Puzzle education as curatorial practice eng

Author: Julia Schäfer

Title: PUZZLE: Education as Curatorial Practice

A puzzle is a mechanical game of patience. We can assume that a puzzle is composed of a number of parts that taken together

constitute a whole. I have never been able to cultivate a passion for puzzles. I lack the ambition, patience and perseverance required to

assemble something pre-fabricated from its constituent parts. Luckily however, there’s more to the puzzle metaphor than merely putting together a whole. In puzzles, each piece has its place, they join up

and support one another. If pieces are missing, you can still assemble and experience the whole.

In 2010-11, the idea of the puzzle served as my point of departure for the development of an experimental exhibition project in the Neubau

(new wing) of the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig (Leipzig

Museum of Contemporary Art; hereafter GfZK). The GfZK is located near the centre of Leipzig, a city of some 500,000 residents and a comparatively large amount of museums, galleries and artist-run initiatives devoted to contemporary art. The GfZK focuses on

projects that are topical, socially engaged and relevant to society. It operates thematically and seeks out new forms of contestation in curation, education and communication.1

The institution was founded in 1992, and since 1998 has been located in a converted Wilhelminian villa, as well as, since 2004, a new

building (the ‘Neubau’), which architecturally reflects the museum’s program. Its legal status as a foundation and its funding model based on public-private partnerships permit a degree of freedom for

experimentation. Thus, for example, unlike institutions which are entirely publicly funded, visitor numbers needn’t exert an undue

influence on exhibition conception and design. This also has positive consequences for education work, which has had its own department in the GfZK since 2004. The work done by the GfZK FÜR DICH

(YOUR GfZK) focuses on long-term partnerships with kindergartens, refugee accommodation providers, charity organisations, special 1

J. Schäfer; Vor heimischer Kulisse, pp.107ff., 190ff., 221, 237. See Backstage, http://www.gfzk-leipzig.de/?s=Backstage, accessed 13.04.2016.

needs schools and primary, middle and trade schools. It is often the

marginalised parts of the city or society which are picked up on and addressed in the debates that take place within the art education

projects. The resulting projects are rarely aimed at places where an

excess of cultural education programs can be found.2 With reference

to the image of the puzzle mentioned at the outset, we could also say of our cultural education programs that we don’t do pre-fabricated programs designed only to increase visitor numbers. Investigation

and experiment remain the driving forces not only of curation, but also of the education program at the GfZK.3

I was assigned the task of designing the first ever year-long

exhibition from the museum’s collection for the Neubau building.

Until then, such shows had always taken place in the GfZK’s old

building, the Villa. The aim of the exhibition concept was to break with this custom in an interesting way.

The Neubau is located at ground level. A large glass façade opens onto the city and passers-by. As I perceive them, its spatial

proportions create a pleasant harmony with the human body. There are two different levels, with alternating floor and ceiling lighting.

The spaces flow into one another: neither is really separated from the other, whether acoustically or in terms of light.4 Many of the walls can be shifted manually, so that new paths can be created for each exhibition: sometimes there is a fixed route, sometimes there are

various possible points of entry. Floors, walls and ceilings all have the same surface texture and look all of a piece. The Neubau’s

interior is differentiated by a number of shades of grey: a light grey and a dark grey define the floor areas as display and non-display

zones, different grey tones also distinguish fixed and moveable walls.

Additionally there are numerous exposed concrete walls. The floors and walls of the ‘cinema’ are made of black rubber, which also covers the building’s facade.

It was a challenge for me to develop a long-term, static exhibition for the Neubau. The site is a flexible spatial structure and couldn’t

2 See also, http://www.gfzk.de/foryou/?cat=4 [accessed 13.04.2016] 3 Other education programs at the GfZK include: education cards, services, writing points, corridor as display, home game, etc. See www.gfzk.de [accessed 13.04.2016].

4 J. Schäfer, Curating in Models, p.85.

simply remain still, especially when considered in relation to the

collection. It has a history and is itself a narrative. It shows traces of

its founders and founding initiatives, for example the works donated by the Association of Arts and Culture of the Federation of German Industries5 or the endowment of works of various provenances by

private collectors and artists. Purchases made over time reflect the

different emphases of the museum’s various administrations. But the collection is also a reflection of the interests of a number of people

currently working in the museum, whether in terms of organisation or content. Taken as a whole, the collection is very heterogeneous and lively, yet it also has very few gaps.6

Often the fact that museums are showing their own collections produces a certain lack of enthusiasm. It isn’t easy to find an

audience for such exhibitions. So for me it was important to bring out a sense of the space itself as forming part of the exhibition: to

develop something specific to the Neubau, something which couldn’t have taken place in the Villa, the older of the two buildings.

