space for art
Colonia

Forms of art life – Simultanhalle

Simultanhalle – Raum für zeitgenössische Kunst is a project space based in Cologne, Germany, which started its program in 1983, initiated by Czech-born artist Eva Janošková.
 
The building was originally intended to serve as an architectural model for the newly planned Museum Ludwig, now among the biggest museums in Germany and home to the collection of Peter and Irene Ludwig, one of the world’s most notorious collector couples of US-American Pop Art. The architects Busmann + Haberer erected a 100 square meter cubic hall on the outskirts of the city on an abandoned school yard in 1979. The initial purpose was to test the lighting, flooring and wall paneling as well as the practicality of their proposed roof construction which later went on to become an iconic feature of the final museum building.
 
While the temporary model was set out to be demolished after the completion of the project in 1983, Janošková, who had been working in a studio close by, utilized it to organize exhibitions for fellow artists. A year later she was able to acquire funding from the city’s Office for Cultural Activities, establishing a frequent programing and turning the building into a project space. Internal documents of the city mentioned a building as „Simultan-Halle“ (literally meaning „simultaneous hall“), which later went on to serve both as the name for the architectural model as well as for the idea of hosting an open and experimental project space in a museum-like environment within its halls.
 
From 1989 on a varying group of people took on curating exhibitions with local and international artists in the space. Simultanhalle has since then been a steady participant in the art scene of Cologne. The organizing team consists of a free number of both working artists and theoreticians, whose structure is build around self-organization and sharing work in a group of equally involved participants. The team changes sporadically, allowing a new member to come in through the recommendation of the one leaving it. This results in a constant flux of people and taste. The program is therefore not lead by a singular approach but rather represents a diverse set of interests.
 
Simultanhalle’s three-month-long project at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art will reflect this in its form. There will be three individual phases, each running for one month. Every single one of them takes turn in recapitulating a specific aspect of Simultanhalle’s past curatorial methods, repurposing its history to evaluate its relevance in a current state of artistic practice. A point of departure for the first phase is Simultanhalle’s profound involvement in supporting female artists from a very early stage on, while at the same time being run by young female protagonists in a climate where equality was still missing. The second phase reassess Simultanhalle’s background in being embedded within a particularly remote urban situation all the while trying to build up a public with opening up work processes for visitors to take part in. At last, the third phase picks up on Simultanhalle as a locale for performative and open-ended project oriented practices that defy traditional conceptions of an artwork based on marketability or closed off forms.
 
Throughout these three phases, a basic set of parameters will serve as the connecting framework linking the different exhibitions. The stage of the original space in Cologne will be rebuild in MMOMA and an archive will tell the history of past exhibitions and their specific organizational methods. Before there has not been a cohesive material archive bringing together past protagonists and projects. The presentation in MMOMA therefore serves as the inauguration of this archive, still being part of an ongoing research project. Three ring binders will serve as an interactive time line, enabling to wander through the past on one’s own and mirroring the loose and as of now unwritten history of Simultanhalle.
 
The current organizing team consists of Irene Bretscher (*1985, Tübingen, GER), Klara Brochhagen (*1991, Bergisch Gladbach, GER), Dennis Brzek (*1993, Hamm, GER), Kriz Olbricht (*1986, Freiburg i.Br., GER), Morgaine Schäfer (*1989, Wolfsburg, GER), Verena Seibt (*1980, Dachau, GER) and Jessica Twitchell (*1983, Mellrichstadt, GER).