Museums and Institutions in Germany

“I see media art as contemporary art. It needn’t be digital, flickering or interactive. I’m interested in the fact that we exhibit artists that confront a world based on media and technology. Whether they do this in oils, per video, computer or Internet.”

So says Inke Arns, Director of the Hardware MediaArtAssociation (Hartware MedienKunstVerein / HMKV) in Dortmund, which is now celebrating its 15th anniversary. When Hans D. Christ and Iris Dressler founded Hardware in 1996, the digital revolution was in full swing. The two could then only have hoped that their “baby” would develop as splendidly as it has. Today the HMKV has an international reputation, is the winner of several prizes, and is almost alone in Germany in its orientation, comparable perhaps only to the ZKM in Karlsruhe and the Edith Ruß House for Media Art in Oldenburg.

From the small studio office to the brewery

The HMKV and its exhibition spaces resides in the third floor of the Dortmund U, a former brewery building in the city, a “beacon” of the cultural capital, restored and enlarged into a home for art and creative industries.

What a career! The nucleus of the HMKV was a small studio office in the Dortmund Artists House. There was no manifesto, no statement. Founding father Hans D. Christ (today, along with Iris Dressler, Director of the Württemberg Art Association) recalls that the HMKV reflected a “personal stance”. From the start, a point was made of the careful presentation of thematically curated exhibitions, on the integration of universities and offerings of workshops – and of making a virtue of necessity (Dortmund has neither an art academy nor a connection to the art market). Characteristic of the city was the abundance of commercial and industrial buildings that, as a result of structural upheaval, now stood vacant and awaiting new uses. The exhibition organizers positioned themselves in these spaces – with the goal of bringing art, location and local color into dialogue.

Nomadic media art – in movie theatres, boutiques and railway stations

Thus, with the founding of HMKV in 1996, media art was not only to be found in museums or cultural institutions but also “nomadized” (Christ) in gutted movie theaters, boutiques and offices, shopping malls, railway stations and the municipal library. The venue of the exhibition Reservate der Sehnsucht (Reservations of Longing) in 1998, in which 34 international artists took part, was the central tower (the “Dortmund U”) of the Union Brewery, then a ruin. That the HMKV would one day find its home here was known only to the crystal ball.

Way station: steel works – the HMKV in the Phoenix Hall

Exhibitions such as Short Cuts. Anschlüsse an den Körper (Short Cuts: Connections to the Body, on the relationship of work, man and machine) in 1997 and Plan B. Stadt Raum Kunst (Plan B. City Space Art) in 2000 strengthened the institutional and financial support for the HMKV on the part of cultural sponsors, who recognized that it had put Dortmund on the map of global media art. In 2003 the Association moved into a 2,200 square meter exhibition space in the Phoenix Hall in the south of Dortmund. It was a former steel mill, a still imposing relic of industrial history. There the HMKV held such successful exhibitions as Games - Computerspiele von Künstlern (games – Computer Games by Artists, 2003) and Wach sind nur die Geister (Only the Ghosts are Abroad, on ghosts and media manifestations of the beyond, 2009).

The U-Tower: exhibition space and host of the ISEA

The latter exhibition already took place under the aegis of Inke Arns, who assumed the leadership of the HMKV in 2005. Today the PhD in Slavic languages, who also did university studies in art history and political science, leads a team of ten. She designs exhibitions, keeps in touch with artists, curators, and institutions around the world, and is on the road as a lobbyist for the HMKV. She has been able to increase the budget of the Association to € 549,000 annually, € 200,000 of which comes from local businesses. At the U-Tower, she has also increased the frequency of exhibitions to four per year (last year there were actually seven). In 2010 the HMKV was host to the ISEA (the International Symposium on Electronic Art), and the 46,000 visitors in the same year set a record.