Miracle of the Prairie

The artists’ collective zeitraumexit asked the question: What function does art have in the current political landscape? What kind of cultural organisation does an urban society need and want? This project was a radical, short-term experiment which staged political, participative and aesthetic processes and playfully depicted the operations of a cultural organisation as a creative commons.
In September 2017, the festival “Miracle of the Prairie” presented international artistic works on the topic of political participation. At the same time, representatives from cultural institutions throughout Europe met with political activists at the “European Summit Culture of Protest” to discuss the relationship between protest movements and cultural organisations. At the conclusion of the festival, zeitraumexit has entrusted its infrastructure to civic groups from Germany and abroad until summer 2018. Those who wished to participate had to submit a proposal in a public competition and have been chosen by an assembly (sovereign). A committee of festival participants and guests (legislature) has developed a democratic procedure to regulate the presentations. The implementation of and compliance with the rules has been ensured by the “Art Monarch” Tanja Krone (judiciary). The project has enabled visitors to experience aesthetic and democratic-parliamentary practices and wanted to encourage an international discussion on the role and function of cultural institutions. The project has been accompanied and evaluated by students from the University of Mannheim, as well as documented on video.

Directors and curators: Gabriele Oßwald, Jan-Philipp Possmann
Artistic support: Tanja Krone
Artistic participants: Rodrigo N. Albornoz (AR/NL), F.Wiesel, Ant Hampton (GB), Julian Hetzel (DE/NL), Tanja Krone, Andreas Liebmann (CH/DK ), Christophe Meierhans (CH), Anna Mendelssohn (AT), ongoing project (AT/DE), Wolfgang Sautermeister, David Weber-Krebs (BE), ongoing project sowie Sibylle Peters, Raul Zelik, Marijana Cvetkovic (CS), Zsuzsa Berecz (HU), Leonidas Martin (E), Richard Stanton (GB), Houter Willart (B) and many others