#freiburgcollects. Memories for Tomorrow

This project by the Freiburg Museum für Stadtgeschichte highlights one of the central responsibilities of city museums – collecting. “Freiburg Collects” examines conventional collection practices and searches for new ways to present and preserve everyday culture in Freiburg together with its inhabitants. How do the collections of today end up at the museum of tomorrow? What narratives do we use to describe city history? And how do we go about developing new narrative forms? These are questions the museum in Freiburg hopes to discuss with as many community groups in the city as possible. The goal is to establish a multi-perspective collection strategy which makes visitors the protagonists and encourages discussion on collections.

The museum is collaborating with the Literaturbüro Freiburg, the performance collective Turbo Pascal and the Office for Migration and Integration in order to incorporate a wide variety of perspectives and forms. Long-time residents and newly arrived collectors and experts, researchers and artists will discuss the existing collections in workshops and develop new collection criteria and strategies. In the second phase, all collectors of Freiburg’s everyday culture will be invited to contribute their stories, objects and memories to create new “city narratives”. A jury will then make a selection, after which groups of experts from Freiburg will interpret the collections and place them in the context of city history. An exhibition at the museum will present the final results and make the collection process visible. Discursive and artistic forms of presentation, such as a dramatic staging of “living data carriers” by the performance collective Turbo Pascal/Element 3, will highlight the different levels of interpretation. The project will also develop guidelines for participative collecting, which the museum will document and publish.

Partners: Office of Migration and Integration, Literaturbüro Freiburg, performance collective Turbo Pascal