I responded to this challenge with a kind of dynamic curating – the concept of PUZZLE. By the concept of ‘dynamic curating’ I mean leaving behind the system that dictates that once an exhibition is open, it shouldn’t be altered. During the initial planning phase I

worked without thematic brackets and without formulating a focal point. I divided the floor plan of the the Neubau – 800m2 of

exhibition space – into ten polygonal slivers. Reassembled, they

make up the whole Neubau. While considering the play between the

different zones, I arrived at the idea of having each one dedicated to a different theme, and of inviting co-producers to work with me to puzzle together an image of the museum’s collection. Hence the exhibition’s title.

In line with my occupational leitmotif of education as curatorial

practice, I invited eight different protagonists or groups to create the exhibition of the collection with me. All participants were given the

5 “The Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft im BDI e.V. (Association of Arts and Culture of the German Economy at the Federation of German Industries) has supported arts and culture since 1951 and campaigns for a society in which art is seen as an essential resource.” See www.kulturkreis.eu, accessed 13.04.2016.

6 H. Stecker and B. Steiner, Sammeln.

task of engaging and working with the collection, but how they

implemented this requirement was left up to them. Those invited were given a tour through the storerooms to get to know the

collection, and anybody who requested it was given the entire

database on CD, so that all participants could explore the collection beyond simply ‘rummaging around on-site’.

After the participants had developed their ideas, a total of 34 puzzle pieces in the form of projects, exhibitions and installations came

together for PUZZLE, some being presented simultaneously, some consecutively.

Each of the zones had different co-producers and focused on different things: for Interventionen (Interventions), I invited artists to respond to the collection with new artworks.7 The Klasse Intermedia

(Intermedia Class) of the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig developed six artistic projects related to the collection, ranging from

performance to installation and video works.8 Anders Sammeln (Collecting Differently) showed what was missing from the

collection, thereby shedding light on the politics of the collection.9

Under the title Neuerwerbungen? (New Acquisitions?) works were

presented that were originally created in collaboration with the GfZK, but which (at the time of the exhibition) were no longer a part of the

collection.10 For Puzzle im Puzzle (Puzzle in a Puzzle) the collection manager chose pieces from the collection.11 Kabinett (Cabinet)

referenced an existing exhibition series, in which the conservator

presented unknown (mostly graphic) works from the collection.12 For the GfZK FÜR DICH zone, GfZK’s art educators worked together with children and adolescents to prepare two presentations.13 The

7 The artists were Carola Dertnig, Tadej Pogacar and Cornelia Friederike Müller.

8 The students involved were Angelika Waniek, Sabine F., Guillermo Fiallo Montero, Stefan Hurtig, Franzika Jyrch and Meta Einvald.

9 Angelika Richter (curator) presented Inszenierungen des Eigen_Sinns (Staging Strong-Mindedness), Julia Schäfer (curator) presented Covergirl/Wespenakte (Covergirl/Wasp Nudes). Both presentations involved a critical engagement with the GDR, as well as featuring women artists, who were under-represented in the collection at the time.

10 The artists involved were Antje Schiffers, Dorit Margreiter, Dora Garcia and Sofie Thorsen.

11 The collection manager was Angela Boehnke.

12 The conservator was Heidi Stecker.

13 Group 1: Lena Seik and Alexandra Friedrich (art educators), Tristan Schulze (interaction designer), with Willem Conrad, Leo Hingst, Max Fechner (students); Group 2: Lena Seik and Alexandra Friedrich (art educators), Tristan

Vermittlungsteam (V-Team) (education team) participated with projects concerned with the question of attitudes towards

contemporary art.14 In Konservierungmaschine (Conservation Machine), also a pre-existing GfZK project, restorers used an example artwork to demonstrate restoration methods and the

difficulties involved in preservation.15 Finally, I invited members of the Förderkries (Friends of the GfZK) to curate exhibitions with

works from the collection or to comment on them.16 With the division of the zones, I tried to avoid creating any hierarchies, allocating no

more space to the invited artists than to the children and adolescents.

