Meet Up! at the Museum

In the first lab focuses on the topic of 'encounter'. Together with people from the Cologne Kalk, several workshops explored the questions, among others: What personal associations do we have with the term 'encounter'? What do encounters mean in Kalk? How do encounters shape today's migration society? How do spontaneous or created encounters promote or prevent a sense of home? And can these encounters be visualized and located on a map of Kalk?

During the workshops, the participants shared personal stories, places, and objects. Topics such as work, food, activism and entrepreneurship as well as different types of encounters were addressed and discussed. Inspired by these conversations and topics, the DOMiDLabs team then researched objects and documents in the DOMiD collection. In dialogue with the collection that emerged from the workshops, these form a narrative of how we collectively negotiate urban space and shape our contemporary realities.

The result of the collaborative work is an open exhibition of objects, maps, and boxes that can be explored, commented, and added to. Visitors are invited to meet each other, to encounter narratives, places and objects from Kalk - and elsewhere - as well as to contribute their own. In this way, a dynamic place is created in which somewhat different exhibition experiences can be experienced together.

The first lab brings together people who all have a connection to the district of Kalk in Cologne, on the right side of the Rhine. The future migration museum, that is being planned and developed by DOMiD, will be located in Kalk. Those who live and work here in Kalk all have different backgrounds and (migration) stories, and help make Kalk the, creative, lively, multifaceted and versatile place that it is. The group "People of Cologne Kalk" is very dynamic. That means new people are always joining the workshops, some just stop by once and others come to every meeting.

raumlaborberlin has been working out of Berlin since 1999 at the intersection of culture and urban planning, installation artworks, exhibitions and temporary structures. In their work, the architecture collective addresses space, the city and urban renewal as both a cultural project and a process. They are drawn to work in difficult urban locations. Places chafing and pulled between various systems, eras and planning ideologies, and that cannot adapt. Places that have been given up on, that are left over and left behind, but that still represent a not insignificant value to the cityscape. These places are their testing grounds. They have unused potential that raumlaborberlin attempts to activate. This opens up new perspectives for alternative usage patterns, a shared culture, urban diversity and difference. In Cologne, raumlaborberlin has previously been involved in, among other projects, the exhibition RESIST! The Art of Resistance at the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum, as well working to prepare the Hallen Kalk.