**Summer School 2021

The Stories We Tell Ourselves**
with manuel arturo abreu, Judith Barry, Maximiliane Baumgartner, Europa Frohwein, Lena von Geyso, Charlotte Klonk, Julian Müller, Lucy Steeds, Stephan Trüby, Helena Vilalta, Shira Wachsmann, Jennifer Warren, Eva Wilson & Adam Gibbons
and a work by Céline Condorelli

August 23–26, 2021

In the lead-up to the bicentenary of the Kunstverein München in 2023, the Summer School entitled The Stories We Tell Ourselves explores alternative forms of collective knowledge production and negotiates the concept of an institution intended for the public. The format takes the empty space between two exhibitions and the urban surroundings of the Kunstverein as a setting, thereby allowing for the simultaneous presence of various approaches in the same place. The Summer School invites participants to work together with guest lecturers and the curatorial team on four topics—Architecture, Exhibition and Display History, Publishing, as well as Society and City History—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 and discussed in (semi-)public formats such as lectures, discussion rounds, or screenings. The public program, which happens both onsite and online, can be found here.

Together, we will think about which temporalities and politics such a non-conventional format of knowledge production is subject to, but also which it can challenge. This will be approached in four working groups:

1) Architecture
with Julian Müller (Department of Architecture, TU Kaiserslautern), Gina Merz (Kunstverein München)
and Europa Frohwein, Stephan Trüby, Shira Wachsmann

The building of Kunstverein München consists of several layers of histories that form its current substance. The building itself, understood as a body, is permeated by “wounds and traumas.” In this group, the architectural history inscribed in the building is to be opened up and thought through from a sociological perspective: it aims to gather the essential information, in order to test speculative as well as real architectural interventions in the lead-up to the anniversary in 2023. Furthermore, it will be explored, how, where, when, and why the body moves in and is guided through the Kunstverein. Paths, spaces, and accesses will be questioned, while mapping the actors in and around the Kunstverein.

2) Exhibition and Display History
with Lucy Steeds (University of the Arts London), Gloria Hasnay (Kunstverein München)
and Judith Barry, Charlotte Klonk, Helena Vilalta, Jennifer Warren

The working group will take the Kunstverein’s exhibition and display history as an example to explore the various spatial and ideological strategies inscribed in such institutions. If art and architecture are mutually intertwined, while sharing publics, what can we learn from the resonances between exhibited works, their architectural setting, and the wider socio-political context? Together, we will think through the changing spatial parameters of the presentation of art and consider how these inform experience and also shape discourse. Display is hereby explored for its role in aesthetic perception and public engagement, thus emerging as a co-producer of artistic meaning and social significance.

3) Publishing
with Eva Wilson und Adam Gibbons (Publicists, a.o. quotationmarkquotationmark.com), Maurin Dietrich (Kunstverein München)
and manuel arturo abreu

What does it mean in the broader sense of the term “to publish” or “to make something public” to think about the structures in which an institution and its actors communicate? Based on current and previous Kunstverein München media ranging from print (publications, booklets, press releases, leaflets, etc.) to digital (website, newsletter, radio, etc.), we dedicate ourselves to the question of form, urgency, and addressee. Working together, the aim will be to design other speculative formats in which content is produced and circulated. In addition, the question of how this content is made accessible to new publics, speaking to them and in turn closing itself off to others, will be investigated.

4) Society and City History
with Lena von Geyso, Adrian Djukic (Kunstverein München)

The group is interested in the social and local environment of the Kunstverein. Who was involved at this institution and its surroundings at different times and what were their goals? Artists, citizens, individuals, families, art scenes, contexts—who was accountable for what and when? The archival material of the almost 200-year history of the Kunstverein serves as a basis for this research. These observations of the Kunstverein cannot and should not be separated from their direct surroundings: the Hofgarten and the city of Munich with its specific social structure. We ask what subjectivities these settings produce and how this is reflected, doubled, or refracted in the Kunstverein. In addition, the group tries to grasp and question the bourgeois beginnings of the institution up to the changed conditions of the present.

Image: Céline Condorelli, Revision -part II, construction drawing. Courtesy the artist.
Installation views: Céline Condorelli, Revision -part II, Cell Project Space, 2009. Courtesy the artist; photo: Milika Muritu.

The project is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation.

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