2019 Berlin

Tracks in a Box: when artists make guided tours was a group exhibition of artistic guided tours with a programme of newly commissioned audio walks, self-guided explorations, and performative tours by Berlin-based artists. The exhibition functioned as an imaginary center for artistic guided tours: a pop-up gallery, a discursive space and a living archive. Born out of a desire to give a body to the artistic guided tours that have been presented in the context of B_Tour, a nomadic curatorial platform dedicated to guiding as an artistic practice, since 2013, it took on the paradoxical challenge of exhibiting, collecting, mediating and archiving inherently transitory, participatory and performative public artwork.

The exhibition approached the imagination not as an individual activity but as a collective playing field that belongs to the realm of the public. Rather than creating one shared idealistic vision, Tracks in a Box brought together multiple overlapping and contradictory imaginary landscapes to celebrate the coexistence of nightmares, wild fantasies and daydreams. Momentarily fracturing the mundane, the participating artists took the audience on a trip between the infra-ordinary and the grand spectacle.

Listen to interviews with curator Lianne Mol and artist Gabi Schaffner in this podcast by Cashmere Radio (in German).

Tracks in a Box was a collaboration between CLB Berlin and B_Tour. The exhibition opened in the LCB Pop-Up gallery in the Aufbau Haus am Moritzplatz between September 7th and 27th 2019, and was funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe funding for presentations of contemporary visual arts.

participating artists: Mirja Busch, Wanda Dubrau, Birte Endrejat, Georg Klein, Pia Lanzinger, Gianni Maccaroni, Ilona Marti, Camila Rhodi, Christoph Rothmeier, Gabi Schaffner, Marie-Anne Lerjen, Helwes & van Goudoever, Rimini Protokoll, Belle Santos, Melissa Deerson, Anna Romanenko, Gabriel Hensche, Adrianna Liedtke & Henrik Hillenbrand, Alkistis Thomidou, Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga, Martin Michette & Tinatin Gurgenidz, & Lisa Albrecht

www.b-tour.org/tracks-in-a-box