Scenarios about Europe

posted by: Barbara Steiner

Scenarios about Europe is a practical study, the prologue to a large-scale project. It took place at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Leipzig between September 2011 and April 2012. The essential purpose of this study/prologue was to put the complex network of connections involved in a large European project to the test, assuming that the complexity would continue to grow during its implementation, due to the many institutions involved. Ten curators from Brussels, Istanbul, London, Łódź, Minsk, Novi Sad, Høvikodden/Oslo, Donostia-San Sebastián, and Taipei were each invited to make three proposals on how to approach the subject of Europe from the perspective of the arts. This resulted altogether in thirty scenarios and thus thirty possibilities on how to think about Europe. The development of three consecutive scenarios allowed various thoughts on Europe to be expanded upon, corrected and reformulated in several stages. 1, 2, 3… clearly indicates a series, which is theoretically open-ended. The reflections on Europe will be continued beyond this study. Furthermore, in Leipzig the various participants had the opportunity to get to know one another and also to see if common aims for the curatorial work of the project team could be established. Scenarios about Europe 1, 2, 3 is not the vanishing point of the project, but the starting point of a collaboration in which the circle of participants will become even wider at the next stage.