This PhD project examines the differing roles exhibition-making has held in the period since Berlin was reunified in 1990 - from being used by activists as a tool for protest, to building the city as an art destination in Europe and how the state used it while place-marketing the New Berlin – in order to examine how this practice has contributed to the production of the new city. Taking key exhibitions of contemporary art in Berlin in the period 1992 - 2018 as sites of research I look at how they were in differing ways being used as a tool for the promotion of an idea that related directly to the city and what it may become. The research is situated at the intersection of exhibition studies, spatial theory and political history, examining these projects together and with an interdisciplinary lens for the first time in order to look at the possibilities and limits of exhibition-making as a practice for societal change.
Nicola Guy (Wed,) studied this question.