Now Recording: Performance - A Symposium by the Skulptur Projekte Archives
December 4 to 5, 2025
Auditorium, LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur Münster, Germany
Located between past and present, archives are not neutral containers but active agents that document, preserve, and produce meaning. The Skulptur Projekte Archives is thus not conceived as a dead sammelsurium of documents, but as a permeable, shifting structure – shaped by the practices it holds and continually transformed through engagement. The Archives – like performance – operates through time, space, and the body, raising questions about how people affect and reshape art, sculpture, and archival knowledge.
The symposium Now Recording: Performance brings together diverse perspectives on the continuous present of performance in the archives – asking how performative practices are documented, how they endure, and how archival infrastructures respond to the tensions between ephemerality and permanence, memory and liveness. Framed by the exhibition Performance People, which explores how sculptural practices have been expanded, animated, and performed across past editions of Skulptur Projekte, the symposium extends this inquiry into the archival realm. It explores how archives can hold performance not only as a trace or as a record but also as something still unfolding—a form that resists capture yet persists.
While rooted in the holdings and perspectives of the Skulptur Projekte Archives, the symposium opens a wider conversation: about performance and preservation, sculpture and its expanded field, and the evolving roles of institutions in shaping cultural memory. It invites participants to consider archives not as a closed system, but as a permeable site—where the past is in motion and the performative continues to unfold.
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4
11:00 – 11:30 am
Greetings and Introduction
Hermann Arnhold, Director LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur, Münster
Jana Bernhardt and Marianne Wagner, Skulptur Projekte Archives, Münster
11:30 am – 12:30 pm
Resurrections and Discoveries: Potentials and Challenges of Archival Performance Research
Lisa Beißwanger, Assistant Professor for Art History and Theory, University of Koblenz
12:30 – 1:30 pm
Dancing Archives. Documentation and Revival of Pina Bausch's Choreographies
Gabriele Klein, Professor for Ballet and Dance, University of Amsterdam
1:30 – 2:30 pm
Lunch break
2:30 – 3:30 pm
Actio. Considerations on the Copyright Status of Performative Actions
Grischka Petri, Head of Copyright Research, FIZ Karlsruhe
3:30 – 5:00 pm
Case Studies: From the Records
Von da an (From Then On) in Archive. Spaces, Works, Visualizations from the Anti-Museum: www.museum-moenchengladbach-1967-1978.de
Susanne Titz, Director Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach
Susanne Rennert, Curator for Modern and Contemporary Art, Stiftung Museum Schloss Moyland
How to Archive What Slips Away. Reflections on the Archival Anxiety of the Unrecorded
Jana Bernhardt, Research Associate Skulptur Projekte Archives, Münster
Performance: Made for the Present, Collected for the Future
Marianne Wagner, Curator for Contemporary Art and Skulptur Projekte Archives, Münster
5:00 – 6:00 pm
Coffee break
6:00 – 7:00 pm
Artist’s Lecture: Everyone Was Always Early
Jeremy Deller, Artist, London
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5
9:15 – 9:30 am
Arrival and Intro
9:30 – 10:30 am
Event, Object, Archive: Critical Approaches to the Conservation of Performance-based Works
Hanna B. Hölling, Research Professor, University of the Arts, Berne | Senior Fellow, Collegium Helveticum ETH Zurich
10:30 – 10:45 pm
Coffee break
10:45 – 11:30 am
Case Study: Substance or Soul – Soul without Substance?
Leonie Müller, Paper conservator, LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur, Münster
Katja Siebel, Objects conservator, LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur, Münster
11:30 am – 12:30 pm
Conversation: Spreading and Sharing. How to Distribute Archives
Maurin Dietrich, Director Kunstverein München
Vincent Schier, Curator Skulptur Projekte 2027, Münster
Eva Wilson, Curator Skulptur Projekte 2027, Münster
Moderation: Jana Bernhardt and Marianne Wagner
12:30 pm
Final Discussion followed by Goodbye Soup
Conference fee: 25 Euro (including soup for lunch and entrance to the collection)
Students can participate free of charge.
Tickets: https://shop.lwl-museum-kunst-kultur.de/#/product/event/2436
Conference language: English
Concept and Organisation: Jana Bernhardt and Marianne Wagner
Photo: Hanna Neander / LWL-MKuK
Charlotte Zander: Collector, gallery owner, museum founder
Charlotte Zander (1930–2014) began her career in the art world as a collector. From the mid-1960s onwards, she built up her collection with works by artists who had not studied at art college – at that time known as “naive art.” This led her to found Galerie Charlotte – Galerie für naive Kunst (Charlotte Gallery – Gallery for Naive Art) in Munich in 1971, which remained open until 1995. She then opened her private museum in Bönnigheim Castle in 1996, where she presented her collection, organized exhibitions, and pursued collaborations with international cultural institutions.
The exhibition at ZADIK sheds light on the stages of the collector, gallery owner, and museum founder's life. How did Charlotte Zander shape the various roles she took on throughout her life? How did she go about giving visibility to the artistic positions she valued? How did her network with artists and other players in the art world function? What joint projects, exchanges, and discourses took place? The exhibition also encourages a critical examination of historical, often stigmatizing terminology. And it shows how the Zander Collection is carrying its legacy into the future.
Dates
- October 10, 2025 | 7:00 p.m. | Exhibition opening
- November 6–9, 2025 | Special exhibition at ART COLOGNE
- December 5, 2025 | 7:00 p.m. | Susanne Zander in conversation with Michael Krajewski
ZADIK
OPENING HOURS | Monday–Friday | 10 a.m.–4 p.m. and by appointment | Closed on public holidays
ADMISSION free (also to events held as part of the exhibition)
A comprehensive upgrade and update of the RazUme database and program, Moderna galerija, Ljubljana (Terms of reference PN6 eVizual)
We are pleased to announce that Moderna galerija (Ljubljana) has joined the project “Establishment, Launch, and Optimization of the Unified Information Platform e-Culture”, led by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia.
As part of this project, Moderna galerija will upgrade and modernize the RazUme database and program. The RazUme database is the main tool of Moderna galerija’s Archives Department, which has, since its establishment in 1971, systematically collected, processed, preserved, published, and provided access to data on and documentary materials related to exhibitions staged in Slovenia; exhibitions of Slovenian artists abroad; exhibition venues and other spaces of production and presentation of visual art; 20th and 21st century visual artists in Slovenia and Slovenian artists abroad; and writers on 20th and 21st century visual art.
Our focus is on a comprehensive upgrading and updating of the existing RazUme database and program, with the prime objective of developing a modern, stable, and user-friendly online application, based on a technical database and software upgrade, which will include services for remote access to the data.
The updating and optimization of the processes of collecting, processing, preserving, and providing access to data and material will contribute to more efficient work processes in the institution and greatly improve the accessibility of content for the professional public, such as university teachers, researchers, art historians, curators, artists, students, and other interested individuals who use such material and data in their research, exhibitions, publications, and studies.
The project is financed in the frame of the Recovery and Resilience Plan by the Republic of Slovenia and the European Union – NextGenerationEU.