In March 2023, the sp ce gallery hosted a curated infrastructure for almost a month, designed by Neele Marie Denker, which brought together accomplices, friends, thinkers, artists and designers for workshops, talks, dinners, discourses, collaborations, and commonality according to the principle of invitation.

Hospitality, for all its generosity, is a complex concept. Often reduced to sociability or reciprocity, it initially seems to have fundamentally positive connotations. Denker explores the potential of hospitality and its relevance for the curatorial in search of a spatial shape of hospitality. Popular elements of a situation based on hospitality form the basis of the discussion: the table, the gift, and the invitation.

"A curatorial situation is always one of hospitality (Beatrice von Bismarck. Das Kuratorische, Spector Books: Leipzig, 2022): [...] It receives, welcomes, and brings people and things together for a limited period of time." Enabling this shared public sphere is the gift that comes to bear in curatorial hospitality. The pandemic calls for a reinforcement of hospitable gestures, and current debates, such as those surrounding Documenta 15, also highlight the ambivalence and complexity of the hospitable condition of exhibiting. Rather than foregrounding the common form of exhibition presentation, Be my guest - or would you like to be the host? rather situationally explores the question of what conditions and possibilities it takes to be a host. Collaboration in this process is central and expands the sense of urgency in which roles of hosts and guests, forms of cultural production, and gathering are rethought and renegotiated.

The curated infrastructure designs access points to find thoughts, perspectives, conditions, and tools for plural responses of/for/with hospitality.

The project is Denkers' master thesis, which was developed in the Spatial Strategies M.A. program at Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design. Supervised by Prof. Frauke Gerstenberg and Prof. Sandra Schramke.

Video documentation

Within the Lab graduates and experts are invited to work together on sustainability-related projects, which are centered around local materials and their production. Located in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein the Lab works as an incubator and a pilot project for collaboration and production at the Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design.

The exhibitions are the product of students‘ collective approach to curating and their investigations of hybrid exhibition formats. Through these, the web is explored not merely as a tool to replicate existing practices, but rather as a site of convergence of rapidly changing practices and approaches; new ways of curating, creative collaborations, investigations, expressions, and dialogue.

Eleven curators and four artists: The topics touch landscapes and bodies, how art converges with technology and virtual reality affects perception and self-awareness. Side by side we ponder plant life, 3D printing, classifications of artistic media, and eusocial insects of the order Hymenoptera.

The festival is a collaboration between Artzine Web magazine and the course Creating & Curating Exhibitions at the IUA‘s Department of Fine Art, where the emphasis is placed on digital and relational curating. Conceived and developed at the IUA‘s Department of Fine Art during the course Creating & Curating Exhibitions, this year taught with an emphasis on curating digital art by Hanna Styrmisdóttir, Professor in Curatorial Practice, and Helga Óskarsdóttir, Founder and Editor, artzine. Guests included curator Daría Sól Andrews, artist Ragnar Már Nikulásson, Professor Margrét Elísabet Ólafsdóttir and Krist Gruijthuijsen (Director, KW, Berlin) and Anna Gritz (Curator, KW, Berlin).

Scenographic and curatorial assistance for designer in residence Benjamin Unterluggauer for the exhibition Fuzziness: Diffusion – Adaption, featuring results of the designers 6-month residency at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MK&G).

An exhibition with support from the Stiftung Hamburger Kunstsammlungen. Shown are various objects from the Benjamin Unterluggauer's Foilweld project along with the infamous design classic blow chair.

spatial structure: mokit.tools

The group exhibition FUGE. Zwischen Übermorgen und Gestern of the interdisciplinary network INTER- takes up the principle of the fugue as a method of insertion and connection to negotiate the relationship between individual and group in exhibition production. The fugue refers to the polyphony of the network: the different contexts and artistic or theoretical disciplines of the individual actors.

