Installation view, Total motiviert – ein soziokulturelles Manöver,
Kunstverein München, 2003
"Bürgerschaftliches Engagement, Städtisches Baugeschehen"
was produced in the framework of the exhibition "Total Motiviert - ein
soziokulturelles Manöver" at Kunstverein München in March 2003.
The group exhibition was modelled on the idea of a „Kulturladen“,
a local citizen run space for cultural production, a well-known phenomenon
in Germany.
The exhibition was interpreting and reflecting this kind of socio cultural
practice, as well as the ways contemporary art practices relate to local contexts
and develop social situations. The exhibition changed and developed in the
course of its duration. My contribution, "Bürgerschaftliches Engagement,
Städtisches Baugeschehen" it is a brief look into the methods and
strategies that organizations and groups of citizens, consumers, users of
the city apply in order to affect their physical environment. It is an attempt
to grasp a part of the reasons and backgrounds for people to organize and
become active in changing their living space in the city.
What are the roots of these organisations, what are the visions of urban life,
as opposed to the suburban model, for those who has the resources to engage
in this kind of work. Who has these resources? What is the gain from this
work for the people involved? And how is this (idealistic?) work interlinked
with the administration of the city? The project also deals with about the
phenomenon of the association as a tool to act in society, as a mode of formatting
an activity and a social
space too. It is about the blending borders between idealism and profit, between
what is autonomous and what is institutional, and how one can move in between
different aspects of engagement. The project was developed on the basis of
a interviews with people from Munich-based citizen organisations dealing with
the city, found via the internet, with information from the city administration
and with information and recommendations collected during the research from
the network of organisations.