Reference project

Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken, Our House is on Fire

The group exhibition "Our House is on Fire" at the Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken is curated by children and young adults. The project is a cooperation of the cultural office of the state capital Saarbrücken, represented by the Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken and the school culture, initiated by Katharina Ritter, M.A., with the elementary school Wallenbaum and the school in the Rastbachtal, as well as the art mediator Saskia Riedel (arcs audio).

So that children and young people can make their own impact on their city.

The young curators selected the artworks for their exhibition from a pre-selection. The participating artists are: Fiona Arenz, Barbara Herold and Florian Huth, Felix Dreesen and Stephan Thierbach, Icy and Sot and Eric Schwarz. Here you can see the installation Treibgut by Felix Dreesen and Stephan Thierbach.

Through the project, the students' decisions are taken seriously and they are made visible as curators in the exhibition. The project was realized by a fourth grade class of the elementary school Wallenbaum and an eighth grade class of the school in the Rastbachtal.

In short interviews produced by arcs audio, the curators talk about the works and their selection. These can be listened to via QR codes in the exhibition.

The titular work "Our House is on Fire" by Icy and Sot deals with a speech by climate activist Greta Thunberg. This was selected by the curators of the school in the Rastbachtal. The photo shows the exhibition view in the Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken.

The six artistic works range from video works to paintings and fabric installations. Here you can see the work "Grey Ocean" by Fiona Arenz, which was selected by the eighth grade.

In workshops at school, the fourth grade children explored contemporary art and curating an exhibition. At the end of the project, they set up their own small exhibition in shoe boxes.

Kids took turns spinning the wheel of fortune which would tell them if they needed to loosen up with an instruction to "Dance!" or "Jump!" or if they should ask for a riddle to better understand the activities of the director Katharina Ritter or the technical director Jörg Schallmo.

In this video, Katharina Ritter (head of the Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken) and the art mediator Saskia Riedel talk about the project. The video was produced by Pesheng Ali on behalf of the Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken.

Implementation

In this project, a website with the interviews was set up and QR codes were distributed in the exhibition. These led directly to the interviews.

To the interviews

Interested?

Would you like to know more about the audio guide, our services or the possibilities of participative art mediation? Then please contact us. Don't be shy – we really like to talk about art!