Artists and guests: Aaron Angell, Stephan Dillemuth, Harm van den Dorpel, Louise Guerra, It’s Our Playground, Mirak Jamal, Angela Jerardi & Antonia Lotz, Amy Lien & Enzo Camacho, Chus Martínez, New Noveta, Pakui Hardware, Lukas Quietzsch, Berthold Reiß, Philipp Simon, Dominik Sittig, Santiago Taccetti, Susanne M. Winterling
Exhibition title: Site Visit
Curated by: Heinrich Dietz
Venue: Kunstverein Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
Date: March 24 – July 23, 2017
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Kunstverein Freiburg
A site visit is usually the part of planning an exhibition when an artist visits a location regarding a prospective exhibition. Based on this ritual, the Kunstverein Freiburg invited artists and other guests in combination with shifts of certain time and space parameters, to take part in its exhibition programme. Not so much an inventory but a collection of sketches of the future: it asks what could be, and focuses on the potential of artistic practices and the forms of their presentation from a future perspective.
Presently, our view into the future seems obscured. Instead of opening up the unknown, evaluated forecasts and techniques to manage the future only seem to further extend the present. The format of Site Visit evolves through the charged relationship between a seemingly eternal presence tending to disaster and an open, desirable future. Regarding the activities of the Kunstverein Freiburg, the future is planned and organized by using the limited budget to use the hall in a proven manner for exhibitions and accompanying programmes. Against the background of pragmatic considerations and Excel sheet arithmetics, Site Visit is an experiment about breaking routines, hybridizing the activities of the Kunstverein, and reshaping facts by exploring possibilities.
Focusing on artistic practices which include aspects of cooperation and self-organisation, or intervene in their own conditions and modes of circulation, the invited artists are asked to bring something along. It could be a work in progress, a prototype, an uncompleted or an in situ work. Their contribution can, but must not, relate to the Kunstverein or an aspect of the institution, it could also be a free speculation on the future. For every visit there is a corresponding event, each of which takes a different form, such as a performance (New Noveta / It’s Our Playground / Aaron Angell / Chus Martínez), a reading (Lukas Quietzsch, Philipp Simon), a conversation (Amy Lien & Enzo Camacho / Susanne Winterling), an excursion (Berthold Reiß), a lecture performance (Pakui Hardware, Dominik Sittig), a goat sketching session (Stephan Dillemuth), a hiking trip (Mirak Jamal & Santiago Taccetti), the building of a wormery (Angela Jerardi & Antonia Lotz) or a fictitious exhibition (Louise Guerra). Instead of realising an exhibition that is planned in advance, with every visit the events and materials can expand into the unknown.
Harm van den Dorpel has developed the website http://sitevisit.site/ which features the online contributions of individual guests. In addition to this, the artist duo It’s Our Playground have created the display unit Framework for the spatial presentation of these various contributions. During the duration of Site Visit the office of the Kunstverein is transferred into the exhibition hall. Thereby making both the people and the processes behind the planning of the exhibitions partially visible. Most importantly, it enables the visitors and the Kunstverein team to interact and come into conversation. By relocating the office, and its work on future projects, within the exhibition hall itself it takes on a new meaning and presence.
