Too Soon To Say - The Unconference

An “unconference” at the Bayerischer Hof. That’s where the MSC, the Munich Security Conference, usually meets. Experiencing the arts shining in this setting is remarkable. We live in a confusing world. Current realities change almost weekly. It is comforting to observe that art—which has existed for about 40,000 years (since our ancestors danced together in caves, told stories by the fire, and painted the walls)—continues to respond to confusing times with great persistence. This becomes most evident when a young art form like film, which is my field, collaborates with an ancient one like painting and the visual arts, which is your field. This is not just a conference, but a workshop of modernity. That’s why we call it an “unconference.”

Please note that this keynote is held in German. 

Stabat Kater is a Munich-based band with a vivid vision of German-language post-punk, shoegaze, and indie culture. In their lyrics, they commune with ghosts, lie beneath stones, and draw on asphalt with bones. The cat stood still and beheld: two heads, six hearts, twelve legs.

What Are People For? create the perfect kind of dystopian dance music for our times. Born from the collaboration between artist Anna McCarthy and musician/producer Manuela Rzytki, the band could be the lovechild of Tom Tom Club and Throbbing Gristle, striking the ideal balance between hip-swaying vibes and dark, provocative content. The band’s visual identity is an essential part of their allure. Live, they are eccentric, fierce, and unapologetic—donning sheer costumes, garish miniskirts, and intricate headpieces as they deliver their songs with raw intensity. Their performances radiate queer sexiness and go far beyond aesthetics, creating a space for collective dreaming. 

WAPF? is a rare fusion of contemporary punk energy, irresistible groove, absurdly dry humor, and startling creativity. They have the power to set a party ablaze—with your arms in the air and your mouth shouting: WAPF? WAPF? WAPF?

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.

Printing is happening in Munich.
planparallel (Gesa Puell, Head of the Printmaking Workshop at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich), Leo Hurzlmeier, and Knust Kunz Gallery show how lithographs and linocuts come to life—how they're created, experimented with, and refined into edition-ready prints. Whether it’ll amount to something is "too soon to say," but it might just be fun! Artist, printer, and gallerist form the ultimate symbiosis when it comes to bringing printmaking into the world. The gravity of it all? That’s a conversation for later.

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.

"Pictures on a Journey" is an interactive postcard project: it invites emerging artists and image-makers from around the world to respond to the themes "Strange Homeland" and "Encounters." Selected through a global open call, the postcards offer diverse perspectives on these ideas, exploring notions of unfamiliar homelands and transformative meetings.

Facilitated by a "Post-Officer," visitors will be guided to select from the curated postcard motifs, compose personal messages on-site, and send them across the globe — reviving the spirit of Mail Art. Each postcard is paired with a "textography" by Angela Aux, forging unexpected and evocative links between image and word.

Rooted in the longstanding tradition of postcards in contemporary art — explored by artists such as Karin Sander, Roman Ondak, Isa Genzken, and Milen Till — this participatory project creates a space for personal exchange and global connection.

& a red currant and meringues cake.

"Presse Mobile" consists of a wheeled folding structure supporting a printing press and a series of magnetic surfaces for the creation of temporary matrices. It was completed by Katerina Stefanidaki and Zafos Xagoraris at Maison d'Artistes - Françoise Heitsch, St. Raphaël and first presented at the École Freinet in Vence, 2024.

Relying on the audience to participate as crew - operating cameras - prop styling - script monitoring - making coffees - pouring beers and enjoying a bit of bavarian movie magic.

Synopsis: 
Kyle & Leander, estranged cousins, spent the night at a suite at Bayerischer Hof, awaiting the arrival of a lawyer who is to read the last will and testament of their great Bavarian aunt.

& an apple tarte. 

Martin Creed's work in progress feature film 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. The film is classified as Certificate 18.

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).

In his site-specific installation, Ossian Fraser responds to the historical and architectural context of the Bayerischer Hof and subtly disrupts the viewer’s familiar perception. He activates the building and its rooftop terrace with a large, floating balloon that marks the airspace above the hotel and reclaims the sky as a temporary artistic site. 

