CCA Temporary Gallery is not only an institution, but a network. With this new series, we want to introduce you to the people who are involved in our work and make the realization of our projects possible. Today we introduce you to Lisa Klosterkötter, Interim Artistic Director of CCA Temporary Gallery.
Interview: Paulina Seyfried
July 2024
Name three characteristics you would use to describe yourself?
Multitasking, mindful, cheerful.
What questions are you currently dealing with?
I am currently wondering how the role of curators will change and develop in the coming years, because the cultural landscape will change dramatically due to the global crises that surround us. I ask myself where it should go, how the artists of the future will be able to work and where I see my place. I see this as a challenge and an opportunity to rethink my profession and my artistic environment from the ground up, but I also have great respect for it.
I look at the developments in cultural policy with concern, for example with regard to budget cuts, especially for the independent scene, which is explicitly close to my heart. At the same time, I would also like to remain positive and try by all means to continue to contribute to a lively scene here in Northrhine-Westphalia and elsewhere. I am skeptical and have observed that aspects such as fair pay are currently proving to be a step backwards in the art field. At the same time, I can also see that important issues such as accessibility, participation and institutional opening processes are being understood and supported more, which is great and I would like to make a more targeted effort in my work in future to drive this forward.
How did you get to know Temporary Gallery?
I've known Temporary Gallery since it was founded in 2012, when I had just started studying fine arts at the HFBK in Hamburg and was only in Cologne from time to time.
What is your role at Temporary Gallery?
I am currently replacing Aneta Rostkowska on parental leave as artistic director of the TG. Together with Gitte Moll, who has taken over the interim management, I will be in charge of the TG's program for a year.
Before that, I had already realized several projects for the TG, including the process-based and participatory exhibition “Blue Binding Ribbon”, which ran until June 2024 and was co-curated by Aneta Rostkowska and myself. The project focused on the collective aspects of textile handicrafts in contemporary art and showed many exciting works by local and international artists. An important part of the project was the constant joint work on site in collective groups. We met once or twice a week and worked together on textile projects, taught each other techniques and exchanged ideas. In addition, participating artists organized workshops, there were open workshops and handicraft groups, collaborations with local initiatives and institutions. Set designer Jakob Engel had developed an exhibition design for the space, which also included a canteen with a communal table. We regularly cooked and ate together there. It was great to see how the exhibition space was enlivened and used every week by familiar but also increasingly new faces and became a community space, a place to work and an interface for certain interests and needs.
What is it like for you to work for Temporary Gallery? What do you like about the job?
For me, the TG is a place where concepts of exhibition making are constantly being explored, expanded and innovatively shaped from all sides. It has a strong, individual profile and at the same time is constantly being rethought. There are constants and commitments such as the negotiation of relevant themes and the implementation of certain ongoing formats—such as the youth programme headed by Paloma Nana, the residency programme and many collaborations—as well as endeavors that are tackled in participatory, open processes. I am very happy to have been able to work with the TG for a while now and to be shaping the content of the program as interim director.
What is your next project for Temporary Gallery?
I will now accompany the TG for a year until summer 2025, including the projects that I didn't help plan from scratch. It's very exciting to be able to experience and support the curatorial work of other cultural professionals, such as the curatorial duo Sour Grass or curator Nada Schroer, from close up.
On August 20, I will be continuing our “Temporary Kitchen” format, which we launched in summer 2023, together with artist and chef Paula Erstmann, with whom I have been working closely for many years. With the TG's mobile kitchen, which was created as part of the ‘Cooking as Performance’ exhibition curated by Aneta Rostkowska and Agustina Andreoletti, we cook for and with the TG's neighbours in the public spaces of the Mauritius district, in squares, parks and at the local weekly market. We also took the public on culinary exploration and shopping tours through the neighbourhood to the various international restaurants and food shops in the surrounding streets, whose operators we now know personally.
And, of course, I have some plans for 2025, for which I am currently writing applications.
In recent years, I have realised many multi-part, temporary formats in public or non-institutional spaces such as "Über Brücken - Bridging" (Cologne 2022 - 2024), and “Gegenwart” (Hamburg 2020 & 2021) both together with the curator Elena Malzew, “DOLLHOUSES” (Hamburg 2021, Cologne 2023) together with the artist Signe Raunkjaer Holm and “Bedarfsgemeinschaft”, a new socio-cultural format in various cities in the Ruhr area, co-initiated with Paulina Seyfried and Paula Erstmann. The core concern of my work is to focus on the direct, immersive and activating experience of art and community. These aspects will also play an important role in my projects in the TG.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
I would very much like to continue trying to support, establish and collaboratively design open spaces for culture and community as a curator. I have many ideas, big and small plans for my professional future, let's see which of them can be realized and where the needs in my environment are at that time, which I would like to orientate myself towards.
And privately: in 5 years' time, my two children will be almost teenagers, so we'll see what challenges and new scope life brings with it. 🙂
Photo:
Paula Erstmann
