ZukunftsAtelier

About the project

Building on Joseph Beuys' idea of the "Social Sculpture", the "ZukunftsAtelier" workshop series was launched in 2021 with financial support from the Stiftung Zukunft jetzt! In small groups, the students identify areas in which they see a need for change or action and develop an idea for a social sculpture and strategies for implementing it. They develop a symbol for their action/project, like Joseph Beuys' oak and stone. This sign is then translated into a creative-artistic form. The form and material are completely up to the students. The aim of the workshop series is to get the students out of a passive view of art or a generally passive-consuming attitude and to create an awareness of social responsibility. In the face of the great challenges of our time, a feeling of powerlessness often dominates. The ZukunftsAtelier aims to show people how they can take action themselves, even in the smallest of ways.

About the foundation

DASMAXIMUM KunstGegenwart is a museum of contemporary art in Traunreut, Upper Bavaria. With works by five German and four American artists, such as Andy Warhol or Georg Baselitz, the museum shows significant positions of international contemporary art. The museum's concept is based on the principle of "One artist - one room - forever". Permanent art instead of constantly changing permanent exhibitions. Daylight instead of artificial lighting. Peace and concentration instead of distraction and consumption. It is not about imparting knowledge, but about the active and individual experience of art and the present. With this approach, DASMAXIMUM manages to break down barriers, not least for children and young people, and create an unbiased approach to art, as well as offering space to open up and share one's thoughts.

Against the backdrop of "dying forests", the German artist Joseph Beuys recognized the need to sensitize the general public to ecological problems as early as the beginning of the 1980s. In 1982, he developed the art project "7000 Oaks" for the documenta7 art exhibition in Kassel. Over a period of 5 years, 7000 trees were planted in the city of Kassel, each with a basalt stele at its side as a guardian.
However, planting trees alone will not save the climate. Rather, there is the danger of an ecological cloak that prevents radical change. Accordingly, Beuys was not purely concerned with an ecological planting campaign. For him, the tree and basalt were merely the visible sign of a changed social order. He was concerned with the social process that was initiated by a planting campaign. Beuys called this process a "social sculpture". In his opinion, each individual has the potential to have a creative impact on society and change it for the better.

The Stiftung Zukunft jetzt! finances the participation of one school class from Munich in the ZukunftsAtelier. On the one hand, the project is thus carried beyond the regional borders and, on the other, the Munich pupils have the opportunity to complete one of the two modules at the DASMAXIMUM museum in Traunreut. For the project, the change of location from one's own environment (school) to the museum rooms is essential: time and again, it has been confirmed that the change of location offers the necessary neutral space to express thoughts and concerns.

In the 2021 project year, a group of pupils from Theresien-Gymnasium in Munich took part. During the first module at the DASMAXIMUM museum, they talked about topics that moved the individual pupils. In the end, they agreed to design an action on the topic of factory farming.

At the second meeting, which took place at their own school, they then got down to the implementation: The problem of factory farming was to be highlighted using photos in which the animals were replaced by people/pupils. Concepts such as confinement, pressure, fear etc. were to be depicted. This was reinforced by a "pig mask" that each pupil put on. A photo of 9 pupils crouching on a narrow shelf and another of two pupils squatting in a narrow cage were selected and printed as a poster-sized photo collage in A0 format. The photo collage was exhibited together with a cage in which a CD player plays the sound of pigs squealing in the school auditorium and presented at the closing event of the ZukunftsAtelier at k1 in Traunreut.

Afterwards, both teachers and pupils reported that the project had greatly sensitized them and that they have been much more conscious about their meat consumption ever since.

In the second project year 2023, the 7th grade of the Freiham secondary school in Munich took part in the ZukunftsAtelier. Under the theme "We deserve this", the pupils tackled a burning issue: the lack of communication between teachers, parents and pupils. They felt that they were not being heard and listened to enough, so in lengthy discussions they developed terms such as co-determination, freedom of expression, tolerance, equality and respect, which represented their "salary" for harmonious coexistence. Their creative expression was reflected on T-shirts that symbolized their message. They also planned an impressive cardboard sculpture, which is still being completed.