Kathrin Böhm: Art on the Scale of Life

HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg in association with Kathrin Böhm are pleased to announce the schedule of a series of workshops and events in connection with the book project Kathrin Böhm: Art on the Scale of Life. Edited by Gerrie van Noord, Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson, the book was realised in 2022 through a collaboration between the University of Gothenburg; PUBLICS, Helsinki; and The Showroom, London; and is co-published with Sternberg Press. Drawing upon the visual and textual material assembled within the book these events reverse content from the publication back into the 1:1 scale of Böhm’s exceptional modus operandi. The events and workshops explore the tools, forms, and propositions for art on the scale of life through the critical exploration of Kathrin Böhm’s multifaceted, deeply collaborative and durational practice.

Workshops and events Kathrin Böhm: Art on the Scale of Life
KADIST Space, Paris, France
Organised by A-field, with TEAMeD / Université Paris VIII, together with book contributors Doina Petrescu and Kuba Szreder.
Thursday January 25, at 7–8:30pm (CET)
(To register, please RSVP to communications [​at​] afield.org, subject to availability.)

La Foresta / Accademia di comunità, Rovereto, Italy,
Together with Bianca Elzenbaumer
Wednesday February 21, at 6–8pm (CET)
Together with Bianca Elzenbaumer, Flora Mammana, Chiara Mura, Carlo Bettinelli and Fabio Franz.
(Beforehand, from 5pm we are making bread and soup together.)

pro qm, Berlin, Germany
Thursday March 7, at 7pm (CET) 

Museum Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Poland
Tuesday March 12, at 7pm (CET)  

HDK-Valand, Gothenburg, Sweden
Together with BA and MFA Fine Art, Kerstin Bergendal and Mick WIlson
Tuesday March 26, at 4pm (CET)

Casco, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Together with book contributors Wapke Feesntra and Aline Fernandez
Wednesday May 1, at 6pm (CET)

About the book
Since the mid 1990s Böhm has expanded the terms of socially engaged ways of working to an unprecedented scale and breadth by co-producing complex spatial, visual and economic forms. These often entail the production and ongoing re-production of organisational infrastructures, manifested in collective identities such as Myvillages (since 2003) and Public Works (active 1999–2012), or via practice based initiatives such as The Centre for Plausible Economies (since 2018), Company Drinks (since 2014) and the Rural School of Economics (with Wapke Feenstra since 2019).

The book follows in the wake of a major collaborative exhibition that explored over twenty years of Kathrin Böhm’s practice across two phases at The Showroom in 2021, COMPOST. Kathrin Böhm: Turning the Heap and COMPOST: For Future Use. These enabled a public process of sieving through, assessing, archiving and reformulating Böhm’s practice by making use of her methods of production—working one-to-one, collaboratively and in public—to distil tactics, tools, concepts and strategies that continue to serve a socially transformative art practice. Emerging as a key outcome of this process and offering a significant addition to debates on contemporary art and architecture, social action and public culture, Kathrin Böhm: Art on the Scale of Life brings together critical dialogue and reflection by internationally acclaimed contributors including: Dave Beech, Céline Condorelli, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Wapke Feenstra, Katherine Gibson, Joon-Lynn Goh, Lily Hall, Yolande Zola Zoli van der Heide, Grace Ndiritu, Gerrie van Noord, Paul O’Neill, Doina Petrescu, Gregory Sholette and THEMM!!, Kuba Szreder, Gavin Wade, Mick Wilson, Stephen Wright, and Franciska Zólyom.

The visual register of the book is much more than a series of illustrations and acts as a counterpoint to and extension of the ideas elaborated in the texts. The book is designed by the innovative design studio An Endless Supply, who have been collaborating with Böhm across various projects since “Trade Show” at Eastside Projects, Birmingham, in 2013.

Copies of the book will be available at all workshops and launch events. Individual copies are available to order from Sternberg Press, while trade orders can be made via one of their distributors.