This democratic principle was crucial to the success of PUZZLE. I saw my own role as that of a director and host, a manager and mediator, who provided the framework, who demarcated and

allocated the zones, and who stood by as an advisor, coordinating and monitoring all the projects.

For this project, letting go of my responsibility as a curator was a crucial action to take. Trust became the support which held

everything together. I had provided a framework and defined a

system that was as self-perpetuating as possible. I had provided all participants with the same conditions. Anyone could contact me at

any time to discuss particulars. Many, but not all, took up this offer.

Incidentally it was often organisational or technical issues that

needed to be discussed. Basically, for each group, and for each

individual within a group, a different curatorial language had to be

found. My task essentially consisted in accompanying and facilitating this search.

With a total of 48 team members, the project couldn’t succeed in every case. Mishaps were a part of the system. In one case we

displayed a contribution on a wall which was still empty, right around the corner from where it was supposed to be positioned. For a long

Schulze (interaction designer), Erika Miersch (teacher), Martin Reich (technician), Gereon Rahnfeld (intern) and year 7 students from the Petri School.

14 Franziska Adler (illustrator and art educators), Kristin Meyer (comic artist and art historian), Julia Kurz (drama scholar and art educator), Luise Schröder (artist), Christin Müller (art educators) and Andrea Günther (artist).

15 Syblle Reschke and Angelika Hoffmeister zur Nedden (restorers).

16 Anneliese Böhm (teacher), Stephan Schikora (financial officer), Verena Tintelnot (art historian and Feldenkrais teacher), Henrik Pupat (arts journalist), Doris Staufenbiel (cardiologist).

time the conceived project stagnated and the work just wouldn’t

reach a conclusion. The previous presentation was extended and the

following one brought forward. We also had lengthy discussions with the artist Sofie Thorsen, but were unable to show her work in its

required form due to financial limitations. By the time we had found

a satisfactory solution for all participants, the actual opening date had already passed. We opened this particular section two weeks later.

PUZZLE was designed with this kind of flexibility in mind, which would hardly have been imaginable in any other exhibition at the

GfZK. But this also meant that it was challenging for visitors who

wanted to see every contribution. Sometimes the project that they’d

come to see had already been de-installed, which we had completely forgotten to announce.

In spite of our democratic standards, responsibility for the design of

the exhibition as a whole still lay with me as the curator. I decided to colour-code a number of the walls. For this I applied the colour

system used in the collection catalogue17 for the exhibition rooms. In the catalogue, colours organise the works according to their

acquisition date and periods in the museum’s history. The colours provided an orientation for the exhibition in much the same way.

While the contributions on show in PUZZLE were continually

changing, the coloured walls remained the same.18 In order to further facilitate orientation, our graphic designers developed a system of magnetic signs for the exhibition. Additionally, thanks to a large

display board in the windows of the Neubau, people could see which

pieces of the puzzle were currently on display and which would be in future. Within the zones themselves, the signs provided information about the particular zone and the participating team members and artists.

The concept and procedure of PUZZLE reflected my own approach to museum education as a curatorial practice. Coming from a museum

education background, for me curation without educational elements remains unthinkable. Every time I curate an exhibition I pose myself

17 H. Stecker and B. Steiner, Sammeln.

18 The coloured walls also turned out to be a helpful means of orientation for the photographic documentation of PUZZLE. This is just one example of the many cases in which something developed out of the process, rather than being completely planned out from the beginning.

questions regarding its reception, and very time the attempt to answer them takes a new form. With PUZZLE, thanks to the involvement of so many different co-producers, there was a particular diversity of

voices which was more or less self-explanatory: mostly we needed nothing more than a panel text with a brief introduction to the

particular theme. To this end, all the invited participants were asked

to prepare their own texts, in order to best communicate something of what their piece was about. The only exception to this was a zonecrossing project developed by the education team: the ‘brochure tours’. They guided visitors through PUZZLE with maps and

suggestions for activities, each time following a specific aspect of the whole exhibition.

