Presentation of archival materials during the exhibition Shifts

September 19 – November 23, 2025

Parallel to the exhibition Shifts by Iris Touliatou, an documentation of the exhibition Dream City is on show in the Archive Space.

The exhibition took place from March 25 to June 20, 1999 – in the public space as well as three Munich art institutions. The project was initiated by Dirk Luckow, head of the visual arts division of the Siemens Art Program. In the introduction to the catalogue, the four curators Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, Luise Horn, Dirk Luckow, and Dirk Snauwaert outline the idea behind the exhibition as follows:

„In the exhibition Dream City the Kunstraum München, Kunstverein München, Museum Villa Stuck, and the Siemens Kulturprogramm present the work over thirty artists whose media and themes vary widely. Their work may be variously described as ‘social sculpture’, installation art, intervention art, gender art, institutional critique, “art as a service”, but it is all characterized by a social or political commitment. […] The image of Munich as a museum-like ‘Dream City’, propagated by the tourist industry, conjures up baroque illusion and a theatrical simulation of ‘authenticity.’ It is this image of Munich which is critically addressed in this exhibition.”

The presentation in the Archive Space features the design of the exhibition's corporate identity by Peter Friedl, as well as contributions by AA Bronson, Yvonne Doderer, Félix Gonzáles-Torres Pia Lanzinger, and Michaela Melián in collaboration with Kein Mensch ist illegal.

Michaela Melián's installation Festung consisted of an inflatable and painted container castle and was created in collaboration with the group Kein Mensch ist illegal, founded in 1997 at documenta X in Kassel. Festung was set up at various locations in Munich during the exhibition’s duration.

The corporate design of the exhibition—which included the logo and print products such as stationery, flyers, posters, and the exhibition catalogue—were designed by Peter Friedl. His concept was based on the existing corporate design of Siemens.

Pia Lanzinger's contribution consisted of bus tours dealing with the relation between urban space and gender and a folding map, designed by Michael Hauffen. These established forms of tourism, intended to enable sightseeing as consumable as possible, were thus filled with new content.

Yvonne Doderer published the reader never give up!, in collaboration with Kunstverein München. The reader brings together two types of text: basic feminists texts as well as interviews. The reader could not only be purchased at Kunstverein München, but also at other locations: “The book circulates through the physical space of the exhibition, through bookstores and shops, libraries and other places of discursive debate, provoking the imagination of new spaces.”

Dream City was the first exhibition in which AA Bronson participated as an individual artist rather than as part of the group General Idea. The three members of the group—Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal, and AA Bronson—had been working together since 1969. In 1994, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal died of AIDS. The photograph and text Felix, June 5, 1994 address the death of Felix Partz as well as the sharing and ending of a common identity. The photograph of Felix Partz on his deathbed was displayed at Villa Stuck and on five billboards in the city

Félix González-Torres' work Untitled (Go-Go Dancing Platform) (1991/1999) was exhibited in the living room at Villa Stuck. The work consisted of a sky-blue platform lined with light bulbs. The Go-Go Dancing Platform remained empty for most of the day —“except when a male go-go dancer arrives sporadically according to his own desire to perform. No music is audible to the viewer as he dances to the sounds of a Walkman.” The work was first exhibited in 1991 at the Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York. For Dream City, it was reinstalled three years after Félix Gonzalez-Torres died of AIDS.