At the same time, the work references the balloon’s historical functions – from meteorological observation to surveillance – and draws a fine connection to the site’s transformation into a highly protected zone during the Munich Security Conference.

In the conference rooms of Bayerischer Hof, characters of the memorial walking theater “Au au au Hi hi hi” meet and negotiate Germany's politics of reparation after 1945. Among them are the director of the Bavarian State Reparations Office Dr. Philipp Auerbach, who takes his own life in 1952 after a show trial in Munich; the sculpture professor Anton Hiller, who navigates the regime changes between the monarchy, the Third Reich and the Adenauer period with ease; the concentration camp survivor Jerzy Wisniowski, whose applications for restitution are rejected by the German state; several professional producers of Hitler busts; and a life-size nude made of bronze.  Following the reading at Bayerischer Hof, performers and visitors will go on a walk to several historical locations surrounding Lenbachplatz. 

By/with: Samuel Fischer-Glaser, Astrid Schmetterling, Angela Stiegler, and Magdalena Wisniowska

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

Pylons specially designed for this event are located directly in front of and inside the Hotel Bayerischer Hof. They don't guide guests, but rather direct their attention to other messages.

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.

Aqua Monaco and Public Possession present their latest collaboration which unites graphic design, music and product culture. This joint project by two Munich-based institutions, titled Oase, features a spring edition of Aqua Monaco’s 0.33-liter mineral water bottles designed by Public Possession, an audio cassette by People Waving and a curated selection of merchandise and print goods. The PP-AQ Oasis at Bayerischer Hof offers a moment of refreshment inviting visitors to immerse themselves in blue light, mineral water and an audiovisual sound bath loop.

OASE, 2025
An installation by Aqua Monaco & Public Possession

Words: James Joyce, Public Possession
Sound: People Waving
Graphics: Public Possession
Animation: Aqua Monaco

The pop music and performance art antics of the critically costumed art collective synthesize into a tv show, club event and political reflection, merging today’s surreal realities as manifestation in a live hybrid streamart parade with a special philosophical Jane Fonda inspired IDEOBICS warm up by Sophia Efstathiou.

With Kathi Glas, Liz Dom, Chloe Tolmer, Roman Dziadkiewicz, UKRAiNAtv, Unnur Andrea Einarsdóttir, Sophia Efstathiou, Alina Belyagina, Tor-Ada Solberg, Kangela Tromokratisch & Alex Murray-Leslie. 

Livestream the parade here: https://linktr.ee/ukrainatv. 

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, Charlotte Posenenske, Fred Sandback, Barry Le Va and Rosanna Marie Pondorf.

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.

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 with Friederike Schuler and was suggested by Kunstraum München for the Unconference. 

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: Paulina Caspari (Munich), Ursula Krinzinger (Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna), Nicolaus Schafhausen (KIN Brüssel), Anne Schwanz (Office Impart, Berlin).
Moderation: Lisa Gersdorf (Frieze)

Please note this panel will take place in German. 

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, which are presented every half hour.

“Close Enough” explores the emotional and aesthetic dimensions of the hotel room – a transitional space between arrival and departure. Hotels promise individuality through design: tropical dreams, minimalist calm, historical backdrops. Yet behind this staging, the room remains anonymous. Constantly reset, cleaned, prepared for the next guest. A ritual of erasure that leaves no memory behind. The film examines the tension between performed personality and the impossibility of true appropriation. Using AI-generated images, the memories of these spaces are made tangible – fleeting traces of gestures, bodies, and glances that never fully become real. What remains is the feeling of having been close to something. “Close enough” – but never quite close enough.

Alex Hunter is a creative director based in Paris. He develops strategies and content for brands and institutions. In his artistic practice, he explores the aesthetic and perceptual dimensions of artificial intelligence.

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.

As part of a film program for the opening of Various Others 2025, Sammlung Goetz is showing a selection of works by Chinese artists Cao Fei (*1978) and Lu Yang (*1984) in the Astor Cinema Lounge of the Hotel Bayerischer Hof.