The different curatorial signatures were a source of enrichment. All

those invited were now permitted to do what is usually the exclusive preserve of artists: they could build, extend, annotate, curate, and treat the collection as their equal counterpart. Artists curated,

educators built installations, children taught, students made new work and annotated the collection.19

Many suggestions were taken up as we went along, and made

productive in unplanned and unexpected ways. For example, while the collection manager was giving the education team a tour of the

storerooms, she mentioned that ‘adequate images’ had not been taken of a lot of the works. This prompted the education team to deal with

this situation, using Rosmarie Trockel’s O.T. as an example. In their contribution to PUZZLE, entitled Für diese Arbeit existiert keine

adäquate Abbildung (No Adequate Image of this Work Exists), they

displayed all the reproductions of the work that they could find. The

worst of them was printed on a new postcard. People could also listen to an audio track describing the work in great detail. The work itself remained out of sight.

Then it happened that the Slovenian artist Tadej Pogacar displayed

his contribution to PUZZLE as part of Interventionen (Interventions) after a delay. He curated a selection of works from the collection,

including Trockel’s. Each party was unaware of what the other was 19 Four years after the end of PUZZLE, Franziska Jyrch, a former art student, sent the GfZK a work she had produced for it, entitled Wahl (Choice) 326 B1/B2 (2010), and thereby became part of the collection herself.

doing, and for two weeks there was the most compelling synchrony.

In the first few weeks, an unplanned emphasis on performance

developed. Carola Dertnig (Interventionen) designed a kind of score

for a performative confrontation with the collection. At the exhibition opening, Angelika Waniek (Klasse Intermedia) performed the history of the founding of the GfZK. Angelika Richter (Anders Sammeln) presented performance-based artworks by women artists from the GDR.

In his work Zwischensicht (Inter-View), Guillermo Fiallo Montero

(Klasse Intermedia) conducted video interviews with various GfZK personnel, asking them to describe a work from the collection that

they found particularly striking. The works themselves were not on

view. Initially, the contribution of the education team (No adequate

image) was on display in the adjacent space. This was then replaced

by another work by the same group entitled Pile this end up. Andrea

Günther displayed a multitude of wooden crates, cardboard boxes and packaged artworks from the collection. She had also resolved to not

display the actual objects from the collection. Foreseeing the parallels between Montero and Günther, I decided to leave the door separating them ajar.

On one occasion, this kind of interplay led to a new acquisition for the collection: Tina Bara and Alba D’Urbano’s work Covergirl

(Wespenakte) was displayed in the Anders Sammeln section, where

works were shown that might suit the collection, but that lacked any common focal point (such as the critical confrontation with the

GDR). The work was itself the result of a response to an exhibition

by Dora Garcia, which I had curated in 2007. The Leipzig professor Alba D’Urbano had taken a tour of the exhibition with her students.

As she left I gave her a copy of the catalogue. Her colleague Tina

Bara, with whom she occasionally collaborates on art projects, saw the catalogue a few weeks later and recognised herself in the cover photo.20 It was an unbelievable coincidence. We had no way of

20 J. Schäfer, Zimmer. Note: this catalogue was taken off the market one year after the end of the exhibition. In the context of the exhibition, Dora Garcia had the right to show images from the Stasi Archives. However her gallerist decided to offer the photographs for sale at the Berlin Art Fair. As a result, a number of people recognised themselves in the photographs and complained to the authorities. This scandal of personal rights led to the exhibition catalogue being taken off the market. This occurred even though all images in the catalogue and

knowing who the people in the photographs were. Garcia had

obtained the materials for her exhibition from the Stasi Records

Agency (BStU, then the Birthler Office) by submitting an official research application. The film Zimmer, Gespräche (Rooms,

Conversations), which Dora Garcia shot in 2007 as part of her Blinky Palermo Grant, is about the Stasi and the different roles played by its key figures. The Stasi Archive was the project’s basis and point of

departure. The film was purchased by the GfZK while PUZZLE was

running. Parts of it were screened concurrently with the presentation of works by D’Urbano and Bara. The two artists had carried out

extensive research on Tina Bara’s own past as an activist in the GDR, resulting in an installation work.21 After a tour of the exhibition, the

Friends of the GfZK spontaneously decided to purchase the work for the collection.

As the above examples make clear, shifts of meaning were

continually taking place in the system of PUZZLE. What supposedly stood in a fixed relation could only a week later have lost its footing, or it may have had to re-assert itself and enter into new dialogues.

