Staging Dioramas ::::::::: The (Re)Staging

The diorama is a dying species. Through its silent disappearance from the museums, a part of history is fading away that has shaped our world-view to the present days. Developed as a simulation of reality in the 19th century they evolved into a fundamental element of natural history and ethnographic museums which always fascinated audiences. Thus, Dioramas have become exhibits of obsolete regimes of the gaze, which can tell us how we have learned to see the world. The diorama is therefore an ambivalent tool of memory: fallen out of time and increasingly invisible, it nevertheless remains a powerful instrument that creates meaning.

What can the remaining dioramas tell us about the past? What shall and must a diorama provide today and for the future? How could the diorama of the 21st century look like?

These questions will be explored by Simone Dede Ayivi (theater maker), Yorgos Sapountzis (visual artist) and Benjamin Zachariah (historian) along with the curators of the project „Staging dioramas“ in a three-day co-working process.

The common goal is to re-stage a diorama in the project space grüntaler9, in order to release it from its anachronistic state and to make it negotiable for the present. The working process is public and always visible through the front window of the project space.

On June 27th at 7pm we warmly invite you to enter the diorama of the 21st century.

June 25th – 27th 2015: Working process
June 27th, 7 – 9pm: Inauguration

Fäcebook Event

Staging dioramas is a project by the curators Stefan Aue, Jana Eske, Jessica Páez together with Simone Dede Ayivi (theater maker), Yorgos Sapountzis (visual artist) and Benjamin Zachariah (historian).

„Staging dioramas: The (Re)Staging“ follows the lecture and workshop program „Memory – Representation – Fiction. The role of dioramas in museums of cultural history“ in the Grassi Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig on April 23rd / 24th, 2015. Special thanks to the staff of the museum, who supported the preliminary research for this project.

A project in the framework of the Masters Program Cultures of the Curatorial at Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig. With the friendly support of Dresden State Art Collections, Grassi Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig, the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi and gruentaler9 – a space towards the performative.