Cao Fei's RMB City Opera (2010) is an experimental theater piece inspired by the propaganda operas of the Chinese Cultural Revolution that explores the connection between real and virtual identities. Physical and digital spaces serve as a stage for the interaction between actors and avatars.

In DOKU the Self (2022), “Doku”, Lu Yang's non-binary avatar, assumes six different virtual identities. These correspond to the six realms of existence of the Buddhist wheel of life, death and rebirth.

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.

Ina Loitzl trains and prepares herself for each of her five-minute bouts — against herself, her own motivation, the big players of the art world, and yes, occasionally against imbalanced quotas, submission deadlines, and even the competition. In the art business, you have to be trained, take it in stride, withstand blows from all sides, and be able to get back up after a knockout.

The life of an artist is no walk in the park — it’s more like a boxing ring in which a woman must move.

For Various Others, she steps into her role on the hour, dons her costume, and performs — short and sharp, five minutes. Afterwards, she’s available for autographs and a breather in the ring. Spectators are welcome, documentation encouraged. Donations of “punches” to support the work are gratefully accepted by the sweat-drenched artist. The only question is: will she give herself a black eye — or end up with one?

Thanks to the Curt Wills Foundation for their support!

Performances at 10 PM & 11 PM

60:00 - 59:59 - 59:58 … What reads like the countdown to a major event is the spectacular event itself: the 1HOUR DISCO*, one hour of spontaneous, time-bound dancing. It is organized by Monopol, the magazine for art and life, in cooperation with the Frankfurt-based artist collective saasfee. Since 2009, saasfee has been hosting the 1HOUR DISCO* at irregular intervals in the saasfeepavilion in Frankfurt. This one-hour immersive group performance begins with a perfect starting signal and an equally foreseeable ending. But a little warm-up is essential: before the start, Monopol Magazine, together with the Young Generation Art Award in cooperation with Degussa, invites you to a reception — get ready!

As part of the Various Others “Unconference”, artist Leiko Ikemura, architect Philipp von Matt and phenomenologist and architecture professor Prof. Dr. Franz Xaver Baier gather for a fireside chat to discuss the interplay between art and architecture. Particularly in the creative process, the emergence and development of ideas, these two areas often intertwine more than they differ. The occasion for the discussion is the interdisciplinary group exhibition curated by Leiko Ikemura at Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, which brings together 13 artists and architects from the modern and contemporary periods. They all share a similar approach in which they interpret or shape the world in a poetic way, seemingly questioning existing conventions and definitions.

“The only thing that counts — the only prize in the game — is who ends up with the paintings.” — Eugene M. Schwartz

Try your luck and test your collector's eye. Take Aim at abstract masterpieces by Jasper Johns, Kenneth Noland, Hilma af Klint, and others.

The sharpest shooters will walk away with great prizes, insider tips, and artists’ books. 

Remember — every great collection starts with a first shot!

As part of the Various Others opening weekend, community radio station Radio 80000 will take over the Cocktailhalle at Hotel Bayerischer Hof on the evening of May 10. At 11 PM, Alex – member of the iconic punk band Chicks on Speed – opens the evening with a DJ set. From midnight onwards, a selection of Radio80000 hosts will take over with eclectic electronic sets, carrying the night into the early morning hours.

Radio 80000 x Various Others presents Alex Murray-Leslie (Chicks On Speed), Glaskin, DJoy, Bogus b2b luxus. 

Fire-Site Chat: Artist Talk Carla Filipe & Andrea Lissoni

A site-specific tea performance that engages both with the physical location itself and our positioning in time and space. Artist Anna Maja Spiess invites you to a calming cup of tea in turbulent times.

The tea ceremony will take place in German. At 1:30am there will be another one in English. 
Please sign up via mail to guest@variousothers.com.

