From 9 to 11 July, together with Kunstverein Siegen and Kunstverein Bielefeld, we invite you to the artistic symposium Speculative Pen: Fabulating Institutional Futures at Temporary Gallery in Cologne. Over the course of three days, we will ask, together with international guests from the fields of art, curation and research, how art institutions can remain future-oriented, equitable and connected — as part of the programme Übermorgen by the German Federal Cultural Foundation.
With Cane Adina Erzi, Alistair Hudson (online), Nina Möntmann, Tamarind Rossetti and Stephen Wright, Paulina Seyfried, Meghna Singh, Benjamin Seroussi (online), Kathy-Ann Tan, Fatoş Üstek (online) and Franciska Zólyom. Food by AMA.TWI.
Participation is free of charge, and the symposium will be live-streamed.
Please register by 1 July at info@temporarygallery.org.
Speculative Pen is an artistic symposium taking an experimental format that connects institutional self-questioning with speculative exercises regarding the desired future of art institutions. Rather than a conventional site of knowledge transmission, the event is conceived as a collective learning space and artistic-curatorial intervention in which institutional structures are reflected upon and speculatively extended. The title refers to the ballpoint pen as a tool of administrative and structural practice.
By reinterpreting it as the Speculative Pen, we explore the extent to which speculative approaches can contribute to rethinking institutional structures and the associated scope for action. At the same time, we ask how utopian propositions can be translated into concrete, situated speculations that build on existing practices.This symposium is an open research project undertaken by three institutions—the CCA Temporary Gallery in Cologne, the Kunstverein Bielefeld and the Kunstverein Siegen—as part of the Übermorgen—Neue Modelle für Kulturinstitutionen programme run by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes, which brings together fifty cultural institutions across Germany to develop new approaches to their future as meaningful spaces for social life, particularly in light of the significant challenges and crises of our time. Over eighteen months, the three institutions are jointly developing their working methods, testing new models of collaboration and participation, and pursuing the question of how art institutions can remain networked, equitable, and fit for the future. What connects their curatorial approach is a shared understanding of exhibition-making as something that extends into the urban and social fabric of their respective cities, and of discourse and education not as accompanying activities but as integral to curatorial practice itself.
One conceptual thread running through this research is the concept of the permacultural institution, developed by Aneta Rostkowska in her essay Towards a Permacultural Institution (Islands of Kinship, Mousse Publishing, 2024). Drawing on the principles of permaculture—long-term thinking, interdependence, and care for living systems—the model presents art institutions as accessible and inclusive hybrid spaces that combine the functions of community centres and exhibition spaces, and that prioritise the well-being of both their staff and the wider community. It advocates decentralising curatorial authority, integrating social engagement into the institution's core structure, and cultivating sustainable practices that run counter to the overproductive, fast-paced logic of the contemporary art world. Crucially, the model insists that ecological and social sustainability must always be thought together—neither can be addressed in isolation from the other. The concept has been developed through practice as well as theory: first through the summer seminar Towards Perma-Cultural Institutions: Exercises in Collective Thinking (Stiftung Künstlerdorf Schöppingen, 2022), and subsequently through the workshop series Towards Permacultural Institutions: Curating Transformation (CCA Temporary Gallery, 2023), which brought permacultural ethics—earth care, people care, and fair share—to bear on questions of institutional transformation in the art sector.
Kunstvereine occupy a peculiar position in the cultural landscape: chronically underfunded yet stubbornly persistent, they have long functioned as what might be called survival artists—nimble, community-rooted, and capable of experimenting precisely because they operate outside the logic of large institutional self-preservation. This symposium asks how that structural precarity might be reframed as a condition for solidarity, and how genuinely collaborative practices can be built within and across these structures.Through collective writing and creative self-expression sessions guided by artistic impulses, as well as fictional excursions, workshops including Paulina Seyfried's Language Creates Reality on the third day, discussions and lectures, we will address questions of participation and publicness, alongside different organisational forms and possibilities for democratising institutional practice. The symposium also attends to social sustainability and process-oriented, collaborative educational work—one that considers inclusive access alongside decolonial and transcultural perspectives.
The event brings together an international group of artists, curators, researchers and institutional practitioners, including Cane Adina Erzi, Alistair Hudson online, Andreas Maus, Nina Möntmann, Tamarind Rossetti and Stephen Wright, Paulina Seyfried, Meghna Singh, Kathy-Ann Tan, Fatoş Üstek online and Franciska Zólyom, among others. Food by AMA TWI.
Convened by: Jennifer Cierlitza Kunstverein Siegen, Lisa Klosterkötter and Aneta Rostkowska CCA Temporary Gallery, and Victoria Tarak Kunstverein Bielefeld.
The symposium will be live streamed. To register, please write to info@temporarygallery.org by 1 July. You can find information about the event’s accessibility on our website. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any special requirements or queries. We offer childcare; please let us know in advance when registering if you would like to make use of this. Please also indicate your child's age.
Language: English, with brief introductions to each contribution in plain language in German and English.
Saturday, 11.July, 9.30-12.00 Workshop with Paulina Seyfried (afterwards 12-13 lunch)
Workshop: Language creates reality
Cultural workers are increasingly being asked to solve social challenges. Their institutions are expected to serve as spaces for entertainment, education, and interaction — for the widest possible audience. And yet budgets are shrinking, and cultural policies are growing more restrictive. Thinking about changes we can do without a budget, we need to remind ourselves that language does not just describe the world; it actively constructs it. To become more accessible, we need to communicate more clearly, both inside our organisations and with our audiences. This is a question of self-awareness, hierarchy, and transparency, but also of the words we use to describe things we do. This workshop is for everyone interested in unlearning their academic language. It offers a chance to:
- reflect on where you stand personally and professionally
- think together about how power works in language, especially in the art world
- look at language not just as a barrier, but also as a way to open doors We will talk and write together. Language can exclude — but it can also help people find their place and rise socially.
What we will do: We start with a check-in and a short introduction. Then we move into practical writing and translation exercises, working with plain language.
To take part, please:
- Read a short introductory text beforehand
- Be open to trying new ways of writing and communicating — leaving academic language aside
- Bring something to write with
Funded by Übermorgen—New Models for Cultural Institutions, an initiative by the German Federal Cultural Foundation. It is delivered in collaboration with Bureau Ritter as the executive partner. The German Federal Cultural Foundation is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
IMAGE:
Victoria Tarak, from the ongoing artistic-curatorial research project O Ovo
Like the egg forms a protective dwelling for processes of becoming, it is at the same time a fragile structure that points to the necessity of care and attention, thus becoming a metaphor for the equally delicate, vulnerable, and easily disrupted emergence of ideas. The various eggs in the image appear to be in dialogue with one another and refer to the symposium Speculative Pen as a site of collective practice.
