Photo Exhibition - Season Opening 2024/25 - Campaign

dergreif.org · Instagram · Münchner Kammerspiele

"Off to Elsewhere" is the title of the 2024/25 season of the Münchner Kammerspiele, which will be festively opened on September 14 together with a photo exhibition in their Therese-Giehse Hall. "Off to Elsewhere" was also the call by Der Greif, the renowned Munich-based organization for contemporary photography, to its worldwide community of photography enthusiasts to submit their images as visual responses.

Over 1,000 submissions from 82 countries are the result of this impressive initiative. From this multitude of contributions, Çağla Ilk, co-director of the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden and curator of the German Pavilion at this year's Venice Biennale, has selected 40 images by artists ** aged between 25 and 74, which will be staged as both the image campaign for the 2024/25 season, as a photo exhibition, and in a special art publication by both organizations.

To kick off, on September 14, the selected images will be transferred from the theater workshops to the foyer of the Therese-Giehse Hall in a performance as an official part of the art festival Various Others. There, they will be presented for three months as a photo exhibition on the glass front of the hall between exterior and interior: a visual bridge between the 'Theater of the City' and interpretations of Elsewhere from around the world.

In the following weeks, visitors can send out the 40 motifs as postcards from the Habibi Kiosk of the Münchner Kammerspiele or re-stage them in an interactive wall installation. Additionally, 20 motifs will be displayed as large-format posters in Munich's public spaces.

New special publication creates a link to the public campaign

The special Der Greif publication accompanying the exhibition features 8 large-format DIN A2 posters, folded to DIN A4 size. This format intentionally echoes the campaign visible in public spaces. Out of the 40 total image motifs, 8 are reproduced in full size. The poster backs combine the remaining 32 motifs, creating intriguing new image constellations.

The publication will also be available at the Habibi Kiosk's K67. In the weeks following, visitors can acquire the 40 motifs as postcards, and send greetings to loved ones. Additionally, an interactive magnetic wall installation allows visitors to create and re-stage new image combinations from the 40 motifs. This engaging approach to the visual world and audience participation helps extend the exhibition's life beyond its official duration.

About the Collaboration

"Off to Elsewhere" as a motto for the 2024/25 season also responds to "Don't Leave Reality Alone," with which Barbara Mundel's directorship began in 2020. Photography's relationship to reality is simultaneously its strongest and most hindering characteristic, for no photo really leaves reality alone. Even if we think a photo merely depicts reality, the captured, frozen moment we get to see is extremely fragmentarily limited in place, time, and perspective, and thus abstract in its concrete imagery anyway. Not to mention artificially generated photographic images, which only suggest a reproduction of reality through their visual language.

The cooperation between the visual worlds of Der Greif and the programming of the 'Theater of the City' seriously and playfully pursues the goal that we each primarily listen to our associative perception as reality in order to find a personal path to 'Elsewhere'.

Both art forms - photography and theater - share the ability to merge mental, real, and subjective dimensions as ‘projection spaces’. This cooperation, interdisciplinary in nature, may be unusual, but proves to be refreshingly symbiotic in its diverse manifestations.

With works by Alvin Ng, AnaHell, Anna Pentzlin, Anqi Li, Armin Amirian, Berk Kır, Camilla Gorini, Chloé Milos Azzopardi, Christian Nicolay, Cyriaco Lopes, Elena Paraskeva, Ernesto Solana, Fenqiang Liu, Florian Luthi, Forrest Simmons, Giacomo Tazzini, Grzegorz Piotrowski, Hannah Woolf, Igor Schiller, Inna Piskun, Jinchun Wei, Julia Walk, Lars Borges, Lê Quyên Nguyễn, Lisa Großkopf, Marco Castelli, Marvin Zilm, Mehdi Moghimnejad, Melanie Schoeniger, Milena Villalón, Oliver Kartak, Paul Hiller, Samet Durgun, Sári Zagyvai, Saxon Baird, Stepan Chubaev, Sveta Kaverina, Tino Kukulies, Yolanda Y. Liou and Zita Frohloff.

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"Off to Elsewhere" - Opening Performance and Presentation

Saturday, September 14, 2024 at 6 PM

Duration: 3 months

Therese-Giehse-Halle

Falckenbergstraße 1

80539 Munich

From 10 PM: Party in cooperation with Various Others

CONVIVA at Blaues Haus

Hildegardstraße 1

80539 Munich

Free admission

Music

9:00 PM – 11:30 PM Valentin.SNC & Voe LIVE

11:30 PM – 2:00 AM Sianza LIVE

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About Çağla İlk

The curator and architect was invited by the Münchner Kammerspiele as a guest curator for this open call. In March 2023, Çağla İlk was appointed curator of the German contribution to the 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. Since 2020, she has been co-directing the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden with Misal Adnan Yıldız. İlk works in theory and practice at the intersection of visual arts, architecture, sound, theater, and performance. She uses dramaturgy as a method of curating and integrates transdisciplinary approaches into her curatorial practice. Instead of static forms of exhibition-making, İlk pursues the idea of working with events and installations that change and make transitions visible.