In “A Piano Plays In Another Room And It’s Raining” (2022), Paul Valentin takes us into a melancholy fugue of computer-generated spaces that overwhelm us with their abundance of references to film, painting, and computer games, as well as the carefully designed “digital objects”, leaving us initially speechless. The aesthetics of this work, which oscillates between cinematic philosophy and spatial installation, refers to the design of so-called “liminal” spaces – transit spaces – that evoke feelings of eeriness, nostalgia, and anxiety in us. What we see is not what we think we see, know, or understand. Each scene demands that we take different perspectives, jump between worlds and “realities,” abandon projections and allow for new possibilities. Ultimately, we understand that we are seeing our seeing itself here, contemplating the making of meaning, and pursuing the philosophical search for the nature of the world.

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 celebration of VO's “Unconference”, Wendy brings her karaoke bar night to Munich. The event first debuted at Parcours, Art Basel 2024, and an encore has been much anticipated for.  While Wendy’s Wok World is usually experienced via the wok cooking and performance that demonstrate Wendy’s strive for purity and perfection, for this event, guests will have the chance to perform songs that feature “Wendy’s Words” (notions that guide her) and sip on specialty “Wendy cocktails” inspired by her signature dishes. The video work is created with Kevin Roark, featuring a compilation of footage of Wendy in action, at the wok, at the wet market, and other locales. The specialty cocktails are created in collaboration with The Savory Project in Hong Kong, each inspired by a signature Wendy dish. This event is produced by Sam and Hillary Lui alongside the team at Various Others.  

Göksu Kunak’s performances draw attention to (chrono)political events at the intersection of stereotyped non-Western dramaturgies and (self-)censorship. The connection of different genres such as lecture performance, dance, concert, tableaux vivant, bodybuilding and pole dance creates impressive images and experiences with subcultural, art historical and political references. Their works focus on intercultural and queer social discourses by questioning traditional body images and gender clichés using the body as a political medium. Göksu Kunak and Madeleine Freund speak about the representation of the muscular body in art, live-exhibitions and performance as hyper-assemblage.

On the occasion of the ‘Unconference’ by Various Others, Museum Brandhorst presents a film program at the cinema of the Bayerischer Hof. The featured works—Isaac Julien’s “Looking for Langston” (1989), Anri Sala’s “Long Sorrow” (2005), and Tourmaline’s “Salacia” (2019)—explore figures from literature, music, and activism. In this unique context, they weave together past and present, connecting individual narratives with silenced histories of resistance. The title “Hold fast to dreams” is taken from a poem by writer and activist Langston Hughes. It stands symbolically for a shared night at the Bayerischer Hof—for the freedom to occupy space, and for the transformative power of dreaming. 

The lecture traces its origins to a series of watercolour works inspired by Virgil’s Aeneid. In October 2023, Berthold Reiß wrote to Sinem Tekel in Istanbul about one of these works, Aeneid I, 338: This is a city in danger—captured in a single line that lies between dunes or waves. The inhabited place may well be a mirage. Aeneas is in search of a new city, after his homeland, Troy, has been destroyed. His greatest hope, Carthage, turns out to be his deepest disappointment.

The fourth book of the Aeneid, which tells the story of Aeneas and the Carthaginian queen Dido, is considered a tragedy. In the 2nd century BCE, Marcus Porcius Cato famously ended his speeches in the Roman Senate with the words: Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam – Furthermore, I consider that Carthage must be destroyed. In the 18th century, Voltaire wrote of his estate Les Délices near Geneva: Carthage must be refounded. Between these two poles—and over the course of approximately 30 minutes—the lecture KARTHAGO explores the city as a space of possibility. 

Since 2021 Raphael Weilguni and Vincent Scheers have been composing and performing their electronic strain of free jazz storytelling alongside their practices as visual artists. 

For this year’s Various Others event at Hotel Bayerischer Hof, Weilguni (piano, modular synthesizer and vocals) and Scheers (modular synthesizer, xaphoon and one string guitar) will explore the history of the hotel through an electro-acoustic counterpoint improvisation, incorporating elements of baroque, blues and musique concrète.

Irma to Come in Earnest is a video portrait of Hurricane Irma and its aftermath. Through slow-motion images witnessing the major destruction caused by the category-five hurricane, which struck the U.S. state of Florida on August 30, 2017, Julius von Bismarck reveals the aesthetics of nature’s devastating force. The film transcends familiar images of disaster, capturing both the nature of the storm and the media presentation of the catastrophe in an otherworldly atmosphere. 

