What is public in public art? What are the contingencies of working outside of the protection of the institutional walls? What makes city curating? This reader takes Munich as a case study, and documents the projects of PUBLIC ART MUNICH 2018 dealing with political, ideological and economical shifts, spanning from the founding of the Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919 to the arrival of refugees at the Hauptbahnhof in 2015. It contextualizes art within the broader questions of the grammar of the public sphere and of what constitutes publicness today. It also reflects on the concept of context-specific city curating, performativity and art conceived in minutes rather than square meters. Art projects, conversations and essays plot a narrative of how art can cultivate encounters with the unpredictable, negotiate uncommonness, and provoke counter-publics to come.

This reader is published on the occasion of Public Art Munich 2018 – Game Changers (April 30-July 27, 2018), curated by Joanna Warsza. PAM, commissioned by the City of Munich, is Munich’s biggest public art program. Its first edition in 2013, A Space Called Public/Hoffentlich Öffentlich, was curated by Elmgreen & Dragset.pam2018.de

Freiraum is an initiative of Goethe Institute and Kanuti Gildi SAAL will organise a series of events related to the topic of freedom in Tallinn. Freiraum as sphere of freedom or free zone unites 53 partners from culture, science and civil society all over Europe who in more than 40 cities of Europe will be grappling with the concept of freedom in our contemporary world. Paired European cities are developing projects to be presented to the public in a series of events in 2018 and 2019. Kanuti Gildi SAAL dialogue partner is Kunsthaus Dresden and they formulated question - against the backdrop of the increasing use of the city and public space as a setting for right-wing populist initiatives since late 2014, what can art, as a language of freedom, do in times of widespread resentment? Kanuti Gildi SAAL posed a question: are we wrong to be happy? Focusing on the nexus between freedom and responsibility as well as on positive aspects of free private and public life.
https://www.goethe.de/prj/fre/en/index.html