European Kunsthalle

Since 2005 European Kunsthalle institution

From the very beginning, the European Kunsthalle was an institution with no permanent space. It defined itself as a Kunsthalle to appropriate the potential of this particular form of institution, but also to revise it critically. Having emerged from a specific situation—the demolition of the Josef-Haubrich-Forum in the city center of Cologne—the European Kunsthalle conceived of itself as a project that traces and examines the conditions and structures of an institution of contemporary art without being bound to a permanent space or location.

When the Josef-Haubrich-Forum was demolished in 2002, citizens of Cologne organized their protest by forming a society that initiated the project European Kunsthalle. The intention was to investigate the conditions and practices of curating and exhibiting contemporary art beyond its factual situation in urban space, and to actively participate in the discussions about the transformations of public space, social bonds and political agency as part of the conditions and practices of a newly founded Kunsthalle. During the initial phase of the European Kunsthalle project, one of its most important tasks was to formulate the conditions of a new Kunsthalle for Cologne as part of the public sphere, and as a field of possibilities for today’s heterogeneous realities.
From 2005 to 2007, the European Kunsthalle tested models of curatorial thought and action as ways of dealing with contemporary art through various formats and exhibitions. The question of what institutional formats work in contemporary cultural and political conditions was central to this. Neither politically authorized nor bound to a specific space, the initially virtual exhibitions—but functioning institutional structures—of the Kunsthalle offered the opportunity to initiate a research process beyond the specific situation in Cologne. The changed conditions of curatorial activity and the shifting cultural and urban structures were therefore as much subject of the initial phase of the project as were the possibilities of an expanded European context.
From the beginning, the central theme of the project was not the site-specific adaptation of the Kunsthalle model, but the development of an institutional model that opens perspectives for an urban society beyond the nucleus of the art field. Concrete activities such as the one-month event Under Construction—which gathered representatives from art, architecture, sociology, economy and politics for lectures, discussions and presentations in different places across Cologne—contrasted with the more immaterial research of teams of architects on stable and unstable spaces, the results of which were summarized as a publication. With the two-year project European Kunsthalle c/o Ebertplatz (2008/2009) the Kunsthalle shifted its emphasis following the initial nomadic phase. Located in an artist-designed spatial structure by Dorit Margreiter, the Kunsthalle model temporarily operated in a central, vibrant inner city square. The project questioned how an existing space becomes an art space and how it can offer extended possibilities of function and perception. The minimalist, modular structure by Margreiter framed the various exhibition projects, for which artists mostly created new work and reacted to the specific situation they were confronted with. In parallel, between August 2009 and Mai 2010 European Kunsthalle curated the program of the exhibition space Ludlow 38 at the Goethe Institute in New York. During this time it organized a series of exhibitions with internationally renowned, mostly European, artists that had rarely been shown in New York.

After 2010 the European Kunsthalle focused once again on decentralized action and cooperation. As an institution without a permanent space, it was intended as a performative presence and existed wherever its projects took place. Collaborations with the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, the Kunsthaus Bregenz and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna resulted in the development of exhibitions that enabled an immediate reflection on the form of the institutional through the (co-) authorship of the Kunsthalle.

This website documents the European Kunsthalle’s various activities from 2005 until today.

Artistic Directors: Rike Frank, Vanessa Joan Müller
Team 2011-2013: Vanessa Joan Müller, Astrid Wege
Team 2008-2010: Rike Frank, Anders Kreuger, Astrid Wege
Team 2005-2007: Nicolaus Schafhausen, Vanessa Joan Müller, Nikolaus Hirsch, Markus Miessen, Philipp Misselwitz, Matthias Görlich

The foregoing texts and images are provided and copyrighted by: https://eukunsthalle.com/en/