Meanings and layers were continually over-lapping. Regarding the

concrete practice of education in the exhibition, this meant that it was necessary to update the content weekly. The aforementioned

brochures focusing on different key themes were created to respond to this challenge. They were conceived by Christin Müller, a

colleague in the education team. Six tour routes were created: a

colour tour, a movement tour, a listening tour, a materials tour, an

artist tour and a tour of the changes that had taken place.22 The overarching curatorial concept of the exhibition – in accordance with a

democratic approach – was grounded in horizontality. Artworks were rarely mounted on plinths. They were placed alongside everyday objects, complementing and expanding them. For example, the

children involved in the first contribution for GfZK FÜR DICH,

entitled Monster und Sport (Monsters and sport), placed an exercise the exhibition were anonymous and their use in the catalogue had been approved by the authorities.

21 It just so happened that the image in which Tina Bara recognised herself was confiscated when the Stasi carried out a search of the premises of one of her former companions.

22 J. Schäfer, PUZZLE.

bike in front of a work by Plamen Dejanoff and Svetlana Heger,

which if you sat on it and pedalled really fast, began to play a song

which was intended to increase the visitor’s pleasure at viewing the BMWs depicted. Upon being shown the work, colleagues of other

museums often responded with: “This would be just unthinkable in our gallery!”

Working on the exhibition catalogue it became clear that this manysided, interlocking project would be very hard to reproduce in book form. Presenting and conveying the processes involved in processbased curation are a real challenge, because the book is a

comparatively static medium. We had to ask ourselves questions like: are we going to proceed in a linear or chronological manner? Will we present each of the puzzle pieces independently, or will we probe the in-between and/or emphasise the connections, simultaneities and

coincidences? Together with editor Tanja Milewsky and designer

Annalena von Helldorff, we ultimately produced both – an overview with remarks on proximities and an interlocking network of

references to parallels in content. The latter was also able to be

integrated – especially subsequent to the exhibition. Someone who

visited the exhibition multiple times will be able to orient themselves in the catalogue. Someone who encounters it for the first time in the book will initially be challenged.

So a puzzle was created. But not one that produces only one specific image and allows no other. A puzzle of 34 project fragments. Taken all together, they produce a tension, a togetherness, a dynamic that

we never experience in other group exhibitions, where the spaces and sequences are designed and occupied exclusively by artists. This vitality and dynamism expanded my thinking about curation.

Collaborating with such different protagonists enlivened my work; it also demanded that participants communicate in a variety of

languages. Artistic concepts tumbled about chaotically, yet everyone came together through their very own engagement with the GfZK’s collection. The collection itself received a real breath of fresh and

very diverse air, and we all benefited from each other’s perspectives.

PUZZLE was my most comprehensive attempt to date to conceive

and implement a different kind of curation. A total of 48 people took

part, aged from 5 to 75, of various backgrounds and professions.

Artworks by 57 different artists were shown, as well as a further 19

items that weren’t part of the collection. Many contributions related

to works from the collection that weren’t themselves on display. Nine new works were created for PUZZLE. In addition, members of the Friends of the GfZK contributed privately-held works. During the exhibition, five works were sold.

Works which had either never been shown or not shown for a very long time were put under the spotlight. The exhibition also helped create new relationships both between items within the collection, and between the collection and items outside it.

Moreover, the puzzle method established a community, connecting

many participants and their friendship circles to the museum. People once only vaguely or distantly interested now stay in contact and

bring other people along with them. This is a big win for the GfZK. At the conclusion of the project it became clear that perhaps

something like ‘Tangram’ would have been a more fitting title,

seeing as a multitude of connections had been created within the

exhibition, going far beyond the quality of a precisely defined entity.

PUZZLE became much more an open system for countless

possibilities, many of which are yet to be fully explored, with impacts that are still blossoming.23

23 By this I mean firstly the experience of thinking about the exhibition, but also, the fact that many participants have continued to collaborate. It is also worth noting that since the completion of the project other exhibitions with dynamic approaches have taken place at the GfZK: Europa N [Europe N] (2011), KunstKunst. Von hier aus betrachtet! [Art-art: From the inside out!](2012), Hausgemeinschaft (Family Affairs), (2013) Travestie für Fortgeschrittene 1-3 [Travesties for the advanced 1-3] (2015/2016). See also www.gfzk.de, accessed 13.04.2016.