There is an exhibition in prison. It is called CRACK.

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THERE IS AN EXHIBITION IN PRISON. IT IS CALLEDCRACKProf. Danica DakićFrom May to July 2015, the international students from the Master ProgramPublic Art and New Artistic Strategies from the Faculty of Fine Art at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar grappled with the century-old building which used to housethe youth prison in Weimar. As part of an exhibition project, the building openedits doors for the first time since its closure several years ago, this time as a placefor artistic production and discourse. This project produced interventions,participatory work involving children and adolescents, video works, performances,performative lectures and tours. Besides the exhibition, the site was activated ina performative workshop led by artist duo Prinz Gholam and in discussions led byBauhaus-Universität Weimar’s visiting scholar Dr. Boris Buden. With this artisticinsight, new forms of action were brought to the fore and knowledge productionwas developed.The different cultural perspectives brought together by the program’s internationalartists led to highly differentiated artistic engagements with issues such as thebody and limits, freedom and individuality in a complex society.I would like to thank all the contributing artists and academics, the artistic assistantsAnke Hannemann and Ina Weise, and the coordinator of the MFA-programJirka Reichmann, for their participation in the exhibition and the accompanyingpublication. THERE IS AN EXHIBITION. IN PRISON IT IS CALLED CRACK wasboth an artistic project and a moving collaborative work experience. It was madepossible by the creativity, curiosity, insight and questions of each individual person,as well as their deep commitment and openness to the project.My deepest gratitude to all the additional people and institutions that have madegreat commitments and contributed financial support to this project, and especiallyto the Kreativfonds at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.8
Pierced until the End of CultureDr. Boris BudenIn the courtyard of the former prison, in a square space cordoned off by fences,there is a ping pong table made of concrete. A metal plate divides the table intwo equal halves, replacing the net. Concrete and metal replace wood and string.The sports equipment should be robust, not only because the court is outdoors.The purpose it served was also robust- the re-education of young offenders atthe correctional facility in Weimar. But this was a few years ago. The empty cells,corridors, meeting rooms, and official offices, like the courtyards of the prison,are now occupied by artists. Two of them, Paloma-Sanchez Palencia and Ina Weiseturned the table tennis court into a work of art by installing a scoreboard onthe surrounding fence. The scoreboard showed two different terms, sometimesconflicting, in pairs as if the table tennis match were between COMMUNISM andPORN, SPRING and FREEDOM, TOMATO and SUCCESS, TIME and SCIENCE,FEMINISM AND INTERNET and so on.I can hardly imagine a better metaphor for the concept of culture. It is widelyknown that the term “culture” encompasses anything from communism,pornography, spring, freedom, feminism, success, even tomatoes. Even the mostdisparate phenomena of human life are found in the concept of culture. It seemsto be able to reconcile the deepest contradictions and to integrate the strangestexperiences. Culture, Raymond Williams wrote in his Keywords in 1976 is “one ofthe two or three most complicated words in the English language”. 1 Nevertheless,he turned explicitly against any attempt to designate a “true” or “scientific” senseof culture. He knew that the meaning of “culture” cannot be clearly fixed. Instead,Williams advocated a permanent working process in which the levels of meaningof the term expand and the relationship between them are reorganized. Actually,that is exactly what is done in the field of knowledge production according toAnglo-Saxon and German Cultural Studies. That's also what makes the conceptualdevelopment and practical realization of the idea of “cultural education” possibleand plausible in the wider social space today.Actually, the association of culture and education in the socio-historical sense isa relatively old phenomenon. It was initially the Enlightenment, which broughttogether these two terms from the outside. “The words enlightenment, culture, andeducation are newcomers to our language. They currently belong only to literarydiscourse. The masses scarcely understand them” 2 , Moses Mendelssohn wrotealready in 1784 in his essay “On the question: What is Enlightenment?” which waspublished in the Berlin Monthly, an important journalistic institution taking part inthe German Enlightenment discussion. Like the more famous essay, “Answering the9
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EditorMFA-Program „Public Art and
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There is an exhibition in prison. It is called CRACK.

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