Design shapes societies, values, and realities of life. It takes courage and vision to use design as a tool for economic, social, and cultural transformation. Design serves as a bridge between aesthetics, function, and social change. Where can design mediate and, above all, initiate dialogue? What impact and relevance do creative professionals have? In this interdisciplinary panel, we will discuss what strategies and resilient solutions can look like – how complex systems and interrelationships can become recognizable – how diversity can create stability and how diversity guarantees security and support.

Panel: Prof. Dr. Moritz Basil Mungenast (Architecture + 3D-Printing Specialist), Christian Zanzotti (Product Design), Oliver Herwig (Design Theory)
Moderated by Prof. Bettina Otto and Dara Sepehri (DDC Board Members)

Olga Hohmann’s performance Off the record probes the less formal settings that exist alongside official conference proceedings and the unspoken rules that govern them. Together with the costume designer Sina Manthey she explores the politics of informal encounters at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof, the traditional venue for the Munich Security Conference.  While key decisions are usually taken around large tables behind closed doors and announced at lecterns in a formal choreography, important information informing and influencing those decisions is exchanged in more informal settings and in-between spaces. Whether during breakfast, a drink at the bar, or in the hotel corridors, this information exchange operates according to formulas of inclusion and exclusion. The economy of knowledge transfer likewise follows the principles of profit maximization. Olga Hohmann uses historical and local references as well as music to create a site-specific performance in the ministers’ room of the hotel, tracing the codes and strategies of diplomatic rhetoric. 

Invited by the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism, Olga Hohmann's performance takes place as part of Various Others' Unconference.

"Presse Mobile" consists of a wheeled folding structure supporting a printing press and a series of magnetic surfaces for the creation of temporary matrices.

It was completed by Katerina Stefanidaki and Zafos Xagoraris at Maison d'Artistes - Françoise Heitsch, St. Raphaël and first presented at the École Freinet in Vence, 2024.

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)

A pendulum string – a resonant drum is suspended within a three-metre-high frame. From it hangs a curved bronze rod creating a pendulum-like structure. Following a technical introduction, Limpe Fuchs invites participants to engage directly with the instrument — to play, to hum, to sing and to attune their voices to its rich overtones or simply to listen and absorb its resonant soundscape. Through this process, a nonverbal dialogue with the instrument unfolds.

Group size is limited to a maximum of 10 adults. Please sign up via mail to guest@variousothers.com.

This lecture examines the context, activity and impact of Hungarian avant-garde artist groups mainly focusing on the medium of painting from 1945 to 1989, and the marks they left on the painterly scene until nowadays. Through the analysis of its theoretical and stylistic antecedents going back the European School and the Group of Abstract artists (1945-1948), the activity of the Zugló Circle (1958-1968) until its resonance in the new painterly wave of the eighties named New Sensibility (1981-1988), the lecture aims to shed light on how Abstract art translated in an ethical position facing the official cultural politics and aesthetical ideology of socialist realism. The axis drawn by the groups’ respective visual and theoretical approach revealed a similar endeavour: to reconnect with Hungarian Abstract, avant-garde, constructivist visual traditions and intellectual heritage, while also attempting to reinsert Hungarian – unofficial – contemporary art in the discourse and stream of international Abstraction.

Róna Kopeczky (1983) is a curator and art historian based in Budapest. She worked as a curator for international art in Ludwig Museum Budapest (2006-2015). In 2015, she joined acb Gallery in Budapest as artistic director and also actively contributes to the publishing activity of acb Research Lab, with a focus on forgotten, neglected or ignored oeuvres of the Hungarian neo-avant-garde art. She participated in the organization of the first and second OFF-Biennále Budapest (2015-2017). She is the co-founder of Easttopics, a platform and hub dedicated to contemporary art of Central Eastern Europe and was the curator of the 18th Tallinn Print Triennial (2022) in Estonia and of the Hungarian Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale (2024). She has been working on the elaboration and development of Secondary Archive, a platform dedicated to women artists from Central and Eastern Europe, launched in 2021. She completed her PhD in Art History in 2013 at Sorbonne University in Paris.

