The Shadow Museum, a collective of young people seeking alternative approaches to the museum institution for several years, is now exploring the history of former “contract workers” from the so-called “brother countries” of the GDR together with sideviews. From the perspective of aliens, the young people examine how the then “brother countries policy” affects current societal issues such as racism and discrimination, based on their life experiences and the exhibition Echos der Bruderländer at the House of World Cultures (HKW). The artistic research of the Shadow Museum is presented at the HKW as an interactive, playful, and extraterrestrial symposium.
Foto sideviewsFoto sideviewsFoto sideviewsFoto Jamila GroteFoto Jamila Grote
By/with Laith Azimi, Anna Bartels, Lou Braun, Romy Drieschner, Mariama Juric, Sharon Morane Momo, Elis Nägele, Phanuel Nlend Nlend, Elijah Sagor, Elona Sagor, Anja Scheffer, Moritz Scheffer, Cem Yildiz and the contemporary witnesses Mavinga P. Petrasch, Wilma Florath, Monika Kegel, Anja Paetsch
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.
Which plants live in the urban space of Berlin and how do you detect them? Are they poisonous? Or edible? Can they even heal? How do we use them? Where do they live and how do they survive there? The city pharmacy goes in search of old, almost lost knowledge. The urban space becomes an object of research and a laboratory. What can a plant say about itself and its environment? About the city and its wounds? What does the term migrant plant or pioneer plant mean? Which artistic translations are suitable? How can a living archive be created?
For more than a year, the Stadtapotheke has been conducting intergenerational research: with the Nürtingen elementary school in Berlin-Kreuzberg, the artists Anja Scheffer and Seraphina Lenz, the retired pharmacists Tomma and Heino Luxa and a 456 grade class and their teacher Wiebke Janzen, accompanied by Silke Ballath. The project deals with the research and dissemination of knowledge and seeks to develop new forms of transmission, with research methods alternating between scientific and creative-performative approaches. All of the materials produced is archived and presented in the House of World Cultures as part of “Schools of Tomorrow”.
Arising from its year-long research process, the Stadtapotheke has also forged contacts with various partners in the context of Global Roots, an Erasmus+ project. Its approaches, strategies and procedures reflect and develop ideas and suggestions and the experiences are shared with other participants. In addition, the Global Roots project participants are jointly developing a tool for the drawing together and reflection on the respective experiences. Similarities and differences of the respective processes are made visible and negotiable. Proposals for project ideas, collaboration between artists and elementary schools, as well as diverse areas of interest between art and science are published. The collaboration of the participating teams from the different countries informs the way in which the Global Roots project is documented.
The aim of the Global Roots project is to highlight how arts and culture can encourage teachers in primary education to create a sustainable learning environment in which children can reflect and develop their relationship to today’s world. Partnerships between people from art / culture and primary school education challenge the mind-set and working processes of both professional groups and develop new approaches to convey to children notions of active global citizenship and sustainable development.
“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.
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.
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.
As part of the 1st Children’s Biennale of the Dresden State Art Collections schoolchildren created and performed an opera with the assistance of museum visitors. In 2018, the Archiv der Avantgarden (AdA) invited visitors to explore the question of the connection between art, design, performance and school. Schoolchildren from Dresden carried out research in the Japanese Palais in cooperation with the desarteur (Halle) and sideviews (Berlin) collectives. They dealt creatively and performatively with the “social space” and the importance of changing perspectives, from a framework formed by the ideas of Robert Filliou, Kurt Schwitters and Bruno Munari.
A question of perspective: An opera was staged as an interactive performance in the Albertinum, Dresden in 2019.
An artistic research at the Jewish Museum Berlin, 2017-2019.
The goal is to develop an exhibition format together with young people. In a dialogue with people from different backgrounds, experiences and points of view, the Jewish Museum Berlin is both investigated in an open, dialogical process and simultaneously included in the curatorial work of the museum in order to create a dialogue with them. The “Schattenmuseum” takes its lead from the structures, needs and goals of the museum, looks for alternative approaches and designs an experimental set-up. Content, formats and methods are developed and implemented creatively in cooperation with schoolchildren, residents and museum employees.
First, ethnographic-aesthetic investigations in urban space (Measuring Jewish Berlin) as well as in archives and collections are carried out with the participants. At the same time, a blog is being created for workshops, campaigns, documentation and as a communication tool and project archive.
From mid-2017, sideviews have been involved in a collaborative exhibition at the Jewish Museum Berlin. Schattenmuseum / Growing – Jewish Life Today is a dynamic exhibition that focuses on the question: How can Jewish life today be portrayed vividly?
In the second step, workshops are conducted on the artistic realization of the research in various disciplines such as film, theatre, visual arts, model making, music, design and museum work.
