Mischa Kuball: if walls could tell

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. In various cities across Southeastern Europe, the walls were installed in public spaces, symbolizing museum or gallery walls. 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. 

if walls could tell was launched in August 2024 in the public space near the future Ars Aevi Museum of Contemporary Art building in Sarajevo. In 2024, the process was replicated in various partner cities/venues, such as The National Museum of the Romanian Peasant in Bucharest and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje. In 2025, the project was shown in the Galeria Plai in collaboration with the Center for Contemporary Art [KSA:K], Chișinău, in the MGML—Galerijia Vžigalica / Match Gallery in Ljubljana, the RIZOM [ K ] - Frankopan Castle in Kraljevica, and finally, the Art Gallery “Nadežda Petrović” in Čačak. In each of the partner cities, after being installed in the public space, the walls returned to the museum or gallery where panel discussions were held to thematize the impact of the participatory art in public space within their specific context.

The project now concludes at the WELTKUNSTZIMMER in Düsseldorf, where the international symposium Voicing the Commons: Participatory Art and New Public Imaginaries will take place.

October 16–17, 2025
Voicing the Commons: Participatory Art and New Public Imaginaries
International symposium

In the wake of growing social fragmentation, contested histories, and authoritarian shifts across post-socialist contexts, participatory art has emerged as a powerful tool for reclaiming public space and amplifying marginalized voices. This final conference at Weltkunstzimmer brings together artists, curators, theorists, and managers of cultural institutions to reflect on the international project if walls could tell, which explored how blank white walls—symbolic structures of openness—can become platforms for expression, dissent, and collective imagination.

Spanning diverse urban contexts—Sarajevo, Bucharest, Skopje, Chișinău, Ljubljana, Kraljevica, and Čačak—the project revealed public space as a profoundly political terrain, where art does not merely mirror society but actively produces new forms of civic engagement.

At the heart of the conference lie several key questions: How can we imagine and construct shared spaces in divided societies? What role can participatory art play in reshaping our sense of belonging, ownership, and responsibility in the public realm? Building on the experiences the project if walls could tell, participatory art will be examined as a commoning practice—not merely as a means of creating artworks, but as a process of forging new social relations, solidarities, and forms of care.

Program:

October 16, 8pm 
Keynote by Blanca de la Torre, Director, IVAM, Valencia
Introduction by Dorothee Mosters, Head of Visual Arts Department, Kunststiftung NRW

October 17, 10am to 6pm
Panels with:
Senka Ibrišimbegović, Director Ars Aevi Museum of Contemporary Art, Sarajevo
Calin Dan, Director of MNAC Bucharest 
Vladimir Janchevski, Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje 
Lilia Dragneva, Director of the Center for Contemporary Art, KSA:K Chișinău
Mojca Puncer, Professor of Philosophy, Ljubljana
Lina Franko, RIZOM [ K ] - Frankopan Castle, Kraljevica 
Branka Benčić, Director of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka
Predrag Živković, Curator and Deputy Director of Art Gallery “Nadežda Petrović”, Čačak  

Curator and moderator: Zoran Erić, research fellow at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of 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
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.