For the exhibition, the nine artists, designers, and theoreticians from a wide range of disciplines developed site-specific works that fit into the architectural and thematic interstices of the museum: Sometimes they take up fragments of images from historical works in the collection in order to develop them further, alienate them or reinterpret them; sometimes they appear unexpectedly in the corridors or corners of the museum spaces and other times they serve to open the museum spaces to urban space, to participation or assembly. As an intervention in the historical collection, the exhibition blurs different temporalities. At the same time, FUGE. is a plea for permeability and diversity instead of straightforwardness and stringency; a space for free imagination and participation: objects can be climbed, used, or even taken along.

Drafts and sketches, as well as supplementary material and continuations of the exhibition content, made into a publication by Sabrina Podemski and Neele Denker in collaboration with the Düsseldorf based Salat Magazin.

www.kunstforum.de

For the exhibition FUGE. Zwischen Übermorgen und Gestern, Denker inaugurated an open space in the heart of the institution next to the permanent collection. The new meeting place, reading space, and lounge for neighbors, travelers, and museum staff provides a place to read, pause, work, or speak with others.

The installation thus places the social function of the museum - as a place of encounter, discourse, or simply time out from everyday life - at the center of its work. Through workshops and events, the space invites visitors to actively participate in shaping the museum space and using it through a variety of offerings. The work is thus a work-in-progress, the use and appropriation is open to the public.

IMAGINE THE CITY elaborates representative new formats at the interface between culture and urban planning.

THE GATE - an exhibition and art walk with an audio library at HafenCity Hamburg itinerary took the famous slogan about the Hanseatic City as ‘gateway to the world’ as its starting point to explore aspects of the urban space that usually receive little attention in the everyday life of a city. 16 works by international artists marked out different entry and exit points to HafenCity and looked at which elements influence the perception and therefore the use of urban spaces. Each of these ‘gates’ opened up different approaches to Hamburg’s urban identity. 

Sumpf allows correspondences to merge into one another, traces are left behind, so that separate areas of organization and formation are formed and flow away again. The interplay draws a dynamic with and against each other without a center, organically blends ideas into a polyphonic image.

The exhibition contribution is the result of the physical debut of the group Arbeitsraum - a one-week mini-residency in the Free Radicals program at Floating University Berlin. The experience of becoming a group in one place for one week is thoroughly ingrained.

The Arbeitsraum would like to thank the AStA of the Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design, the Presidency of the Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design, as well as the Floating University and the Futur 3 Festival.

One-week residency at the Floating Berlin, within the Free Radicals program.

The cooperation project between nextmuseum.io and the INTER– network on collaborative work, started with the open call #designatedvisions and will run until August 2021. During the project an exhibition will be created, which will be shown in autumn 2021 in the Museum Ulm.

The community is invited to participate during the whole process, including (digital) meetups (e.g. on Crowdcast) and discussions on Telegram. The planned think tanks as well as the symposium offer the community opportunities to participate.

In December 2020, the "Arbeitsraum" was founded - a space for exchange and a more process- than product-oriented design practice, a laboratory for collective and experimental learning and exchange. The provisional title names the conceptual orientation, which moves between disciplines and different locations, creating a space to confront and connect them.

In a digital hyper collection, we show an overview of our previous projects and experiments. A central feature of this digital exhibition and collection form is the facilitation of an interdisciplinary curatorship and a finite, open end in the design of the space. It is a reflection in images and text on the first months of the "Arbeitsraum". In doing so, we tell the story of our visionary network for collective, experimental creation, knowledge transfer, and the emergence of a transdisciplinary network to challenge the routines and habits of our practices.

Development: Hyper was programmed by Joscha Brüning and Benjamin Unterluggauer.

In the 21st issue of the literature magazine Der Schnipsel, 20 authors devote 140 pages to the topic "Between_space and barrier" - linguistic, social, everyday, tangible, abstract, and geographical.

ISBN: 978-3-948115-04-3

Due to COVID-19, the graduation show of the Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design had to adapt. Instead of being centralized around the campus, many events, exhibitions, and performances were held around the city of Kiel, Germany. Together with Paula Koch, Neele Denker curated the exhibition concept, which focuses on alternative exhibition venues in digital and public spaces with around 50 exhibition places. Locations of encounter were not only the city's well-known exhibition venues but also newly discovered urban niches, where art and design could take place for the first time. Many billboards around the city were rented as extra exhibition space.
Additionally, the digital exhibition featured an interactive map of all the physical exhibitions, a project archive, and a podcast section. The podcasts can still be listened to on YouTube.

