The first exhibition at mumok under the leadership of Fatima Hellweg, “Terminal Piece,” centers on the eponymous installation by artist, activist, and author Kate Millett, a work that raises questions about the representation and perception of violence. Based on these guiding questions, over 400 commissioned works, loans, and pieces from the museum’s own collection are dramatically staged. Their presentation employs the logic of the theater and what was elsewhere called “mood” – with reference to Tolia Astakhishvili’s concurrent exhibition at mumok. Drawing on Millett’s work, Sophia Rohwetter considers the symbolic and real cage as both an auditorium and a stage for imposed and internalized confines.

“Grass Babies, Moon Babies,” Ei Arakawa-Nash’s Japan Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, is just one example of the recent surge in creative explorations of queer parenting and collective care. In literature, alongside Kate Davies, Lotte Jeffs, Claire Lynch, and Torrey Peters, whose respective books “Nuclear Family,” “This Love,” “A Family Matter,” and “Detransition, Baby” have all been published within the last five years, Calla Henkel has now turned her attention to this topic, too – staying true to the characteristic genre-bending style that has already defined her previous books. In “Four Terrible Parents,” it’s not just the creepy queerphobia of the rural setting in the US South, where the chosen family from Henkel’s novel settles down, that sends chills down your spine. The narrative of her book, which William Kherbek reviews here without giving too much away, also revolves around a criminal case as well as family tragedies both big and small.

Giselle’s Books is not a bookstore. Its two founders, Lucas Jacques-Witz and Ryder Morey-Weale, conceived it as an editorial organization. Now operating out of two neighboring spaces in Marseille, the duo runs a learning library, publishes materials, and organizes readings, exhibitions, and now also residencies. With the project “Giselle & Juliet,” which is billed as a hybrid of activated archive and curatorial fiction, Giselle’s Books will be part of the Berlin Art Week this coming Saturday – and is gaining international presence in other contexts as well. Here, Michaela Melián, who has made Marseille her second home, weaves an introduction to Giselle’s Books’ activities into a portrait of the southern French metropolis, which an ever-growing number of artists and culture workers regard as a place of community and refuge.

Stars and other astrological occurrences present themselves to the earthly observer as known and permanent constellations, yet they both physically and symbolically undergo constant change. Outer space recently became the projection surface for SpaceX’s record-breaking IPO, for instance. In the recent rehanging of the Van Abbemuseum’s collection, outer space serves as more than a metaphor for thinking about permanence and order. Conceptualized collaboratively with four external interlocutors, “Collection as Cosmos” arranges its artworks relationally rather than following the temporal linearity of the canon and sets them against the backdrop of an ornamental exhibition design by Matilde Cassani Studio. In a selective walk-through, Xenia Benivolski maps how the exhibition presents a curatorial perspective that emphasizes the storytelling effects and life cycles of artworks over the finitude of their possession and preservation.

Einer historischen Vergangenheit gehören sie keinesfalls an, die Debatten um und die Kämpfe für Lohngleichheit und gerechte Arbeitsbedingungen. Beim Blick in ihre Geschichte wird überdies deutlich, dass Arbeitskämpfe heute wie vor fünfzig oder hundert Jahren immer in enger Verbindung mit künstlerischer Praxis, Performativität und künstlerischen Lebensrealitäten standen und stehen. Das Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen versammelt nun nicht nur Dokumentarisches über die Arbeitskämpfe vergangener Tage, sondern auch Kunstwerke, die im Zuge dieser entstanden sind oder sich mit ihnen auseinandersetzen. Christina Irrgang fokussiert in ihrer Besprechung die Aktualität dieser künstlerischen Arbeiten und Artefakte hinsichtlich der kritisierten Arbeitsbedingungen und der damit verbundenen Forderungen – und dies mit besonderem Blick für die Verschränkungen proletarischer und feministischer Kämpfe.

Even before its opening, the “urban intervention” – as the Volksbühne theater calls the temporary 25-meter-long free-to-use pool in its forecourt – generated a great deal of media attention. The so-called “Volksbad” – presented by the Volksbühne as a measure against the underfunding of Berlin’s civic infrastructure and against the increased control and regulation of public space – triggered a range of reactions, from outrage over its performative nature and supposed waste of taxpayer money to enthusiasm for the attempt to truly establish a “people’s theater” in urban space. Instrumentalization of the debate reached its peak following the announcement of an afternoon during which the swimming pool was to be made available exclusively to the Each One Teach One (EOTO) e.V. association – a racist media backlash ensued. Here, Susanne von Falkenhausen and Christoph Gurk present their respective viewpoints on a project that must meet institutional expectations but also confront social realities that lack any consensus regarding an open, discrimination-sensitive society. While Christoph Gurk – currently involved in a stage production at the theater himself – argues for and contextualizes the swimming pool project by drawing on the history of the Volksbühne and the institution’s educational approach, Susanne von Falkenhausen explores the possibilities and limitations of safe spaces within the context of institutional public life.

Even before its opening, the “urban intervention” – as the Volksbühne theater calls the temporary 25-meter-long free-to-use pool in its forecourt – generated a great deal of media attention. The so-called “Volksbad” – presented by the Volksbühne as a measure against the underfunding of Berlin’s civic infrastructure and against the increased control and regulation of public space – triggered a range of reactions, from outrage over its performative nature and supposed waste of taxpayer money to enthusiasm for the attempt to truly establish a “people’s theater” in urban space. Instrumentalization of the debate reached its peak following the announcement of an afternoon during which the swimming pool was to be made available exclusively to the Each One Teach One (EOTO) e.V. association – a racist media backlash ensued. Here, Susanne von Falkenhausen and Christoph Gurk present their respective viewpoints on a project that must meet institutional expectations but also confront social realities that lack any consensus regarding an open, discrimination-sensitive society. While Christoph Gurk – currently involved in a stage production at the theater himself – argues for and contextualizes the swimming pool project by drawing on the history of the Volksbühne and the institution’s educational approach, Susanne von Falkenhausen explores the possibilities and limitations of safe spaces within the context of institutional public life. Transparency statement: Christoph Gurk is currently engaged as a dramaturge for another project at the Volksbühne and was involved in the “Pool People” project in Munich.

With an impressive 130-year history, the Carnegie International has regularly showcased international art in Pittsburgh while remaining true to its founding mission of promoting international exchange and understanding among cultures. Particularly in the context of biennials and other large, regularly recurring exhibition formats, trends in curatorial approaches can be observed – shifting away from a focus on individual objects and aesthetic experience toward a focus on contextualization and knowledge production. James Voorhies also observes these approaches at the 59th edition of the Carnegie International and situates them within a broader dynamic of changing conditions in artistic and curatorial practice, as well as shifting expectations regarding aesthetic experience and reception.