Setting off, on the move, (never) arriving, being dependent/strange/other/free—a guest. Inviting, welcoming, caring, exchanging, and offering a platform. In a time marked by mobilization, by the global circulation of data, objects, goods, and bodies too; in a time, in turn, when stringent attempts are being made to preclude the refuge and migration movements of people, Kunstraum Lakeside reflects on the capacity to accommodate others. The 2024 annual program asks what being a host is all about. Hospitality is ultimately a phenomenon permeated by power effects. For, according to Beatrice von Bismarck, such dynamics within different relationships determine “whether hospitality is granted in the first place, and if so, under what criteria and conditions. Subsequently, these are responsible for ascriptions of identity and status as well as, entangled within, the distribution of the resources at stake.” In this light, exhibiting—the curatorial situation—is also informed by these aspects of hospitality. According to Bismarck, this entails “the definition of roles, tasks, and functions that all participants can assume in the given situation and the allocation of spaces in the broadest sense,”—in short, society.
In 2024, we shed light on the multifarious aspects of hospitality. The departure point is the concept of the “host,” which has undergone an interpretative shift in the course of digitalization and virtualization: in IT, a host computer can basically be any resource that can host another resource as a “guest” or provide the clients connected to it with particular IT services. The term “host,” first used in connection with mainframes to refer to centralized hardware elements, is now used to denote, for example, virtual machines that share server capacities with other such units and host applications, or in the case of cloud providers, “hosting” describes a line of business.
The annual program at Kunstraum Lakeside explores how hosts enable or disable encounters with strangers and the other, what hosts expect from those who enter their territory, and if it is even possible to create spaces for hosting outside of prevailing conditions. And we stake out whether a host—as a host computer and part of a greater network—can serve us to better understand the necessities of global social relations.
* Beatrice von Bismarck, Das Kuratorische (Leipzig: Spector Books, 2021), 201.
Lisl Ponger — welcome
Opening, February 6, 2024, 6 pm
Exhibition, February 7 – March 29, 2024
Huda Takriti — Rewinding(s). In Rehearsal
Opening, April 9, 2024, 6 pm
Exhibition, April 10 – May 29, 2024
Long Night of Research, May 24, 2024
Steffi Parlow — Goods only upon request. Window in progress
Opening, June 11, 2024, 6 pm
Exhibition, June 12 – September 13, 2024
Dušan Barok
Opening, September 24, 2024, 6 pm
Exhibition, September 25 – November 15, 2024
Salome Dumbadze, Ana Gzirishvili, Nina Kintsurashvili
Opening, November 26, 2024, 6 pm
Exhibition, November 26 – January 2025