TOWARDS OTHER OPENINGS: AN ATTEMPT (PART II)
A listening session and gathering with Raphael Daibert
Thu 10 October, 7 p.m.

Towards Other Openings: An Attempt is the title of a text contribution written by Daibert for an art education publication in 2022, which now takes the form of a listening session and gathering – therefore, part II –  at Temporary Gallery.

The event will start with a listening session of Raphael’s piece Cotorradio, a sonic and conceptual exploration about sounds of belonging (which started from the encounter of the artist with the parakeets present in Cologne, when he lived in the city in 2019), followed by the reading of a text Raphael is writing during his residency time.

Interested in the shift of perspectives, without leaving aside the current moment we live in and what (else) surrounds us, the invitation is to attune one’s ears (as sight) and the eyes (in listening), making use of the virtue of working from an artistic perspective: the poetic possibility of not only imagining, but acting otherwise.

Homemade pão de queijo, a Brazilian snack made from cheese and manioc flour, will be on served for everyone. We would appreciate a small donation.

Raphael Daibert (he/him) is a Brazilian curator, artist, educator and researcher who lives in Berlin. He is currently working as a research assistant and lecturer at the Institute of Philosophy and Art History at Leuphana University Lüneburg, and is doing his doctorate as part of the DFG Research Training Group Cultures of Critique in the same university. He holds a Master's in Art Praxis from the Dutch Art Institute (DAI) and is a founding member of the curatorial collective Cruising Curators in Berlin – currently part of nGbK's working group "Dissident Paths: Walking Together as a Method" (in collaboration with ReRouting) for 2025/2026. Raphael is co-founder of the anti-racist working group Third Space: Disordering the Mess, an artistic-educational project founded in 2021 as part of the project “Group Dynamics – Der Blaue Reiter and Modernist Collectives” at the Lenbachhaus, in Munich. Raphael collaborates with the Dutch Art Institute as part of the Admissions Committee and as respondent to final year student presentations. In his practice, Raphael focuses mostly on artistic research and collective anti-hegemonic art projects.

Raphael Daibert is currently a guest of the Temporary Gallery residency program.

About the residency program:
It has become a declared, if often only half-heartedly pursued, goal of cultural institutions to question and renew their own structures with regard to diversity. However, diversity must not just be a temporary program or a hip agenda, but must go deeper. The question must not only be who gets access to cultural education and its institutions, but who is even able to consider cultural and/or creative work as a career perspective.

Although so-called "art brut" – art by people with a mental illness or a mental disability – is very well established and highly valued, "art brut" artists and their artworks are excluded from the usual art scene: "art brut" functions as a separate area of the art world with its own exhibitions in which only "art brut" artists participate. As a result, they very rarely meet with artists without disabilities. Although the intention behind "art brut" exhibitions is certainly positive and worthy of support, there is no real inclusion here – the artworks are "isolated" in separate exhibitions instead of being included in exhibitions of artists without illness or disability. In order to address this problem in the long term, Temporary Gallery. Center for Contemporary Art in Cologne, initiated a project that focuses on empowerment and inclusion on a deeper level: a residency program for cultural workers with the main goal: to counteract the exclusion of so-called "Outsider Art".

The aim of the program is to invite several international artists to Cologne. The guests visit partner institutions and meet artists in their studios. In addition, individual "feedback sessions" are offered, talks lasting around 1–2 hours, for which artists can register. The residents also present their work at an event in the Temporary Gallery.

We successfully tested the project in 2023 – thanks to the support of the Bezirksregierung Köln – with the Kunsthaus KAT18 as a partner institution. We hosted the collective Sour Grass from Barbados, Hubert Gromny from Berlin and Luiza Proença from Rio de Janeiro in Cologne. The 2024 residencies included Gilly Karjevsky from Berlin and Alberta Whittles, Glasgow. In 2024, the project will be continued thanks to the support of the City of Cologne (funding program: “Culture – Diversity”) and expanded to include new partner institutions. We hope that the project will also contribute to strengthening the artistic scene in Cologne in the long term. After all, better networking with international artists expands the opportunities for artists based in the city to take part in exhibitions outside Cologne.

Image:
cotorra, Barcelona (2021) – photo courtesy of the artist