Künstlergespräch mit Ghana ThinkTank

Globalization as a phase in the geo-political transformation of the world is at once a transformation of art – of the conditions of its production, and possibilities of its diffusion and dissemination and presence. At the same time, artists, and above all the institutions of art – large-scale exhibitions, museums, the art market – are faced with questions as to the extent to which the concept "global" can and must be thought – and how this reflects back on its own methods of working. By means of documentary materials and artistic approaches, the exhibition "The Global Contemporary. Art Worlds after 1989" will examine the way in which globalization, both with its pervasive mechanisms of the market and its utopias of networking and generosity, impacts upon the various spheres of artistic production and reception. 

This critical analysis of the key institutions and dispositives of the art world seeks to illustrate the manner in which globalization has both shaped and itself become a theme in artistic production that intentionally creates and reviews its own conditions and parameters. With "The Global Contemporary. Art Worlds after 1989" the ZKM | Karlsruhe, as a utopian "factory" and work place in the best sense of the meaning, itself plans to thematize these conditions , which also influence everyday life beyond the art world : to make the museum itself a site of contemporaneity – a place in which local experiences of time subvert the unity of the new "universal time".