The collection of the Ethnologisches Museum of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin will remain open to visitors even during the move to the Humboldt Forum. Alongside multiple ‘dialogical’ special exhibitions presented on the Museumsinsel Berlin and at the Kulturforum as part of the event series ‘On the Way to the Humboldt Forum’, the Ethnologisches Museum now offers an opportunity to look behind the scenes of its former location in Berlin-Dahlem during one of the largest museum relocations of our time.

For this exhibition the media artists gaehtgens.hirsch accompanied the museum’s conservators and curators over a period of eight months, photographing and filming the preparations for removal, conservation, and relocation of the collections carried out since the closing of the museum in the spring of 2017. gaehtgens.hirsch will now present the results of this long-term documentary in a whole-room installation in the spacious foyer of the museum complex in Berlin-Dahlem designed by Fritz Bornemann. The installation invites visitors to reflect on the various perspectives involved in such a complex undertaking, and can be understood as an artistic contribution to the discussion on the future of the museum and research site in Dahlem.

‘Traditional African dilemma tales present open-ended stories,’ say gaehtgens.hirsch. ‘The audience itself is invited to find possible answers to the unresolved questions, or solve a paradox with their own ideas. The installation seeks to apply this concept to the uncertainties involved when a museum moves to a new location.’

David Gaehtgens (b. 1973 in Göttingen) and Daniela Maria Hirsch (b. 1973 in Heidelberg), respectively active as independent artists since 2003 and 2008, have collaborated as gaehtgens.hirsch since 2012. David Gaehtgens studied at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Daniela Maria Hirsch at the Burg Halle (Halle an der Saale). In 2014 gaehtgens.hirsch took part in the International Contemporary Art and Video Art Festival in Riga, and to date they have created work for a number of solo and group exhibitions, including at the Museo della Radio e TV in Turin, the University of Verona, and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin.