2013-2016
Sophie Goltz, City Curator Hamburg

Sophie Goltz and her team developed a new concept of art in public space in Hamburg and researched the 35-years history and presence of the renowned program. With more than 150 artists, performers, urbanists, and theoreticians an ambitious program was developed and realized together with partner institutions among others: HFBK, Kampnagel, Kunsthaus Hamburg, W3-Workshop for Culture and Politics, Bildwechsel, Hamburg Postcolonial, Kulturforum South-North e.V. along with international educational partners like Aalto University Helsinki and University of Arts Linz. In over 35 international new commissions with contemporary artistic and performative approaches to urban space were introduced in Hamburg, including Hannah Black, Ricardo Basbaum, Etcétera…, Regina José Galindo, Omer Krieger, Michaela Melián, Angela Melitopolous/Brigitta Kuster/Vassilis Tsianos, Martha Rosler / Miguel Robles Duran, Alice Peragine, Johannes Paul Raether, Lawrence Weiner, et al.

Here you can learn about Sophie Goltz’s program.

2018-2020
Dirck Möllmann, City Curator Hamburg
HAMBURG MACHINE

The program stemmed from the belief that digitality makes our information and communication culture more fluid and permeable, but at an individual level also less transparent. Therefore, the digital cannot be solely understood as an aspect of economic or technological innovation.
In the twentieth century, the current city was a representative stage, a productive factory, a planned infrastructure, a built physicality, and a social reality, sustained by a political community. This has not changed, yet the city has been radically transformed by the current cybernetic epoch. HAMBURG MACHINE asked, what will become of the urban structures in place in this transition from an industrial to a machinist and socio-technological system. What functions can a future art for and in public space have? And, what meaning will art obtain in this society? International artists have been invited to participate in HAMBURG MASCHINE and to create theme-related, temporary works in the public space of the city. Dirck Möllmann has succeeded in realising a large part of his programme. He died of recurrent cancer on 21 September 2019.

Here you can learn about Dirk Möllmann’s program.