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.

In his lecture Dr. Olaf Kranz explores the ways in which Munich is creative. It presents current data from both the yet unpublished 3rd Cultural and Creative Industries Report of the City of Munich and the latest update of the European Union's Cultural and Creative City Monitor. The lecture connects data from these sources and discusses them within the context of various Creative City concepts.

Join artist Rosanna Marie Pondorf and curator Zakirah Rabaney for a talk centered on the site-specific installation, “the session dilemma [multipolarized].” Pondorf’s work challenges the spaces where power convenes – and where art can contest it. Hotel Bayerischer Hof, host to both the art festival Various Others and the annual Munich Security Conference, becomes the stage for her sculptural intervention and their discussion.

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?

Panel speakers: Michael Buhrs (Museum Villa Stuck), Maurin Dietrich (Kunstverein München), Kolja Reichert (K21 Düsseldorf), Katharina von Perfall (PIN)
Moderation: Anna Kleeblatt. 

This panel is hosted by Karl & Faber. 

In their conversation, Kalas Liebfried and Voin de Voin ask: How do we organise in times of chaos? Too long disoriented. Too long lied to. Too long we’ve danced with eyes closed. As censorship, dehumanisation, and control tighten their grip, this dialogue becomes a call to reclaim our senses, sharpen our awareness, and build tools for collective resistance. It is a space to re-learn how to feel, act, and organise—together.

Voin de Voin lives and works in Sofia. Since July 2016, he has been running an independent agency called ÆTHER, with a sibling satellite base in The Hague, The Netherlands. He is the founder of SAW (Sofia Art Week), an annual contemporary art festival established in 2016, and the “School of Kindness,” an experimental program for fugitive learning. His work spans various fields of the visual arts—from performance to installation—drawing on research in collective rituals, psychogeography, sociology, and psychology. Voin de Voin is a freelance curator who celebrates art as activism!

Kalas Liebfried is a Bulgarian artist, curator, and writer. In April 2025, he assumed the position of Artistic Director at Lothringer 13 Halle, Munich. His practice explores the potential of performative arts for socio-political change. Emphasizing collaboration and interaction, he develops platform-based projects. Liebfried is the founder of Fragments of Sonic Extinction, a platform for sound-based art, and the co-founder of the artist-run space NEBYULA. He is an editor at 20 Seconds Magazine and a regular contributor to Positionen – Texte zur aktuellen Musik.

A section of the Hotel Bayerischer Hof lobby will be transformed into a postcard stand installation drawing on the longstanding tradition of postcards in contemporary art – explored by artists such as Karin Sander, Roman Ondak, Isa Genzken and Milen Till. The postcards, selected through a global open call, present a wide range of perspectives on themes such as Strange Homelands and Encounters. Visitors are invited to write and send these cards out into the world. This participatory project references the legacy of Mail Art and creates a space for personal exchange.

& Black Forest Cake. 

& a red wine cake with cherries. 

 Artist talk with Alexandra Bircken and Pia Stadtbäumer, moderated by Lisa Weber from QUIVID, on the occasion of the installation of Alexandra Bircken's work "PS (Horsepower)" on Oskar-von-Miller-Ring. Opening statement by the City of Munich’s Secretary for Public Construction, Dr.-Ing. Jeanne Marie Ehbauer.  

With her expansive horse sculpture "PS (Horsepower)" located at the entrance to the Altstadtringtunnel on Oskar-von-Miller-Ring, Alexandra Bircken questions the role of mobility and speed in urban living spaces. Pia Stadtbäumer, a member of the current QUIVID art commission, created a counterpoint to the traditional equestrian statues of Munich with her sculpture "GO!" (2004) located in the Petuelpark. In conversation with Lisa Weber, head of QUIVID, the City of Munich’s Art in Architecture Program, the creation and context of their artistic works will be explored.