Mischa Kuball: if walls could tell

"Why the hell does everybody want to succeed?
I’d like to meet somebody who wanted to fail. That’s the only sublime thing."
—John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer, 1925

The transnational project if walls could tell, by artist Mischa Kuball, questions art institutions with regard to their permeability to broader social groups within a community. Over a period of two to four weeks, three symbolic museum walls will be installed in public spaces in various cities across Southeastern Europe, where they will act as an accessible and temporary stage for local inhabitants. Like a filter, these walls will collect all “traces” of cultural and urban expressions amid people’s urban lives, away from the cultural institutions to which they refer. Once marked by the environment and the people, the stage then returns to its institutional context; securing the traces left behind or for further inscription. 

With the story of Dos Passos resonating in the background, the analog museum_transfer—the transitory, almost dystopian change of place with its many inscriptions—concentrates on the traces left behind on the walls, seen as a temporary space for the open and limitless expression of citizens in a participatory artistic project within public space. if walls could tell poses current social questions: Can civil society live without museums, and does this dissolve or break the cultural promise to future generations? What are the interactions between society, museums, citizens, artists, and curators?

Acting as a catalyst in this context, Mischa Kuball opens up the space to all citizens, who in turn become direct content producers, participants, and co-authors in the production of a collaborative artwork. They are thus regarded as political subjects who should be able to appropriate all available instruments that turn them into active users and not passive consumers, raising the question: What happens when citizens, potential museum public, and artists get “freedom of expression” in public space, uncommon to museum exhibition politics and practice? 

Once the walls are returned to the museum/gallery venue, an important aspect of the project includes orchestrating a public debate with artists, art historians, theorists, and curators, among others. The discussion will be based on the previously observed social issues and problems in each of the local contexts and inspired by the interventions, statements, and imprints left behind on the walls. The context specific discursive programs will be developed together with partner institutions and with speakers well acquainted with local socio-political and art contexts.

if walls could tell will be launched in the public space near the future Ars Aevi Museum of Contemporary Art building in Sarajevo, designed by Renzo Piano. It will coincide with the long-awaited groundbreaking ceremony of the Ars Aevi Museum, which will be held on August 19, 2024. Due to the specificity of the Ars Aevi art collection, currently “without permanent museum walls,” the panel discussion will take place on September 12, 2024, on the site of the public installation, tackling the topic of plans for a Museum Quarter in Sarajevo. The process will be replicated in all partner cities/venues; starting on August 27, 2024, in The National Museum of the Romanian Peasant in Bucharest, and followed by Skopje, Kraljevica, Bihać, Čačak, Ljubljana, Chișinău and Cetinje in 2025. In each of the partner cities, after being installed in the public space, the walls will return to the museum or gallery where panel discussions will be held to thematize the impact of the participatory art in public space within their specific context. The project will end at the WELTKUNSTZIMMER in Düsseldorf, where the final discussion with all partners will take place.

Curator: Zoran Erić, Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, Belgrade

About the artist
Conceptual artist Mischa Kuball has been working in the public and institutional sphere since 1977. From 2007 onwards Kuball has been a professor of public art at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, and from 2006 to 2008 professor of media art at Hochschule für Gestaltung/ZKM, Karlsruhe. Since 2015 he has been a member of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts, Düsseldorf. In 2016 he was honored with the German Light Award. Since the spring of 2024, he has been an associate member of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Matters of Activity. Image Space Material’ at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Partners 
Ars Aevi Museum of Contemporary Art, Sarajevo
The National Museum of the Romanian Peasant, Bucharest
Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje
Center for Contemporary Culture KRAK, Bihać
RIZOM [ K ] - Frankopan Castle, Kraljevica
Art Gallery “Nadežda Petrović”, Čačak
Center for Contemporary Art [KSA:K] with Galeria Plai, Chișinău 
MGML – Match Gallery, Ljubljana
Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Montenegro, Cetinje
WELTKUNSTZIMMER, Düsseldorf

Contact
Studio Mischa Kuball, Christina Brikmann, studiodirector@mischakuball.com

Support
The project is organized in cooperation with the Goethe Institute network in all respective partner countries.