Tag: Contemporary Art

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Museum Game Theatre

Climate goes Fluxus

GOAL 17 – Climate goes Fluxus is an artistic project developed in five public schools in five Berlin districts. It engages students with the work and thinking of Fluxus artists Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, Alison Knowles and Robert Filliou and connects them with one of the 17 UN- Sustainability Goals.

Drawing on the practices of the Fluxus artists, the project approaches art as a form of attention: to lived experience, to everyday actions, and to the environments shaped by both people and nature.Ausgehend von den Praktiken der Fluxus-Künstler*innen begreift das Projekt Kunst als Form von Aufmerksamkeit: Für gelebte Erfahrung, für alltägliche Handlungen und für die von Mensch und Natur geprägten Umgebungen.

Photos by sideviews

Emerging in the early 1960s, Fluxus challenged the separation between art and life, rejecting fixed authorship and stable roles in favor of participation, experimentation, and the use of chance as a method of inquiry.

Within this framework, students are invited to work collectively through instructions, actions, and open situations, where observation, play, and dialogue become ways of thinking. The project recognizes children not as passive recipients of knowledge, but as active contributors whose perspectives can reconfigure how art, nature, and shared responsibility are understood.

Participating schools:

Rosa-Parks-Primary School, Berlin-Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg

Fichtelgebirge-Primary School, Berlin-Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg

Friedenauer Gemeinschaftsschule, Berlin-Tempelhof-Schöneberg

Carl-Humann-Primary School, Berlin-Pankow

WIR-Primary School, Berlin-Treptow-Köpenick

Financed by:

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THE UNDEAD – HKW

A Performative Investigation

Some figures from the past refuse to stay buried. They resurface in the present, sometimes quietly, sometimes celebrated, unsettling the belief that history only moves forward. Who are these undead? Why do they regain influence, and how do they shape the world we inhabit?

During the HKW-project Global Fascisms the Shadow Museum and its audience trace in this participatory performance the subtle and not-so-subtle signs of fascism returning to everyday life. Through dialogue, imagination, and attentive looking, the performance explores how fear spreads and how gestures of resistance can shift the atmosphere around us.

The project reflects how young people perceive these persistent shadows and searches for ways to keep them from defining our future.

Photos sideviews

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Hamburger Bahnhof – Let’s Play, Move, Communicate!

c sideviews

What does a museum allow? How can we move, sound, and think together inside a space that often expects us to observe quietly? For Hamburger Bahnhof, the Shadow Museum developed a series of collective experiments that stretch the boundaries of exhibition experience. Playing, building images, and telling stories become ways to question familiar conventions.

These interactive tours explore how public space shifts when visitors claim agency and curiosity leads the way. Art becomes a shared field of exploration where new relationships can emerge between people, objects, and the institution that hosts them.

A project by the Shadow Museum with sideviews.

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How can the Fly eat the Elephant?

Pic: sideviews
Pic: sideviews

9qm of Knowledge from Society

Having been invited to participate in the program for the exhibition “What is enlightenment? Questions for the eighteenth century” organized by the Deutsches Historisches Museum (German Historical Museum), Berlin, the Schattenmuseum  (Shadow Museum) has adopted a distinctive approach to the subject. It views the cultural moment of the Aufklärung as an ongoing project rather than a closed historical chapter. For the Shadow Museum, this „Aufklärung in progress“ entails maintaining a critical perspective on culture and society while rejecting all forms of dogmatism.

As part of its contribution, the Schattenmuseum (Shadow Museum) created a space within the exhibition titled 9qm of Knowledge from Society. This space featured a “knowledge repository” inviting visitors to answer a series of questions, with their responses displayed for others to read and reflect upon. The questions and the space addressed topics such as governance, social justice, and the role of the museum as a platform for open debate.

Central to the display were the images of a fly and an elephant, symbolizing a constant dynamic of power. Visitors were challenged to consider a possibility: Wie kann die Fliege den Elefanten fressen? (How can the fly eat the elephant?).

The Shadow Museum also offers interactive performances to activate the space and invite visitors to enter into dialogue with each other, moderated by the Shadow Museum.

