6th of February 10 am – 7pm & 7th of February 10am– 3pm on Mozilla.Hubs
Conceived by Luise Flügge, student at the KHM, and Lisa Tschorn, student at the Kunstakademie Münster
In view of the steadily rising death toll worldwide and in Germany caused by the Corona pandemic, one’s own frustration, anger, grief – all these feelings that arose when an exhibition was cancelled again or even the exam could only be realised as a shadow of the actual performance – seemed presumptuous, yet these feelings were there and needed their space.
With the Mourning Time workshop, we offered students and alumni who had to take a silent exam due to the pandemic or who were unable to realise an important exhibition in the planned form a virtual space for shared mourning, exchange and comfort across the university. This was particularly about networking moments that were missing due to physical distance. Dr. Brigitte Kölle, Head of the Contemporary Art Collection at Kunsthalle Hamburg, spoke on the topic of mourning from a curatorial perspective and how she encounters it in an artistic context. In addition, the artist Annegret Schrader gave us an insight into her work as a grief counsellor and the dimensions and scope that grief takes on in our lives.
Exchange within as well as between (art) universities became enormously difficult during the height of the Covid 19 pandemic. The moments of encounter at exhibitions, tours and performances were missing. In this workshop, we therefore tested how an exchange in virtual meeting rooms could be designed across universities and talked about projects that had to be prevented or modified. In particular, the focus was on mourning and the loss of unfinished projects.
We found the possibilities of a Zoom conference too stiff and wanted to move into new virtual territory. Mozilla.Hubs served as a tool to loosen up the fixed structures of an online meeting by moving around in virtual spaces that offered different presentation and exchange possibilities. Furthermore, we invited people to look at works in the virtual space itself anew and, through the exchange in the group, offered the possibility to give ideas and projects the space they were denied. Although it cannot be denied that virtual exchange comes with many imponderables, we also wanted to focus in this workshop on how online formats offer new possibilities for exchange and a potential all their own that we should integrate as an interface in our everyday university life.
The workshop was aimed at students, alumni and artists in NRW. The prerequisite for participation was the presentation of a project that was not or only partially realised in 2020. The event took place online and the capacity was limited to 20 participants.
Here you can find the accompanying publication:
