How do young people experience history? This year again, the cross-school project »Nationalism in Karlsruhe« has artistically addressed the topic of »National Socialism« and opened up innovative ways for pupils to learn, experience, feel and participate in shaping history at school and outside school. The results of the project will be presented in an exhibition at the ZKM from August 3 to September 9, 2018.

A total of 16 students from three schools – the Goethe, Helmholtz and Bismarck grammar schools – worked on individual topics from the period of National Socialism in Karlsruhe for over a year. Their scientific work was then artistically realized in cooperation with ZKM | Museum Communicationn. The project took place for the fourth time in the 2017/2018 school year as part of a seminar course.

In today's society, young people experience how the exchange of information can be combined temporarily, in new ways and in multimedia form. This experience becomes aesthetically and structurally established in the new exhibition and the young people re-invent a living culture of memory.

The mobile and modular displays already developed in the last exhibition were equipped with new artistic works and divided into three micro-exhibitions according to the principle of ZERSPLITTERUNG [Splitting]. These were exhibited separately but simultaneously in the three project schools. The ZKM is the place where the three exhibition units are put together, in which the works of the students find themselves in a new composition. The exciting question of how the individual works will work in the new formation and whether this will lead to new insights can be observed and discussed.

Equally open, curious and diverse are the chosen themes and the artistic works of the students. For example, a sound installation makes a frightening »memory« audible, a memorial column made of thin foil that breathes in and out air like a lung, shows the transience of a collective memory or a trashy-commercial LED display converted into a memorial plaque suggests a way of making history visible in an unusual form.