Academy [Working Title]
21.10.2017 – 7.2.2018

An ex­hi­bi­tion for the 50th an­niver­sary of Kun­sthalle Düssel­dorf am Grabbe­platz.

In the win­ter of 2017/2018 the Kun­sthalle to­geth­er with KIT will re­spec­tive­ly ad­dress the theme “Acade­my” from dif­fer­ent an­gles. In the third show of the an­niver­sary year, the pre­sent comes to the fore, but with­out hav­ing lost a view of his­to­ry and the Kun­sthalle’s archive. In­spired by the leg­endary ex­hi­bi­tion se­ries “be­tween” (1969-1973), which emerged from stu­dent un­rest and protests against the in­sti­tu­tion —par­tic­u­lar­ly among stu­dents of the Kun­stakademie— the Kun­sthalle
Düssel­dorf in­vites pro­fes­sors and stu­dents of the Düssel­dorf and Münster Kun­stakademies as well as the Kun­sthochschule für Me­di­en Köln (KHM) to Acade­my [Work­ing Ti­tle] to con­front from a crit­i­cal, con­tem­po­rary per­spec­tive a range of top­ics that at­tend the archive and to ne­go­ti­ate the sig­nif­i­cance of an his­tor­i­cal lega­cy as well as the prox­im­i­ty of in­sti­tu­tions and academies in the Rhein­land to the pro­duc­tion of art.

Along­side an im­me­di­ate en­gage­ment with the Kun­sthalle’s archive ma­te­ri­als, more ex­ten­sive and ab­stract en­gage­ment with the idea of the archive may en­sue from con­sid­er­a­tion of the archive as a site of mem­o­ry at the cross-sec­tion of her­itage, his­tor­i­cal bur­den, think tank, mem­o­ry-ar­chi­tec­ture and much more. The cat­e­go­ry “archive” and the cat­e­gories in which the archive is in­vest­ed and so by which it is brought about such as art his­to­ry, cul­tur­al iden­ti­ties and in­di­vid­u­al mytholo­gies should be crit­i­cal­ly ques­tioned. What role does the archive play for the in­di­vid­u­al artis­tic cre­ation and the per­cep­tion of an in­sti­tu­tion? How does the now-time [Jet­zt-Zeit] deal with and eval­u­ate the past? To what ex­tent do not on­ly col­lec­tive, but al­so pri­vate archives them­selves rep­re­sent forms of artis­tic prac­tice?

In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the cu­ra­to­ri­al team of the Kun­sthalle, var­i­ous me­di­al for­mats can be worked through based on the dif­fer­ent em­phases and ap­proach­es of the pro­fes­sors and class­es.

As the no­tion “Work­ing Ti­tle” in the ex­hi­bi­tion ti­tle in­di­cates, the ex­hi­bi­tion has an open-end­ed, ex­per­i­men­tal for­mat. Per­ma­nent ac­cess not on­ly to the per­pet­u­al­ly re­newed im­ple­men­ta­tions of the ex­hi­bi­tion
but al­so to the dis­cur­sive ex­change, work pro­cess­es and struc­tures will be open to the vis­i­tors. It is left up to each in­di­vid­u­al the ex­tent to which they take part in the ex­change, sim­ply ob­serve or de­lib­er­ate­ly in­ter­fere and in so do­ing en­ter in­to the artis­tic works and “fi­nal re­sult” of the ex­hi­bi­tion and, by
ex­ten­sion, in­to the his­to­ry of the in­sti­tu­tion.

Fur­ther items on the pro­gram agen­da be­tween the­ater, per­for­mance, con­certs, work­shops and pre­sen­ta­tions from in­vit­ed speak­ers will be held un­der the la­bel “Per­form­ing Archive,” in search of ev­er new ac­cents of the archive.

Please find here the catalogue of the exhibition.