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Caelius Juvenilis – The Return of the Aliens

Episode I: O Quilombismo

Fotos Yahel & Ciro Caltana

The aliens are back at the HKW: For the exhibition O Quilombismo, the Shadow Museum is staging a performative game in the HKW. From the perspective of aliens of the species Caelius Juvenilis, it juggles with different perspectives, takes biographies of artists, members of the Shadow Museum and their family archives, as well as from further interviews. The result is an interactive game in which visitors are invited to adopt different, new perspectives, to engage with “foreign” and fictitious biographies, and to move through the game in the process. Artistic framing is provided by a spoken chorus and interactive dialogues of the aliens, documenting the research results of the Shadow Museum as a collage of fragments from interviews, archival research, literary texts, contents of the Quilombismo exhibition, etc. 

PERFORMANCE Aliens (in German language)

Making Of – How to become a good Alien (in German Language):

Artistic Research:

Fotos sideviews

Further information:

https://www.hkw.de/en/programme/schattenmuseum/caelius-juvenilis-episode-i-o-quilombismo

This project was funded by:

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SIRIBOX on Tour


Hey Siri! What is a curator?

The project Hey Siri! What is a Curator? was initiated in 2019 as an artistic laboratory: 50 children and young people explored, questioned, and identified their personal expectations, experiences, and interests using artistic methods in collaboration with the Berlinische Galerie, a museum in Berlin. They opened up practical fields of action, understood as an experimental space between museum and school. A variety of interactive experiments, instructions, and suggestions invite engagement with a work, the museum, and its visitors.

The SIRIBOX

The SIRIBOX emerged from this project. It is the result of the collaborative research process and contains all the experiments and interactive instructions created by the children. Each SIRIBOX is a unique piece. The experiments can be taken out of the box individually and tried out. The SIRIBOX was handcrafted in a limited edition of 40 copies. We view the essays, memories, reports, and experiments contained within the SIRIBOX as both a critical examination and a constructive commentary on the collaborative practice.

In this sense, the narratives open up pathways to reconsider why certain people visit museums while others do not. They can serve as starting points for discussions to reflect on and further develop current educational practices, as well as inspire the use of the space between museum and school as an experimental field for exploring new ways of engagement.

ACTIVATION of the SIRIBOX

The Schattenmuseum conducts performative tours with the SIRIBOX in museums/exhibition spaces, in German and/or English. These tours are suitable for both children and adults. The tours have already been successfully held at several institutions, including: HKW/House of World Cultures, KW-Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin), BerlinBiennale, Berlinische Galerie, Kunsten Museum of Modern Art (Aalborg, Denmark), Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Haus Bastian / Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin.

If you are interested in activating the SIRIBOX at your institution, feel free to contact us!

Foto: sideviews
Foto: sideviews
Foto: sideviews
Foto: sideviews
Foto: sideviews
Foto: sideviews
Foto: sideviews

The SIRIBOX mini

In 2021, the SIRIBOX was further developed in collaboration with KW-Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin) and the sideviews project Schattenmuseum (Shadow Museum) into a digital app. The SIRIBOX mini can be used not only in exhibition spaces but also in urban areas. You can download the SIRIBOX mini for free here:

SIRIBOX mini Download

THE ORIGINAL – limited edition

The original SIRIBOX is available upon request for those interested. Applications are reviewed by the Schattenmuseum (Shadow Museum). Contact information and some SIRIBOX owners can be found here:

PUSH THE BUTTON

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    38-40 rooms: In the KW Institute for Contemporary Art

    As part of the anniversary weekend of the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, the Schattenmuseum Youth Committee occupy three rooms of the project 37 Rooms REVISITED with Room 38-40, Back to ME and a new edition of our Game of Life.

    For Kunst-Werke Berlin, the year 1992 was distinguished by the realization of the 37 Rooms exhibition. Taking place parallel to the opening of documenta IX in Kassel, it drew in at short notice a large number of Berlin-based artists, curators and critics who staged 37 Rooms along Auguststrasse. 

    Today, 37 Rooms can be regarded as a prototype for the Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art. On September 18 and 19, 2021 the concept of 37 rooms was reanimated in the neighbourhood,  as visitors were led through the courtyards of the Scheunenviertel to Auguststrasse 69. Both days featured a program of performance and music, including interventions by Schattenmuseum Youth Committee collective, playfully confronting the (archive) structures and inception processes of a contemporary art institution. 

