Too Soon To Say - The Unconference

Drawing inspiration from the "Global-Art-Fusion" project by Beuys, Higashiyama and Warhol (1985), this FAX ART project brings together three artists to send each other fax drawings that interact with each other. Based in Munich, Tokyo, and New York, SORRY FAX ONLY creates a global artistic production, live and direct, that can whisper down the lane, compose cadavres exquis… t’s an exchange with one rule only: no rules. Unless, maybe, that each artist has to react to the faxed drawing within 5 minutes.

It is scheduled to happen on two Saturdays: May 3 and May 10 2025. These dates are not arbitrary: On May 3, Masanao Hirayama will be faxing from TOKIO in Tokyo. On May 10, Martin Fengel will be faxing from Bayerischer Hof in Munich. Both interventions, one at a book fair, one during the art festival marathon ‚too soon to say‘, take place in a hotel setting, they are performative and open to public. Latter will also lead to an almost immediate show at Sorry Square in Munich that will start in the second half of the Various Others program and open already on May 11.

But wait, there’s more: Sorry Press will publish SORRY FAX ONLY as an art book which will be launched at the Tokyo Art Book Fair in December 2025. In sum, this project is an artistic interaction, a performance, one or many exhibitions and an art book. And perhaps perhaps the beginning of a non ongoing book series.

Artists Ruscha Voormann and Milen Till welcome guests to the temporary Filter Café. Beneath the impressive glass dome of the atrium, they create an open, casual space at the heart of the hotel. Throughout the day, the conversation series “A Piece of Cake by …” hosts different artist-curator-talks. Coffee and cake are served in a setting that invites visitors to continue the conversations beyond the scheduled talks.

Salta art, in collaboration with BMW, presents the screening of Crash (2023), a film by Rio de Janeiro–based artist Gabriela Mureb. The screening will be followed by a conversation with the artist, moderated by Christiane Pyka, Spokesperson for Cultural Engagement at BMW Group.

Crash was developed during Mureb’s residency at AIR-M Ebenböckhaus in Munich in 2023, in partnership with the City of Munich’s Department of Arts and Culture. The film was made in collaboration with the BMW Recycling and Dismantling Centre (RDZ) in Unterschleißheim, where the artist was granted access for filming and research.

In Crash, Mureb offers a striking reflection on efficiency, sustainability, and the afterlife of machines. The video documents the disassembly of a test vehicle, transforming industrial processes into a visceral meditation on mortality and materiality. Using the immersive perspective of a GoPro camera, the work blurs the boundary between human and machine, prompting viewers to reconsider the agency of matter in a world shaped by circular economies and mechanical force.

Free entry, limited capacity.

Contemporary art festivals, gallery weekends, and art fairs play a defining role in shaping the cultural identity of their cities. The Gallery Weekend Berlin, Art Basel in Basel, and TEFAF in Maastricht are historic examples of this impact. Various Others is an innovative format that has gained international recognition in recent years through its collaborative approach and diverse network of participants. It reinforces Munich’s position as a vibrant cultural city where museums, galleries, and the local community work together to cultivate a sustainable and inclusive cultural ecosystem. Which international examples are pioneering new approaches? Are these formats sustainable models for activating cultural and creative networks? And what are the most important success factors and driving forces behind the individual formats?

Panel speaker: Joanna Witek-Lipka (Warsaw Gallery Weekend), Robert Danch (DC Open), Mona Stehle (Berlin Art Week), Catinca Tăbăcaru (Rad Art Fair).

Moderation: Kate Brown (Artnet).

‘How To Live' is the story of a little boy growing up, seen through the eyes and hair of a young woman.

Memories are filmed in the places where they happened, including Lenzie Academy, Glasgow, where current-day students of the school act in scenes from the classroom of bullying, misbehaviour and sports. John McEnroe, Martin’s boyhood hero, features in one fantastical scene on a tennis court.

The film is a coming-of-age story, a collage of episodes which spans from conception across the very earliest memories of infant-hood — the first word and the first drawing —to high school, art education and first love. An interwoven parallel story of clothes moves up the body from socks and shoes through trousers to hats. Along the way some helpful guides to sides of life are offered in the form of chapters on “The Trouser Problem” and “What are Moustaches For?”.

Free entry, limited capacity.

