New minds, new ideas - digital and analog

The "artistic director model" previously practiced at Dortmunder U was abandoned by council resolution. The director of the Dortmunder U, Stefan Heitkemper, has established an artistic management board made up of the directors of the following institutions:

• Dr. Florence Thurmes and Regina Selter (Museum Ostwall)
• Dr. Inke Arns (HMKV)
• Mirjam Gaffran and Judith Brinkmann (UZWEI)
• Harald Opel(Opens in a new tab) (storyLab kiU(Opens in a new tab)  of the Fachhochschule Dortmund)
• Prof. Dr. Barbara Welzel (Campus City of TU Dortmund University)
• Adolf Winkelmann (artist and inventor of the Flying Pictures)
• Nadine Hanemann, Head of Marketing and Event Management
• Christina Danick (Exhibition Management)
• Daria Jaranowska (Head of "Digital Culture"; the newly formed department is to further develop digital culture at the U and acquire funding for digital projects)

The first visible manifestation of the collaboration is the "Immersive Space", which has been newly created in the rear foyer on the first floor and will gradually be made accessible to visitors from April 2022. The immersive space is a unique research and development project that offers new ways of presenting and communicating works of art and interacting with them.

It is being developed by the storyLab kiU at Fachhochschule Dortmund in cooperation with the Museum Ostwall and the Museum of Art and Cultural History. The immersive space makes it possible to experience their artworks in a new way in a digital, multi-sensory art journey. In the interactive space, visitors can expect a constantly growing world of sophisticated interaction and sound elements. The immersive space is the result of the "page21" project, funded by the "Neue Künste Ruhr" program of the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

"Flowers!" is the name of the next major exhibition at Museum Ostwall: on exhibition level 6, the public will discover "Flowers in the art of the 20th and 21st centuries", according to the subtitle. But it won't just be flowery there: for the duration of the exhibition(April 30 to September 25, 2022), the floral splendour will enliven the entire Dortmunder U. Even on the forecourt, visitors will have an idea of what is blooming inside.

TU Dortmund University's Campus City will join in and host the #KunstBlumen exhibition on the first level(May 6 to June 26, 2022). Young Dortmund artists from the fields of graphic art, painting, photography and sculpture will be presenting their works, which negotiate different contemporary positions, including the boundaries of painting in Digital & Expanded Painting.

The director and artist Adolf Winkelmann, creator of the "Flying Pictures", is participating with his own work: "Die Wiese wackelt"!

"Digital Worlds" is the title of an exhibition at UZWEI that celebrates the fantastic possibilities of augmented realities from September 3, 2022 to January 15, 2023: In digital worlds, you can follow the wind as a leaf, dive to the bottom of the sea, travel to alien planets or walk through impossible architectures. The hands-on exhibition presents creative projects that experiment with digital spaces, virtual and augmented reality.

One floor up, the HMKV's next exhibition will focus on artificial intelligence ("House of Mirrors: Artificial Intelligence as Phantasm", April 9 to July 31, 2022). Over 20 international artists will address the positive and negative ideas that we associate with AI today. The exhibition is curated by Marie Lechner (Paris), Francis Hunger (Leipzig) and Inke Arns (Director of the HMKV).

On November 8, 2022, the Faculty of Computer Science at TU Dortmund University will celebrate its 50th anniversary. Reason enough for an exhibition from November 11, 2022 to January 15, 2023 on the city campus that tells the history of the faculty and uses historical devices to remind us of the changes in hardware. Computer science is the basis of today's communication structures and is one of the disciplines with the greatest development momentum. A space will therefore also be opened up to discuss the future of digitalization.

According to the original plans of the Gerber architecture firm, the exposed concrete wall on Brinkhoffstraße was supposed to grow over as a "living wall" - however, this has not been successful in recent years. Nevertheless, the area is to be used temporarily: The French photographer and street artist JR will design the wall with portraits of Dortmund citizens. The effects of the weather will gradually destroy the work and restore it to its former state.

The popular mapping on the outer façade of the Dortmunder U is returning - and not just for Museum Night: from mid-May, there will be a week-long mapping on the front of the building to celebrate Fachhochschule Dortmund's 50th anniversary(Opens in a new tab) . The sound for the installation will be provided by headphones that can be borrowed from the building.

In addition, the Dortmunder U team is working on a new website that will be accessible to all visitors in the summer. One component of the new site will be the existing digitales.dortmunder-u.de(Opens in a new tab)  site, which will continue to be used as a blog and for digital offers. From April, the U will also publish a new program overview with all the exhibitions and events on offer as a condensed flyer.