A conversation with Neele Marie Denker and Paula Koch about their work as exhibition directors under special and new conditions.

The catalog showcases students' projects from all majors.

The installation by the designer Thies Warnke was created in September 2020 as a temporary memorial for the arson attack in 1992 in Mölln, Germany. The work represents the silhouette of the house that was set on fire in 1992 on a 1:1 scale. The work is intended to take a concrete position as a mediating interface that tells the stories of the victims. By mentioning the names on the LED board, the different stories become imaginable. Warnke does not show the viewer any stirring images but allows them to emerge from the little information provided, thus reminding us of the memory of the Möllner arson attack. Neele Marie Denker was responsible for the project management and assisted in the conceptual work and the attendant workshops and events.

Funded by the Department of Culture and Education, City of Kiel.

Print Documentation, 166 pages, Softcover, 213 × 291 mm, German, English.

The project aimed for an explorative way of rethinking the typology of the kiosk in the context of urban space and its specific surrounding. Part of the 6-month project were various participative actions, talks, exhibitions, constructions, courses, workshops, and neighborhood actions - all with the aim of discussing sustainable urban development, and curating experiments in an abandoned and vacant space.

The project aimed for an explorative way of rethinking the typology of the kiosk in the context of urban space and its specific surrounding. The central approach was activation through use, sorting out ideas of spatial strategy in alternative ways, and analyzing their effect in the urban and social context. The focus of the work is based on a participational approach and transformation of space in order to discover possibilities. Architecture as an experimental laboratory for a moment related to the participatory work practice in an urban area.

The work deals with the topic of urban vacancy. It provides answers to the question of how cities can be rethought and redesigned through the participation of their citizens. The final exhibition installation provides an insight into explorative approaches to creative-cultural temporary uses, which have provided impulses for new ways of using the kiosk over the past months.

Exhibition: Kiosk Anscharpark, Kiel 02/20 and 09/20
Print Documentation, 166 pages, Softcover, 213 × 291 mm, German, English

The spatial installation works with an underestimated, unrecognized space in between: A transition space characterized by a fragile, fluid atmosphere. The work deals with hybrid processes, the question, and interplay of body and space, embodiment, dematerialization, and dissolution of the classical spatial boundaries. Entering the installation creates in-between spaces. The visitor partially disappears behind the curtains and becomes a part of the hybrid.

Exhibition: Oslo Academy of the Arts, 10/18

Space and fashion merge in a harmonious symbiosis. The lightness of both media is related to each other, complementing and combining. The fluid atmosphere of the set is complemented by the light, fluent fabrics, and cuts.

Raum 04 (15 min. immersive spatial performance with 2 channel beamer projection; 3 geometric bodies in a ratio of 3 to 1; PVC bag; fog; LED strip; sound installation; printed manifest) is a hybrid format between exhibition and performance, between work and process. Rhizome, a key concept of modern philosophy, forms the basis of Raum04, as well as on the theoretical and pictorial levels. The rhizome, a labyrinth without beginning, without end. A system of detours, a place of random events and encounters, characterized by inner endlessness. Dissolution and multiplication form spatial extensions. The idea of a three-dimensional, static space is broken up, liquefied, and expanded into a multidimensional structure. Raum 04 takes up this image of space instead of starting from an interior and exterior space, the focus is on the relation between the spaces.

The prototype (metal, plywood) is designed to allow its users a variety of positions and suitability for every type of body. Designed in a thee-days competition.

Hokker - designed within an interdisciplinary workshop with Studio Aust+Amelung. The stool plays with our senses with its solid sharp-edged curved seat and three distinctive legs looking different at every angle. A stool is no furniture where you sit relaxed for hours but rather a seat for moments in between. You pick it up quickly, put it down in good company, and take a seat. The stool designed in three days is simple yet playful at once. When lifting the Hokker one notices the lightness of the basswood.