The Stories We Tell Ourselves
Summer School at Kunstverein München
August 23–26, 2021; August 9–12, 2022; August 8–11, 2023
Co-Curator
Starting in 2021, in the lead-up to the bicentenary of the Kunstverein München in 2023, the Summer School entitled The Stories We Told Ourselves explored alternative forms of collective knowledge production and negotiated the concept of an institution intended for the public. The format took the empty space between two exhibitions and the urban surroundings of the Kunstverein as a setting, thereby allowing for the simultaneous presence of various approaches in the same place. The Summer School invited participants to work together with guest lecturers and the curatorial team on four topics—Architecture, Exhibition and Display History, Publishing, as well as Society and City History—within the context of the institution’s archive.
During the day, the four groups engaged in communal learning processes that included speculative re-formulations of the institution as well as field research in the social and cultural context of Munich. In the evenings, further approaches and questions were presented and discussed in (semi-)public formats such as lectures, discussion rounds, or screenings.
Together, we will think about which temporalities and politics such a non-conventional format of knowledge production is subject to, but also which it can challenge. The Summer School was organized by the team of Kunstverein München at the time, consisting of Maurin Dietrich (director), Gloria Hasnay (curator), Adrian Djukic (archivist), Jonas von Lenthe (archivist) and Gina Merz (assistant curator).
