Europe under Construction

Kunsthaus Dresden 2016

As part of the exhibition Baustelle Europa in Kunsthaus Dresden, we moderated workshops for three Dresden based initiatives:

The Library Project aims to provide literature in the mother tongues of refugees and new arrivals

Elixir has the plan to build a socio-cultural center in an empty building with working and living areas

the international gardens have been practicing urban gardening with migrants since 10 years

During the workshops ideas and strategies have been developed together with the initiatives and other experts. Plans for spatial transformations have been developed and implemented by Constructlab together with the initiatives in form of prototypes. The workshops were integrated in the exhibition at the Kunsthaus Dresden.

Europe is less the name of a continent than an historical, cultural, political, and spiritual agreement. Populist campaigns, but also political decisions have challenged civil society’s trust in the solidarity of European societies both with each other and with people in distress throughout the world. The artworks in the exhibition EUROPE UNDER CONSTRUCTION address individual aspects of the contradictory experiences of a changing cultural identity in Europe from highly individual points of view. The artistic narratives in the show engage with current and historical experiences of flight and global migration. Others present abstract and documentary images for the ‘anti-political’ movements and the painful processes at the fringes of Europe under construction: The creation of special zones and closed camps, the fortifications of external borders and arson attacks on refugee shelters.

Against the background of these contradictory impressions and the experience of complexity, from which there appears to be no rapid way out, the exhibition also features constructive examples of Europe under construction in Dresden: Not only, but especially in the past one and a half years, a discourse on migration as a positive development potential of urban society has emerged.