Willkommen im Paradies (Welcome to Paradise)
Duration: 27 August 2021–9 January 2022
Opening: 26 August
Press event: 26 August, 11 am
Exhibition concept: Alain Bieber and Vesela Stanoeva
Exhibition design: Please Don‘t Touch, Alain Bieber & Vesela Stanoeva
The world is changing: between global catastrophes and rapid technological progress, humankind is creating new digital spaces for dreams and utopias. What does it mean to be human in this new world, and what if this dream landscape becomes a nightmare? The exhibition Willkommen im Paradies (Welcome to Paradise) at the NRW-Forum Düsseldorf is an immersive, interactive project that transports visitors into fictional worlds between utopia and dystopia. From 27 August 2021 to 9 January 2022, visitors can engage in an artistic experiment and a multisensory experience.
The NRW-Forum Düsseldorf takes visitors on a media art trail of installations and virtual realities over 1,200 square metres. As they walk through the transmedia, narrative exhibition architecture, they face tasks and engage with artistic works on new forms of spirituality, digital rituals and the question of physicality in the virtual. The exhibition offers visitors a transformative artistic and personal experience in which fiction, science, art, technology and their own emotions and fantasies meet. At the end of the journey, paradise awaits—or does it?
With A.A Murakami, Hazel Brill, Martin Backes, Sandrine Deumier, fabien prioville, Barbara Herold & Florian Huth, Dagmar Hugk, Christiane Peschek, Paola Pinna, Catherine Spet, RaumZeitPiraten, Eugen Schramm, Vesela Stanoeva, PriseSalz Crew (Julian Baer, Matthias Brinkhoff, Tim Golombek, Ursula Meyer, Aaron Stratmann, Johanna Wildhagen und Jonas Wüstefeld), Noriyuki Suzuki, Charlotte Triebus, Christian Bröer, and MireviLab.
For information on the artists and works please see the supplement.
The exhibition is curated by the artist and curator Vesela Stanoeva and Alain Bieber, artistic director of the NRW-Forum Düsseldorf. Some of the artworks were found via nextmuseum.io, a collaborative digital platform for co-curation and co-creation. Nextmuseum.io is a joint project by the NRW-Forum/Kunstpalast Düsseldorf and the Museum Ulm, funded by the Federal Cultural Foundation’s Digital Fund as part of the Kultur Digital program and supported by the Beisheim Foundation.
Willkommen im Paradies (Welcome to Paradise) is supported by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and is part of the MARTA project, supported by funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). MARTA is a joint research project by the Hochschule Düsseldorf, the media technology company Tennagels, the Lavalabs agency and the NRW-Forum Düsseldorf that will produce further artistic and technological works. The exhibition was also supported by funds from the District Government of Düsseldorf.
The image material listed may be used freely for thematic reporting (in print and online media as well as on social media channels) and provided that the photo credits given are cited. Six weeks after the end of the exhibition, the free right of use expires.
Project Partners
Partners