Artist Lea Vajda responds to the historic Mirror Hall of Bayerischer Hof, transforming its ornate stucco setting with two spatial works.

On the first floor of Palais Montgelas, Various Others presents a selection of contemporary art from Munich private collections. Works from Sammlung Goetz, beacon and the collection of Markus Michalke find their place in the historic rooms of the Palais. On the first floor of Palais Montgelas, Various Others presents a selection of contemporary artworks from Munich-based private collections. Works from the Sammlung Goetz, beacon, and the collection of Markus Michalke are placed within the historic rooms. Complementing the presentation, Rosanna Marie Pondorf creates a site-specific installation conceived especially for the Red Salon.

With works by Cindy Sherman, Hannah Levy, Pol Taburet, Michel Francois, Fred Sandback, Barry Le Va and Rosanna Marie Pondorf.

At the Bayerischer Hof, a singer performs and presents one of the Review Sonatas. Each Sonata consists of five reviews. In total, there are five Sonatas.

Mehmet and Kazim Akal – known as the artist duo "Kissing Cousins" – expand the painterly process by integrating virtual reality technology as a tool in their art. Their red and white dominated visual world leaves the canvas and continues in digital space: through expansive installations, digitally painted images and animated VR videos, they take painting out of the two-dimensional surface and their painted figures and motifs become animated plasticine that moves and seems to come to life. The Lenbachhaus collection includes works by Mehmet & Kazim and, at the invitation of the museum, the two are showing a selection of their red-colored videos as part of Various Others.

The cousins' hip-hop and graffiti-influenced aesthetic radically disrupts the historicist style of the Palais Montgelas in the Hotel Bayerischer Hof – the temporary exhibition space. The videos, which only last a few minutes, show two similar figures that appear to have grown together at the arms and are in different situations, such as under water or on a horse. The two figures represent the "Kissing Cousins" themselves and appear constantly in the paintings, drawings and videos by Mehmet & Kazim. In this way, the humorous references to art-historical role models, themselves and the art world are put on display for a weekend in the opulent Bayerischer Hof.

Jieun Park is a young artist from South Korea. After attending Chungbuk National University in Cheongju, she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich under Jorinde Vogt and received her diploma from Johanna Reich in 2021. In addition to painting and drawing, Jieun Park also finds her expressiveness in performances, which she records and projects on walls as video works.

Munich is home to a number of renowned museums. Yet, a truly dynamic and sustainable creative economy requires more than just great institutions  –  it thrives on a vibrant, market-driven ecosystem that enables artists and cultural practitioners to live, work, and push boundaries. Experimental formats and market-driven models are essential for artists to build lasting careers beyond public funding structures. Internationally, a generation of galleries with alternative approaches has emerged, whose concepts combine artistic visions with economic sustainability. In the future, they will play a crucial role in shaping a resilient cultural infrastructure and enabling artists to realise their projects. This panel will examine what it takes to establish a gallery, strengthen the commercial framework in the long term and create lasting market opportunities for artists.

Panel Speaker: Nicolaus Schafhausen (KIN Brüssel), Anna Schwanz (Office Impart, Berlin), Paulina Caspari (München)

Moderation: Lisa Gersdorf(Frieze)

Chinese artists Cao Fei (*1978) and Lu Yang (*1984) explore the border between analogue and digital worlds.
As part of a film programme for the opening of Various Others 2025, the Sammlung Goetz is showing a selection of works by the two artists that transport visitors into a virtual universe.

In her performance gestures in space, Düsseldorf-based artist Daniela Georgieva physically and choreographically explores the historic Montgelas Hall at the Bayerischer Hof. She weaves gesture into gesture transforming them into sculptural movements and embodied forms. Focusing intently on one body part at a time, Georgieva investigates its relationship to the body as a whole as well as to movement and space. Through this process she creates, restructures or discards physical and choreographic patterns and radically reconceptualizes them.

Daniela Georgieva is originally from Bulgaria and now lives and works in Düsseldorf. Since 2016 she has focused exclusively on dance and performance art and created mostly solo pieces and original choreographies.

The performance will be followed by an artist talk and was suggested by Kunstraum München for the Unconference. 

Isabelle Graw, author and art historian, teaches at the Städelschule in Frankfurt and is co-editor of Texte zur Kunst. For Too Soon To Say – The Unconference, she will read from her book “Angst und Geld“ (Fear and Money) which is based on individual and social fears of loss and money worries.

