Summer School 2023

The Stories We Tell Ourselves
August 8–11, 2023


On the occasion of Kunstverein München’s bicentenary in 2023, the institution hosts three iterations of a Summer School entitled The Stories We Tell Ourselves, which explores alternative forms of collective knowledge production and negotiates the concept of an institution intended for the public. The format began in 2021; this year marks the third and last iteration. The Summer School takes place in the exhibition spaces and the urban surroundings of the Kunstverein, thereby allowing for the simultaneous presence of various approaches in the same place. Participants are invited to work together with guest lecturers and the curatorial team on four topics—Architecture, City and Archive, Exhibition History, and Publishing—within the context of the institution’s archive.

During the day, the four groups will engage with communal learning processes that include speculative re-formulations of the institution as well as field research in the social and cultural context of Munich. In the evenings, further approaches and questions will be presented by each group and discussed in (semi-)public formats such as lectures, discussion rounds, and screenings. Together, we will consider which temporalities and politics such a non-conventional format of knowledge production is subject to, but also which it can challenge.