"Potentialmuseum.com", Motorenhalle, Dresden - Germany
12 January – 9 February 2006
Group exhibition exploring the role of today’s museum with the following cultural actors:
Sigismond de Vajay (Barcelona)
Tobias Stengel (Dresden)
Susanne Greinke (Berlin)
Renate Flagmeier, Curator, Werkbundarchiv-Museums der Dinge (Berlin)
Georg von Breitenbuch, Museologist (Dresden)
Prof. Dr. Gerburg Treusch-Dieter, Sociologist (Berlin)
In art circles many people dream of creating a place where art can be taught, something that can be called a museum or a contemporary art center or art center. Artists, architects, exhibition curators, art critics or collectors can have this same dream, which sometimes becomes a reality.
The Potentialmuseum project was a very simple proposal that was made to various cultural actors around the world to send a photo or a document of their idea of the potential museum. The project began with a book that was later turned into a web page with new proposals that were received throughout 2003 and until 2005. It was an open and dynamic project with daily changes.
The guests from the Web could add their projects at any time. The idea of this proposal was to show a new generation of invented or imagined spaces that surely will never exist. It could also be together with an explanatory text or architectural plans for more utopian projects. The only rule was to start with a geographical context that really exists.
As a result of the initiative of Tobias Stegel, one of the artists who had participated in the project, the Potential Museum Project received an invitation from the Motorenhalle, a centre for contemporary art located in Dresden, Germany, to present an extended proposal of the project in its exhibition rooms. To add to the archive of images, multiple interviews were initiated with artists and museum directors or curators working on the theme of the museum, such as Manuel Borja Villel, then director of the MACBA in Barcelona, Thomas Hirschhorn, on the “Musée Précaire Albinet”, Jean Daniel Berclaz “Musée du point de vue”, Beatrix Ruff from the Kunsthalle in Zürich, etc… which were then presented on different monitors installed in the room. A short film related to the museum from a documentary point of view was projected in a container for rubble. Actions were also taken with local schools asking children from various classes to draw what for them is a museum. These drawings were then integrated into the exhibition. At the same time, talks and debates were organized on the subject with the help of Susanne Greinke.
Potentialmuseum was the first project that KBB carried out in collaboration with a German institution.
Curated by Tobias Stengel in collaboration with Susanne Greinke and Sigismond de Vajay.
