Content development: Marwa Arsanios, Marina Fokidis and Alina Serban.

Exhibition: Kasper Akhøj and Tamar Guimarães, Marwa Arsanios, Ion Grigorescu, Samir Harb, Yorgos Sapountzis; mobile archive project Even my mom can make a book* initiated by Gamze Özer, Timotheè Huguet and Kristina Kramer; the research project Open End is based on the archives of Künstlerhaus & Academy Schloss Solitude.

Finissage: Lindsay Foster and Allan Sekula.

• How does the political climate and the cultural context influence artistic practice and curatorial thinking?
• How do we exchange ideas, communicate in artistic communities and explore new artist practices?
• Which artistic strategies do we share with institutions and their general set-up? What are the institution’s principal responsibilities regarding the fostering of artistic research and production and the preservation of artistic work?
• What remains after intensive collaboration, exhibitions and research in the archives?
• What is the purpose of hoping for a better future?

These questions resulted from a year-long dialogue on exhibition practices between two institutions in Stuttgart, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart and Academy Schloss Solitude. The outcome is exhibited in two parallel exhibitions and a public accompanying program.

The project Future Scenarios with an Open End was initiated by Jean-Baptiste Joly, director of Academy Schloss Solitude, and Misal Adnan Yildiz, artistic director of Künstlerhaus Stuttgart. They had decided to undertake research with an open end as well as an experimental exhibition by using both of their institutions’ resources. The contents were developed in collaboration with the curators and cooperation fellows Marwa Arsanios (Beirut/Libanon), Marina Fokidis (Athens/Greece) and Alina Serban (Bucharest/Romania), who had lived and worked at Academy Schloss Solitude for two months in 2014. Since last spring, there were regular discussions and informal meetings that served to exchange ideas, observations and references in order to develop the conceptual foundation of the exhibition.

The exhibition program comprises of artistic projects, archive studies, interventions and public talks. It investigates the essential instruments of political thinking, of institutional contexts and artistic motivation and acts as connecting element between history, present and future of the two institutions.

By exhibiting selected works by Kasper Akhøj, Tamar Guimarães, Marwa Arsanios and Ion Grigorescu, the exhibition develops a complex filmic language, that explores the perception of geopolitical realities, historical transformations and the general artists’ quest for universal truth. Samir Harb presents works from his latest graphic novel and Yorgos Sapountzis exhibits a so far unpublished work that deals with a historical moment of our global agenda. Moreover, there is an installation of art books that were collected by young artists from Istanbul and Berlin: The mobile archive project Even my mum can make a book, initiated by Gamze Özer, Timothée Huguet and Kristina Kramer, was spread in the networks of artists and will be extended by launching an open call. The discussion between Künstlerhaus Stuttgart and Academy Schloss Solitude eventually results in a presentation of the undertaken research and the house archives of the two institutions with an eye toward the artists, projects and works that have never met, never intersected – although it would have been meaningful.

By mapping shared memories between Stuttgart, Athens, Bucharest and Beirut and referring to many stories from Brazil to Palestine, the exhibition points at paths for all those who are looking for future. By searching for solidarity, collective identity and artistic visions the project aims at initiating discussions about the gray area between individual responsibility of the artist and his nearly impossible intellectual positioning in times of crisis.

The physical distance, the history of collaboration and the diversity of conceptual interests between the two institutions form the starting point of the project: the institutions’ archives, exhibitions spaces, budgets and bus stops (the most convenient form of public transport between Künstlerhaus and Academy Schloss Solitude) connect their memories.

For the first time in almost three decades, Künstlerhaus and Academy Schloss Solitude collaborate on a project that is supposed to put forward an ongoing discussion on how we work, what we share and what remains in the end.

* Even my mom can make a book is a mobile archive for zines, artist books and independent publications that was founded in Istanbul in 2010 by Gamze Özer, Kristina Kramer and Timothée Huguet. Since then, the archive has grown and was exhibited in different places. More than 300 participants from all over the world have contributed publications to the archive. During the exhibition, everyone is invited to take part in our workshops and create own books or zines – as emmcmakeabook is an ever-growing archive, new contributions are alsways welcome.