    Room 38-40


    Room 38: KW Archives x Schattenmuseum Youth Committee: Room 38-40 

    Taking its spur from the KW archive and early projects, the Schattenmuseum Youth Committee infiltrates the KW by means of an interactive intervention, central to which is the photographic slide. Visitors are invited to develop and curate exhibition concepts for their own spaces, accompanied by the Schattenmuseum Youth Committee. Guided tours, experiments and performative workshops form the framework for an archive and slide workshop for all visitors. 

    Room 39: Schattenmuseum Youth Committee: Back to ME 

    Back to ME is an installation curated by the Schattenmuseum Youth Committee on the occasion of KW’s 30th anniversary. The young people open up an interactive space that invites visitors to engage with themselves. Here, the prejudices of others can be separated from the perception of self. The space offers an intimate atmosphere for self-reflection  which, in turn, functions as a space for silent communication. 

    Room 40: Schattenmuseum Youth Committee:  Game of Life

    In the Game of Life, visitors use various event cards to go through a fictitious curriculum vitae dedicated to questions of identity, community, love, gender and migration. For the 30th anniversary, the Schattenmuseum Youth Committee presents an updated version of this game, originally created in 2018 as part of the exhibition A for Jewish as a cooperation between the Jewish Museum Berlin and the Schattenmuseum Youth Committee.


    Further information about the programme is available here: https://www.kw-berlin.de/30-jahre-kw-jubilaeumswochenhttps://www.kw-berlin.de/en/30-years-of-kw-anniversary-weekend/ende/

    Many thanks to our sponsor:

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    Festival: Sketch-In

    As part of the exhibition “Gezeichte Stadt”, the Berlinische Galerie invited the Shadow Museum Youth Committee and sideviews to submit a contribution to the Sketch-In Festival.

    On October 3rd, passers-by were invited to sketch together with the youth committee at Kottbusser Tor / Zentrum Kreuzberg. The youth committee was interested in what is important to the people of Kotti. The process was filmed and broadcast live at the festival in the Berlinische Galerie.

    There were also various collaborative drawing activities in the museum, on the forecourt and in the neighbourhood, always pursuing the questions: What can drawing be? What role does it play in urban space?

    The concept for the festival was developed by Constanze Eckert in cooperation with the art mediators of the Berlinische Galerie.

    Mehr Infos unter Berlinische Galerie

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    Hey Siri! What is a Curator?

    “Hey Siri! What is a curator?” is a test lab investigating creative freedom between museum and school. For a month, 50 children and young people examined the Berlinische Galerie from their perspective, coming to terms creatively with the collection of the Berlinische Galerie via the questions, “ What would my museum look like?”, “What would I exhibit, how and for whom?” and “How can I approach a work of art in a fun way?”

    As part of this field of experimentation, they designed installations, texts, museum models, videos and performances referring to the collection of the Berlinische Galerie which were implemented and enacted both there and in the school: as an interactive exhibition in which the processes and artistic treatments were brought together.

    Eight museum designs from the perspective of children and young people meet a multitude of experiments concerning the artistic approach to pieces. The experiments were summarized in the SIRIBOX.

    In August 2019, the Schattenmuseum Youth Committee and sideviews were invited to exhibit the SIRIBOX experiments in the Berlinische Galerie. The exhibition opened in December 2019. At the finissage of the exhibition, those interested could receive one of forty SIRIBOXES in exchange for an idea.

    The SIRI-Book

    In 2020, the education department of the Berlin Biennale developed a toolkit for its mediation in a workshop with the Schattenmuseum Youth Committee, based on the SIRIBOX. Applications for the SIRIBOX are still being accepted: the best ideas on how to use the SIRIBOX are selected by the Schattenmuseum Youth Committee.

    Examples / Owners of the SIRIBOX

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    Where is Planet B?

    Between belief in progress and appropriation of the future

    Where is Planet B? is a performative symposium in the Berlinische Galerie accompanying the exhibition “Fazit” by realities:united, a group that develops projects at the junction of art and architecture. On the occasion of the planned abandonment of nuclear and coal power in Germany, the large thermal power plants are to be modified – the steam from still active power plants will rise in the form of huge rings that can be seen from afar as a symbol of a transformation reverberating through the country.

    The intervention Where is Planet B? poses critical questions about social changes and the role of art: From the perspective of Generation 200X. Special guests of the performative symposium are Jan and Tim Edler from realities:united and the curator Ruth Noack.