Magicgruppe Kulturobjekt—The Symposium.

Institutional sites of cultural production are not understood in their exemplary function as places for the alienated observation of objects, but as images of themselves, their functions and existential conditions. The symposium was meant to be a meeting point for actual and possible protagonists in a sphere of exemplary institutionalization—first to explode the reflective corpus, and then to return to an automatic approach to institutionalization in an exceptional state of softened, delayed and annihilating objectivity.

At the symposium, the work of MGK became a point of departure for renewed questions concerning artistic action and how it relates to usage by institutional constellations. For some time now, it appears that the exemplary space as a place to view art seems to have been divided up into diverse institutional constructs and oriented according to their profile development. Such profile-specific uses of artistic production likewise define corresponding constructions of audience. Besides the traditional bourgeois museum, there are innumerable places that are becoming institutionalized as alternatives to a primarily bourgeois understanding and usage of art. Yet the dividing line between the museum and its alternatives is not entirely clear. On the one hand, museums and similar institutional constructs are pressured to bring themselves up to date. On the other hand, new institutional constellations also have to create their profiles as such and thus achieve legitimacy. Both poles seem to be converging due to historical reversions and the absorption of new narrative and mediation strategies. As agreed public places, they oscillate between a discursive provision of information and politicizing, and auto-experience of their public nature. As specialists, they are dedicated to a syntactical-cultural creation in order to generate an overarching base for their work, and to be relevant.

In retrospect, it can be said that MGK may be located in the humus of a conglomerate of institutions and develops the situational between reference and autonomy, in order to realize a lack of clarity as a hyper-real, as-is state. It uses knowledge without conveying it in an abstract way and stages situational specifics within the fragility of an objective outlook. The aim of the symposium is to enable descriptions of existing states of cultural production from the vantage points of cultural workers and knowledge producers whose profiles are emerging in various ways.

(Text source: Marcel Hiller)

Joerg FRANZBECKER, independent curator, lives in Berlin. In 2013, he worked with Eran Schaerf on the project FM Scenario—The Voice of the Listener.

Gerald RAUNIG, philosopher, art theorist; Raunig is, among other things, a decisive protagonist of an actualization of the notion of institution. Starting from a retrospective evaluation of institution-critical art and its influences, he described the formation and re-formation of institutional apparatuses in order to arrive at the concept of institutioning practices.

Katrien REIST has assumed various roles in art production—as an artist, curator, producer and institutional director. Her key focus has always been the question of art as a social and sociological vehicle. Reist studied Art in Construction, was Managing Director of Extra City Antwerp, has curated various projects in public space and is co-founder of JUBILEE, a platform for long-term research and artistic production with discursive output based in Brussels.

Valeska SCHNEIDER works on the mediation of art as a curator and press officer. In both positions she has worked for institutions such as the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Kunst-Werke Berlin or—presently as a curatorial spokesperson at KINDL—Center for Contemporary Art in Berlin. Her repeated changes in role between curator and press officer have underscored the aspect of mediation in her activities and shifted the focus to questions about possibilities of finding a language for art, and addressing these where relevant.

Tim VOSS, curator, formerly at Kunsthal W139 Amsterdam, has been the director of Künstlerhäuser Worpswede since 2013.

No Future Komplex* is a collective of artists and curators. The label currently includes Mitra Wakil, Sebastian Stein and Stephan Janitzky, who work together in a widely conceived, friendly context to oppose hermetic formats in the context of contemporary art and related theory production—in particular since these things have become very, very unpleasant through a tedious field of experience and sheer irrelevance lacking in perspective.

* it emerged from the project NO FUTURE: bourgeois escapism and preaching to the converted, which took place in Lothringer13_Laden, Munich, in November 2011.
www.laden.lothringer13.de/2011/from-no-future-to-public/