Humus Magic Springs in a Planetary Garden

“The garden, in its traditional sense, is a privileged site for planetary intermingling. Each garden, necessarily enhanced by species from all corners of the globe, can be looked upon as a planetary index. Each gardener can be considered an intermediary for encounters among species not necessarily, a priori, destined to meet.” - Gilles Clément

Project spaces for contemporary art have undergone a transformation in recent years that is perceptible to the actors in the spaces, but hardly tangible. In sspatz’s communication with global colleagues, they are slowly approaching a language that can reflect this new meaning. It is a change in the understanding of roles; artists become care-workers for their colleagues without being curators. What role can these new project spaces play in the contemporary art world? After1920 and sspatz will interrogate this self-conception together in a transnational dialogue in order to learn where the journey can lead in the future. How can this new model for project spaces connect geographies, involve artists in the creation process of exhibitions, and navigate communicating this new model with distinct audiences? Complex layering processes must be communicated without preventing viewers from sensual experiences. It is our gift of responsibility that becomes necessary when a garden is planted to retell stories of relationships.

Together with co-founders Thomas Georg Blank and Dominic Scharfenberg, Jonas Mikosch Müller-Ahlheim operates sspatz, an artist-run project space, in Karlsruhe, Germany. sspatz is a group of artists endeavoring to create new ways of connecting local arts communities on a global scale. Typically, communities are only exposed to those artists that have been selected by powerful local institutions, limiting public access of art and ideas to those chosen by large and often non-transparent systems in which the selection criteria is obscured. By taking action and turning their living room into an artist-run space, sspatz has developed an alternative forum for experiencing art by hacking these systematized networks and laying bare their perpetual search for criteria.

sspatz creates nests, inviting artists to spread their wings in new communities. Each nest functions as a small wormhole, creating temporary connections between disparate places in order to create a lasting exchange that will build upon sspatz’s vision of disrupting existing hierarchies. sspatz believes the simple act of creating awareness can transform an entire paradigm.