of a programme structure, which is ostensibly episodic and also fragmentary. The two exhibition periods are accompanied and thematically contextualised by lectures, workshops and a blog with artistic and scientific contributions. 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.
Blog with recent and upcoming contributions by Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc, Eric Baudelaire, Sam Durant/Catherine Carpenter (Getty Museum), Mathieu Copeland, Dirk Fleischmann, Lucie Fontaine, Luis Jacob, Chus Martínez, Doreen Mende, Karl-Josef Pazzini, Michael Riedel, Philippe Pirotte, Kevin Schmidt, Barbara Steiner, Nora Sternfeld, Steven ten Thije, Ricardo Valentim, Nikita Yingqian Cai among others.
Lecture and workshop program with contributions by Özlem Altin, Beatrice von Bismarck, Simon Fujiwara, Julia Kurz and Anna Jehle, Mihnea Mircan, Yuki Okumura, Slavs and Tatars, and Peter Weibel among others.
Curated by Thomas Thiel
Publication
To mark the exhibitions, a 40-page brochure has been already published (German/English) in September 2013. A further publication including a documentation of the exhibition, the accompanying programme and the blog is planned for spring 2014.
The exhibition is kindly supported by
Stiftung Kunstfonds, Kunststiftung NRW, Stadtwerke Bielefeld, Hörmann KG
Press
For press requests, please send us an email via kontakt [at] bielefelder-kunstverein.de or call us on
+49 521 17 88 06. High-resolution press images can be downloaded from our website.