On the basis of the resulting collection of materials, ideas and objects, a third workshop series will take place to realize the exhibition concept and architecture. Participants of the Schattenmuseum select exhibits together with the curators and the workshop results are processed through performance and installation. Various positions and stories on the topic “Growing – Jewish Life Today” as well as the process of dialogical discussion are depicted, brought to life and presented from November 2018 at the Ross Gallery in the Jewish Museum Berlin.
The exhibition “A for Jewish” poses questions, opens up space for dialogue and will continue to develop in a dialogical and dynamic way until the end of 2019: In workshops, participants can introduce perspectives and put down new layers of interpretation and design on the exhibition. Visitors are involved in activities, the performative design suspends any clear boundary between object and person, between narrator and story and invites you to participate in discussions, experiments, creative workshops, theatrical processes and film shoots. The participants of the shadow museum act as experts and present their specific forms of examination and presentation.
Begleitprogramm zu “A wie Jüdisch”/ JMB, Februar 2019
In September 2018, together with sideviews ten young people founded the Jugendgremium Schattenmuseum, in order to reflect on the work and to advise further museums and exhibition centres from their perspective. They also developed the accompanying program.
Shadowmuseum (Schattenmuseum) can be regarded as an alternative approach to the concept of a museum and has grown out of several years of cooperation between sideviews, the Jewish Museum Berlin and a group of schoolchildren from Kreuzberg in Berlin. Schattenmuseum is a structure for developing proposals for museums on how to interact with communities, collections and educational opportunities. Content, methods and artistic formats are developed and implemented collaboratively with young people and adults. Schattenmuseum is based on the actual structures, needs and goals of the respective museum. An experimental field unfurls, accompanying an exhibition for example, in which questions are asked, a space for dialogue is created or an experimental arrangement is set up involving different groups of visitors and including their perspectives in the exhibition. Schattenmuseum has been developing as an experimental arrangement in the Berlinische Galerie since the beginning of 2019. Since mid-2020, Schattenmuseum has also been collaborating with the Berlin Biennale, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art and the House of World Cultures.
After the initial summer academy project, the idea of a campsite in the schoolyard was further developed as a social and artistic experiment: Camping Marianne, defined as a space for all forms of encounter. The camping team consisted of artists from various fields, including the architect collective raumlaborberlin and Kulturlabor e.V., a group that dealt with new forms of cooperation between education, art and science. This new version of Camping Marianne included artist residencies in which projects related to camping at school were developed. Participating in the three “Artists in Tents” were the curator Ruth Noack, the artist Seraphina Lenz and the institution StreetUniverCity Berlin. They expanded the relational perspective of the project. As the artistic director of “Camping Marianne”, sideviews supported the concept and the development of the project, curated the artists in tents and ultimately consolidated the artistic processes.
What do you do if a school no longer works? When classes can hardly be taught anymore, teachers are frustrated, parents are dissatisfied and the atmosphere is tense? When students complain that they hardly learn anything, that they don’t feel they have a voice and that attacks are the order of the day? And if a great deal of the lessons are canceled due to illness?
sideviews was invited to set up an interdisciplinary project in order to intercept the substitution classes and to react flexibly in organizational terms to the constant changes. A large temporary workshop was opened over two months, accommodating different classes daily. The elementary school children examined their school culture by means of a variety of artistic methods. Seven artists from sideviews accompanied them, offering workshops as part of an open laboratory: theatrical improvisation, film, documentation, boxing, songwriting, rap, stage and costume design, model building, participatory spatial development, performance, fine arts, photography and dance choreography.
Themes were elaborated and further developed according to the needs of the children, beginning with the establishment of rules and a culture of discussion, through the exploration of sensitive points in everyday school life, to the development of a culture of communication and welcome. Eventually, common project goals were developed by means of discussions, interviews, performances, invitations and performative elements.
Participation, self-efficacy training and daily practice of empathy and a culture of debate promoted a democratic understanding in order to initiate changes step by step. The themes distilled pervaded all workshops in that they could then be processed on an artistic level and made tangible. Processes were continuously documented and made visible to the school public. The students were supported in small groups and were able to create a vision of their school based on their interests and needs. They dealt playfully and artistically with their culture of welcome. With possible uses and reinterpretations of classrooms. With rules, techniques and concentration through boxing. With their different languages. With self-presentation, improvisation, songwriting and poetry. With theatre scenes about everyday school life, as well as their presentation and evaluation. With dance and movement work as an artistic intervention and with rap.
The result was a pop-up café that also served as an “open house for artistic presentations”. Even pupils not involved in the project were able to show on stage what they could do. The café was set up in such a way that it could continue to be self-organized.
