Mostly far off the 'white cube' but at crossroads, traffic islands or refugee accommodation, the IMM team uses the situation as an on-eye meeting for an open-minded discourse by a motivating acting and an empowering response.
As early as 2013, artist Jörg Spamer initiated the performance 'Urban Lines', which was the start of an endeavour that became more fundamental and sustainable than most individual projects in recent years within the arts.
The International Migration Museum (IMM), founded by him in 2017, operates in participatory individual processes without being fixed on location, discipline or format and evolves into a different one at a time.
The ideas for the use in art were developed during a three years project working as an external artist consultant in collaboration with psychiatrists.
The focus was to find new methods of nonmedical treatments for children and teenagers with mental disorders in performance-like activities and on behavioural theory based mental and physical trainings in terms of communication and social responsibility.
During this collaboration and the acquired knowledge of behavioural studies, learning theories, parts of psychology and neurology, many more areas opened up than the application for therapeutic reasons.
They are also useful for role-playing of actors, for concentration training in martial arts as well as for mental trainings even of national football teams and -of course- many classic operations and so in the art even more as on an operational level .
Numerous further parallels to the work of an artist can be derived as for example in sketching or the use of different layers and levels, which are classical means of painters or sculptors.
The idea of an up-to-date conceptual transfer into contemporary artistic practice arose and was tested and expanded in various steps and projects, starting in 'Urban Lines' 2013 and continuously built up in the 'snapshots' and other activities with the team of the IMM.
Videos
VI_01:
IMM
VI_04: Cascaoland Amasterdam
VI_02: Gartenstadt Frankfurt
VI_05:
Art interventions - garden replacing a parking
VI_03: Smart Supporter
VI_06:
Service Manual for Democracy / Art outside thecomfort zone