The exhibition play! is the conclusion at a local level of the EU research project TRANSLOCAL: MUSEUM AS TOOLBOX, which ran from 2015 to 2017 as a collaboration between the Kunsthaus Graz, KUMU in Tallinn, MSU Zagreb, Museion Bozen/Bolzano and Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź. From spring 2016 to autumn 2017, five institutions worked with groups of young people, focusing on artworks produced in five residencies, to create an exhibition project that these young people were directly involved in shaping. Playing connects – cultures, people, channels of thinking. Play has its own rules, it overcomes language barriers. It is the safest and simplest form of learning and accompanies many people on their way through life. Playing games can be dangerous, can take us to the edge of the imaginable, and make us discover new options. In this sense, play is closely related to art, forming the basis of much artistic practice.
play! is an exhibition project by a group of young people at the Kunsthaus Graz. United by an interest in art and the desire to design an exhibition based on our own ideas, we came together last year to think about current themes with the curators and museum educators. Five works formed the starting-point and foundation for our reflections on the situation and scope of this museum site as a space for art and negotiation. We built on concepts such as identity, self–representation, migration and communication. Through play, which formed the basis of several works, these could be combined in a fundamental way with our experimental approach
In play! we create places of encounter. Encounters between us, space, its rules, its possibilities and the existing artistic and institutional settings. We use free spaces from the cloakroom, to the loos, through to the glass terrace, bending the institution’s rules of play and intervening with artistic or playful settings wherever we can, in order to encourage as many people as possible to join in with our fun, entertaining, critical and thoughtful interplay!
Participating artists include: Oaza Collective, Marcin Polak, Aldo Giannotti, Lasnaidee, Luigi Coppola, Josef Bauer, Gerwald Rockenschaub, Candida Höfer, Giulio Paolini, Clegg & Guttmann and many others.
Curated and activated by Lidia Cekic, Jasmin Edegger, Katharina Grabner, Ramona Haderer, Christina Hahn, Keyvan Paydar, Sarah Resch, Valerie Taus, Alexandra Trost, Monika Holzer-Kernbichler and Katrin Bucher Trantow.
"Der Mensch ist nur da ganz Mensch, wo er spielt." (Friedrich Schiller)
Musicians(performed at the opening night): Riccardo Schöfberger, Klaus Tanner, Christiana Rush, Gustavo Rodrigues Fotos: Jasmin Edegger, (Universalmuseum Joanneum/J.J. Kucek) and Michael Sladek IIIustration: Keyvan Paydar
