I Was the New World

In the exhibition I WAS THE NEW WORLD, you dive into moments, situations, and spaces connected to subcultural, pop-cultural, and countercultural contexts. The focus is on places and practices shaped by spontaneous associations, personal memories, collective histories—and again and again by acts of appropriation, reinterpretation, and transformation.

Through photo, text, sound, and video works by students, lecturers, and guest artists, you move from your own body as a fluid in-between space to autonomous centers by day and night, and behind the backdrops of drag shows. It’s about club bathrooms and imagined clubs, about breakdance, skateboarding in the museum and BMX at the art academy, about demonstrations in Japan, the search for a home in the city—and the last remaining traces of the now-demolished Underground club in Cologne.