THE ARCHIVE AS… at Kunstverein München

Artists: manuel arturo abreu, Niloufar Emamifar, Saidiya Hartman, Moshtari Hilal, Onyeka Igwe, Joshua Leon, Maria Lind, Michaela Melián, Shola von Reinhold, Alan Ruiz, Rachel Salamander, Nora Sternfeld, Sinthujan Varatharajah, Helena Vilalta, among others

Exhibition title: THE ARCHIVE AS…

Venue: Kunstverein München, Munich, Germany

Date: May 27 – August 27, 2023

Photography: All images copyright and courtesy of the artist and © Kunstverein München

Note: Exhibition’s booklet is available here

THE ARCHIVE AS …
… A PROVOCATION
… WHAT CAN BE SAID
… A HEADACHE
… THE ACT OF PUBLISHING
… MAKING THINGS PUBLIC
… A CELEBRATION
… A SCORE
… AN ONGOING DIALOGUE
… A REHEARSAL
… SLOW RUNNER
… EVERYTHING NOT SAVED WILL BE LOST
… A PLACE OF GATHERING
… THE REFUSAL OF THE GHOSTS TO GIVE UP ON US

An exhibition and discursive program with manuel arturo abreu, Niloufar Emamifar, Saidiya Hartman, Moshtari Hilal, Onyeka Igwe, Sami Khatib, Joshua Leon, Maria Lind, Michaela Melián, A. Dirk Moses, Shola von Reinhold, Alan Ruiz, Rachel Salamander, Nora Sternfeld, Sinthujan Varatharajah, Helena Vilalta, and many more

May 27 – August 27, 2023

On the occasion of the bicentennial of Kunstverein München, the exhibition brings together two centuries of the institution’s archival documents for the first time. During the exhibition these will be embedded in a dense discursive program to question how this historical material and the topography of its absences can be made productive for the present.

Joining materials stored on site at the Kunstverein, among them publications, posters, and printed matter, is an inventory of archival records held by the city archive of Munich. Here administrative documents, documentation of exhibitions or artworks are presented, “read,” and put into relation with each other as visual testimonies situated in an adaptable display structure.

On a weekly basis, artists, theorists, (art) historians, and former team members dedicate themselves to the archival material under certain focus points of their own research or experience, (re)arranging and contextualizing or inserting new material. In this way, the history of the Kunstverein will be discussed in a polyphonic context, as the “spokesperson” role of the institution is handed over. The exhibition format, changing through its different actors, negotiates with and in public the question of how histories are constituted. In this process, the past is not treated as one to be reconstructed, but as a representation of reality guided by (personal) interests and contradictions.

THE ARCHIVE AS … is accompanied by a comprehensive educational program such as the Summer School, which brings together over fifty artists and cultural practitioners to test the possibilities and limits of collective knowledge production.

The exhibition design is conceived by Marlene Oeken and Martha Schwindling.

The project is supported by Stiftung Kunstfonds, the German Federal Cultural Foundation, and the Stiftung Stark für Gegenwartskunst.

Installation view: THE ARCHIVE AS …, Kunstverein München, 2023; photo: Maximilian Geuter

Photograph of the staircase hall of the Kunstverein building by Friedrich von Tiersch, 1899; in: THE ARCHIVE AS …, Kunstverein München, 2023; photo: Maximilian Geuter

Installation view: THE ARCHIVE AS …, Kunstverein München, 2023; photo: Maximilian Geuter

Beginning of the 1970s at Kunstverein München; in: THE ARCHIVE AS …, Kunstverein München, 2023; photo: Maximilian Geuter

Installation view: THE ARCHIVE AS …, Kunstverein München, 2023; photo: Maximilian Geuter.

Exhibition Pavillons by Dan Graham, 1988; Exhibition Naturidentische Stoffe, 1989; in: THE ARCHIVE AS …, Kunstverein München, 2023; photo: Maximilian Geuter

Exhibition A Society of Taste by Andrea Fraser, 1993; in: THE ARCHIVE AS …, Kunstverein München, 2023; photo: Maximilian Geuter

Exhibition by Claude Cahun, 1998; in: THE ARCHIVE AS …, Kunstverein München, 2023; photo: Maximilian Geuter

Installation view: THE ARCHIVE AS …, Kunstverein München, 2023; photo: Maximilian Geuter

Sommerakademie organized by Stephan Dillemuth, 1994; in: THE ARCHIVE AS …, Kunstverein München, 2023; photo: Maximilian Geuter

Exhibitions Oh Girl, It’s a Boy! in 2007-08 and Oh boy, it’s a girl! in 1994; in: THE ARCHIVE AS …, Kunstverein München, 2023; photo: Maximilian Geuter