The City Museum of Ljubljana (MGML), the Goethe-Institut Ljubljana, Studio Mischa Kuball GmbH, in collaboration with the Secondary School for Design and Photography, invite you to participate in the project if walls could tell, which will take place at the The French Revolution Square in Ljubljana from April 15 to May 4. The project partner is TAM-TAM d.o.o. 

For a period of three weeks, two white walls—each four meters long and three meters high—will be installed in the middle of the Trg francoske revolucije, standing parallel to one another approximately one meter apart. Passersby will be invited to write, draw, or paint their impressions, interventions, and ideas about what they wish to express to museums, galleries, and cultural institutions, situated between the two walls. The walls invite communication relating in one way or another to culture as presented within institutional frameworks—communication that often remains either unspoken or unexpressed.

Panel Discussion: Politics and Ethics of Participation
April 15 at 11:00, Conference Hall, City Museum of Ljubljana  
Participants: Eda Čufer (dramaturge, curator, and writer, Faculty Member at AVA – Academy of Visual Arts, Ljubljana), Mojca Puncer (Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maribor), Apolonija Šušteršič (visual artist, architect, and independent researcher). The moderator will be Zoran Erić (Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade). The event will be held in English. 

Exhibition Opening: April 15 at 13:00, The French Revolution Square 

In public spaces across various cities in Southeast Europe, two or three symbolic museum or gallery walls have been or will be erected—walls that are typically found inside the very museums and galleries themselves. However, the walls constructed within this project function as direct platforms which, at least temporarily, act as both a matrix and a filter for the local population—gathering diverse "traces" of cultural and urban forms of expression in city life, outside of the cultural institutions they refer to. Once this space is marked by its surroundings and the people inhabiting it, it may dialectically return to the institutional context, preserving traces while also opening space for further inscriptions.

Echoing the narrative of John Dos Passos, the so-called analogue museum_transfer—a transitional, almost dystopian shift of space with its many inscriptions—focuses on the traces left behind on the walls. The walls themselves become a temporary space for open and unrestricted expression—within a participatory artistic project in the public space. if walls could tell raises pressing social questions: Can civil society exist without museums? Does this imply the dismantling or even rupture of the cultural promise to future generations? What kinds of mutual interactions exist between society, museums, citizens, artists, and curators?

Within this context, Mischa Kuball acts as a catalyst, opening space for all residents to become direct creators of content—participants and co-authors of a collective artistic work. In doing so, they are recognized as political subjects who should have access to all available means to be active creators rather than passive consumers. This opens a further question: What happens when citizens, potential museum audiences, and artists in public space are granted a "freedom of expression" that is not typical within museum and exhibition policies?

Curator:
Zoran Erić, Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, Belgrade