Presented by NEBYULA as part of Various Others, this intermedia screening offers a dialogue between the evolving relationship of image, space, and body. Curated and organized by Karim Daniel Mourad, with the support of the NEBYULA team, the program features a selection of local and international video works organized into four thematic blocks, Body and Fragmentation, Memory and Archive, Virtual Spaces and Immersion, and Political Spaces and Social Structures. Together, these groupings reflect diverse aesthetic and conceptual strategies within expanded video practice. Live performances extend the works beyond the screen, creating a porous interface between the physical and the virtual, the personal and the collective, the documented and the imagined.

In collaboration with Monopol Magazin.

Drawing inspiration from the "Global-Art-Fusion" project by Beuys, Higashiyama and Warhol (1985), this FAX ART project brings together three artists to send each other fax drawings that interact with each other. Based in Munich, Tokyo, and New York, SORRY FAX ONLY creates a global artistic production, live and direct, that can whisper down the lane, compose cadavres exquis… t’s an exchange with one rule only: no rules. Unless, maybe, that each artist has to react to the faxed drawing within 5 minutes.

It is scheduled to happen on two Saturdays: May 3 and May 10 2025. These dates are not arbitrary: On May 3, Masanao Hirayama will be faxing from TOKIO in Tokyo. On May 10, Martin Fengel will be faxing from Bayerischer Hof in Munich. Both interventions, one at a book fair, one during the art festival marathon ‚too soon to say‘, take place in a hotel setting, they are performative and open to public. Latter will also lead to an almost immediate show at Sorry Square in Munich that will start in the second half of the Various Others program and open already on May 11.

But wait, there’s more: Sorry Press will publish SORRY FAX ONLY as an art book which will be launched at the Tokyo Art Book Fair in December 2025. In sum, this project is an artistic interaction, a performance, one or many exhibitions and an art book. And perhaps perhaps the beginning of a non ongoing book series.

In 2019, museums and cultural spaces across Germany welcomed a record number of visitors. Then the pandemic hit and with it, an abrupt rupture in audience engagement. Only in 2023 did visitor numbers begin to approach pre-pandemic levels. Today, institutions face a dual challenge: staying socially rooted and publicly relevant while navigating increasingly severe funding cuts and adapting to new times. The panel explores the evolving role of museums and cultural venues in our society and the ways institutions can (re-)connect with audiences. What kinds of programmes, formats and platforms are needed to foster participation and debate? How can institutions open up to younger audiences without losing their existing visitors? How can contemporary art be presented both within and beyond museum walls to integrate it in the everyday? And, what does innovation in this context really mean? 

Panel speaker: Andrea Lissoni (Artistic Director Haus der Kunst), Natalia Sielewicz (Chief Curator MSN Warschau), Noura Dirani (Kunsthallen Sankt Annen, Lübeck). 

Moderation: Elke Buhr (Editor in Chief Monopol Magazin)

Limited capacity. 

Artists Ruscha Voormann and Milen Till welcome guests to the temporary Café Filter. Beneath the impressive glass dome of the atrium, they create an open, casual space at the heart of the hotel. Throughout the day, the conversation series “A Piece of Cake by …” hosts different artist-curator-talks. Coffee and cake are served in a setting that invites visitors to continue the conversations beyond the scheduled talks.

A lecture about the status of painting in Eastern Europe throughout the last decades, from the 1960s until nowadays. How has its perception changed as a medium in relation to politics, to censorship, to the change of regime, to new media?

Art and culture are essential for the functioning of democratic societies. Museums, theaters and other cultural venues rank among the most trusted institutions in Germany: They create space for controversial debates and help foster social consensus. With the rise of right-wing politics and an increasingly politicised discourse on cultural policy, safeguarding these vital "as-if worlds" has become an ever more important responsibility. This panel looks at how cultural policy may sustainably strengthen the potential of art and culture and how cultural practitioners can navigate possible ideological threats. It raises some crucial questions: How should responsibilities be distributed between political, private, and commercial actors? What tools can be used to offset the decline in public cultural funding? What role does the philanthropic engagement of friend circles and foundations play? How do changing funding structures affect institutions? And how can we ensure that art and culture are firmly rooted in all parts of society?