if walls could tell

“Why the hell does everybody want to succeed?
I’d like to meet somebody who wanted to fail. That’s the only sublime thing.”

—John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer, 1925

Mischa Kuball “if walls could tell” - Symposium
Topic: Voicing the Commons: Participatory Art and New Public Imaginaries

Time:
16th October 2025, 6 PM
17th October 2025, 10 AM

Venue: Weltkunstzimmer, Düsseldorf

Program

October 16, evening with speaker

7:45 p.m.
Greeting
Dorothee Mosters, Head of Visual Arts, Kunststiftung NRW

8:00 p.m.
Keynote Lecture
Blanca de la Torre, Director, IVAM – Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Valencia

October 17, the whole day sessions with speakers/partners:

10:00–10:30 a.m.
Introduction
Zoran Erić and Mischa Kuball on the idea behind if walls could tell

First panel

10:30–11:00 a.m.
Senka Ibrišimbegović, Director, Ars Aevi Museum of Contemporary Art, Sarajevo

11:00–11:30 a.m.
Branka Benčić, Director, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka

11:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m. Coffee break

12:00–12:30 p.m.
Călin Dan, Director, MNAC – National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest

12:30–1:00 p.m.
Vladimir Janchevski, Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje

1:00–1:30 p.m.
Discussion with panel participants / Q&A

1:30–2:30 p.m.
Lunch break with performative intervention by Mohamad Moe Sabbah

Second panel

2:30–3:00 p.m.
Mojca Puncer, Professor of Philosophy, Ljubljana

3:00–3:30 p.m.
Lilia Dragneva, Director, Center for Contemporary Art [KSA:K], Chișinău

3:30–4:00 p.m. Coffee break

4:00–4:30 p.m.
Lina Franko, Artist and Artistic Director, RIZOM [K] – Frankopan Castle, Kraljevica

4:30–5:00 p.m.
Predrag Živković, Curator and Deputy Director, Art Gallery “Nadežda Petrović,” Čačak

5:00–6:00 p.m.
Concluding roundtable discussion with panel participants / Q&A

From 6:00 p.m. – Get-together until approx. 7:30 p.m.

Curator and moderator:
Zoran Erić, research associate at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade

Voicing the Commons: Participatory Art and New Public Imaginaries

In the wake of growing social fragmentation, contested histories, and authoritarian shifts across post-socialist contexts, participatory art has emerged as a powerful tool for reclaiming public space and amplifying marginalized voices. This final conference at Weltkunstzimmer brings together artists, curators, theorists, and managers of cultural institutions to reflect on the international project if walls could tell, which explored how blank white walls—symbolic structures of openness—can become platforms for expression, dissent, and collective imagination.

Spanning diverse urban contexts—Sarajevo, Bucharest, Skopje, Chișinău, Ljubljana, Kraljevica, and Čačak—the project revealed public space as a profoundly political terrain, where art does not merely mirror society but actively produces new forms of civic engagement.

At the heart of the conference lie several key questions:
How can we imagine and construct shared spaces in divided societies? What role can participatory art play in reshaping our sense of belonging, ownership, and responsibility in the public realm? Building on the experiences the project if walls could tell, participatory art will be examined as a commoning practice—not merely as a means of creating artworks, but as a process of forging new social relations, solidarities, and forms of care.

The conference will also interrogate the artistic and political potential of the project’s central gesture: placing blank white walls in public space. Can such a silent installation become a chorus of collective voices, transforming neutral surfaces into active, contested, and inclusive sites of public discourse? What new relationships between artists, institutions, and communities does this practice enable?

As a gathering of all project partners and local participants, this event will trace the emergence of common spaces forged through artistic collaboration in fragmented urban environments shaped by the legacies of post-socialism, nationalism, and privatization. It will propose the commons not as a static resource, but as a verb—a living, processual act of co-creating public culture and reclaiming space from both state control and market forces.