09–12.07.26
MOCKINGBIRDS

Treppen (eng. Staircases) is a curatorial project unfolding across several chapters in real estate properties in Düsseldorf, each of which is currently undergoing processes of repurposing, sale, or real-estate transformation. A central aspect of the project is its opening to the public within a space that is normally private and economically highly charged. The exhibition creates temporary access to properties in transition, in which ownership, use, and displacement remain simultaneously open and active. In doing so, it situates artistic production within Düsseldorf's specific living and working conditions, while also linking it to broader questions of urban transformation and cultural policy. Treppen is at the same time a curatorial concept developed in the context of massive cuts to public funding and the growing precarity of artistic work. It responds to the structural shift of cultural-political responsibility toward uncertain, market-dependent conditions, and seeks to test forms in which economy, space, and artistic production can be newly related to one another. At its center is the question of how artistic practice can, under these conditions, not only persist but also develop alternative forms of circulation, use, and distribution.

The first chapter, Ghosts, took place at Leostraße 65 in Oberkassel, in a former villa that has since been divided into apartments. Ghosts emerged as a temporary space for gathering, focusing on forms of memory, presence, and collective storytelling. Its starting point was the idea of the staircase as a space of encounter, where social structures can be not only reflected but also shifted. The chapter centered on the artistic practice of Dina El-Kaisy Friemuth and Jårg Geismar, who engaged with questions of belonging, voice, and shared memory, and who understood the space as a situational, social architecture.

The second chapter, Mockingbirds, is now taking shape at Humboldtstraße 38 in Düsseltal, in a building in a state of transition that is currently for sale. Here, too, the respective property is activated as a temporary space for exhibition and action, and set in relation to the conditions under which artistic production takes place in the city. Mockingbirds approaches the house as a living score. Sounds, materials, texts, images, and gestures move through its rooms, accumulating traces and returning in altered forms.

Over the course of several days, the project transforms each respective site into a temporary public space. Visitors move through rooms, the staircase, and the garden, encountering installations, sound works, performances, and publications. Mockingbirds has been unfolded with Ja Jess, Jessica Tille, and Julian Westermann, who live at the half empty building at the Humboldtstrasse 38, along with works by Andrea Büttner, Radek Brousil, Julian Bieneck, and a library of books from fivehundredplaces, ten thousand angels press and Arts of the Working Class.