Inverse Institution
with Janine Eisenächer, Sönke Hallmann, Inga Zimprich, Lydia Hamann, Kaj Osteroth, Freja Bäckmann, Naomi Hennig, Ulrike Jordan, and many others
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Inverse Institution took place from 2011 to 2015 as programmatic focus of the project space at the artists studio complex Flutgraben e.V. in Berlin. The starting point was to think about the selection and organization of an artistic program not detached from the structural conditions and necessities of the location and institution of Flutgraben. The group worked simultaneously as a board of directors and in rotation as the management of Flutgraben e.V. as well as a curatorial collective and programming group. The clash of these contradictory perspectives and modes of action opened up an opportunity to reflect and reimagine artistic modes of action and their institutional framework. "Inverse Institution negotiates experiences from self-organized and collective contexts, our encounters with institutions, but also artistic and academic knowledge production. In the project space of Flutgraben, we use Inverse Institution to test conditions under which a common institutional space becomes conceivable. How can we invert the prescriptive character of the institution, its function of standardization and normalization? What are the relations between institution and collective? Towards what needs do we want to orient a common space in order to imagine a new institutional practice? In Inverse Institution we try to open up the institution from within by acting together.” (transl. from Aus Institutionskritik eine Gruppenpraxis machen, 2015) In 2016 we finished our work in the project space of Flutgraben e.V. and started to develop exercises and formats to look back on the work done so far. These include institutional meditations and self-interrogations, physical exercises, image descriptions, collective writing, listening, transcription and re-recording of conversations. website Inverse Institution Archive 2001-2015 pdf publication “Aus Institutionskritik eine Gruppenpraxis machen” (Turning institutional critique into a group practice), 2015 |
