Axel Wieder - institutions as social spaces
Axel Wieder is a curator and cultural theorist who was appointed as the Director of the Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art in 2024. Known for advancing institutions as open, socially engaged platforms, he previously served as Director of Bergen Kunsthall (2018–2024), where he developed an internationally acclaimed interdisciplinary program and broadened audiences through ambitious exhibitions and collaborative initiatives. Wieder studied art history and cultural studies in Berlin and Cologne and has led several key institutions, including Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation in Stockholm, Arnolfini in Bristol, Ludlow 38 in New York, and Künstlerhaus Stuttgart. In 1999, he co-founded Pro qm, the influential Berlin bookshop and discourse platform. His work focuses on exhibition history, architecture, and political representation, consistently expanding institutional practices toward greater inclusivity, dialog, and public engagement. He publishes widely and has taught at various European universities and art academies.
LD: Axel, you are one of those curators, in the position of power, who is consistently expanding institutional practices toward greater inclusivity, dialog, and public engagement. Something that is at the core of the ARK project. You’ve often described art institutions as open social spaces. How do you envision the museum or biennale functioning beyond its traditional walls?
AW: It might sound maybe obvious to describe institutions as social spaces, but it has for me really important implications. A visit to an exhibition or a program is not just watching them, but we move in with all our experiences, our histories and the way we inhabit these. And we encounter others, the ones presenting but also other people visiting, we have different forms of exchanges, maybe we talk, but we definitely interact in some ways. I’m interested in possibilities for audiences to own and take over these spaces, to really turn them into platforms of exchange, which requires institutions to be considered in such a way, and not just stages for installation shots. It is surprising for me that so many institutions still produce photographs of empty, idealized showrooms, and that curators and even artists demand such images. For such reasons, cafés, bookstores, or other more typically social meeting spaces are so important in museums, they respond to other needs or other ways of being in a museum. There is also a big potential in live programs to create concrete dynamic moments. In Bergen, where I worked for many years as director of the Kunsthall until I joined the Berlin Biennale as director last autumn, we had a fantastic café, which became on many evenings a space for live events, from talks to concerts and club nights. This was an incredibly important entry point, as a different way into the institution, and we used this program also as an opportunity to work with many and diverse external partners, organizations and initiatives that helped to create a wider range of programs. So, for me a crucial question is first of all how institutions work within their own walls, how to relate from here in a different, more open way to the other social realities, to the outside. “I don’t see any other way for art institutions to remain relevant, beyond commercial interest, than to address their public function more openly.”
LD: You speak powerfully about “platforms of exchange.” The emphasis on institutions as places to be inhabited, rather than merely observed, shifts the conversation from spectatorship to presence. I feel that in this sense, the “arts” becomes a collective field of creative expression: literature, music, theatre, design, defined not by medium but by the capacity to host encounters. International academic institutions operate much like art biennales in the diversity and richness of their exchanges. At the RCA, for instance, we bring together over 60 nationalities. Earlier this year we relaunched ARK in six languages, deliberately challenging the supremacy of English as the default lingua franca. The use of loose pages invited audiences to assemble their own editorial, as a form of performance, reinforcing the idea that exchange matters more than authoritative authorship. Ultimately, what’s at stake is not showing or winning arguments, but gaining knowledge, acquiring perspectives, and experiencing the multiplicity of voices that make an institution truly alive. Many of your projects blur boundaries between art, urbanism, and public discourse. How do you see architecture and city planning informing curatorial practice today?
AW: When I started actively working with exhibitions in the 1990s, I was very interested in discussions about architecture and the city as a topic in the art field. One reason for this was that here, in a discussion on cities, was really a very concrete connection with the everyday reality of people, with very specific politics, power relations, that could be made visible and analyzed. The way in which urban planning imagines and shapes the organization of society, how a specific building creates routines and materializes policies. Michel Foucault’s analysis of social institutions, and Henri Levebfre’s reading of social space as a transmission of power relations were crutial. There is still important potential for me in connecting a discussion on urban politics with my work in art organizations, of bringing programming in connection with discussions about the reality of the cities we work in, but in a more open sense, in relation to more expanded notion of critical thinking on social space. In many instances art has become part of urban development, not always critically, and the discussion on memory culture and historical monuments that inhabit public spaces has become crucial in the past decade. From today’s perspective, I would wish that curatorial practice would inform city planning! That we have more forms of shared decision making, thinking about participation and forms of ownership in a more critical way, and exhibitions as possibilities of opening such forums.
LD: The grounding in Foucault and Lefebvre shows in how you frame the city as both material and ideological. When you speak of wishing curatorial practice would inform city planning, it reads less like a provocation than a proposal for a more poetic administrative logic, one that accommodates nuance, dissent, and community. And yet, the reality is that institutions are often caught within the very systems they critique. Do you think institutions can (or should) operate as civic platforms rather than exhibition halls? What structural shifts does that demand?
AW: Yes. This requires openness, but to be honest: I don’t see any other way for art institutions to remain relevant, beyond commercial interest, than to address their public function more openly. In my past work, I have described my ideal institution for contemporary art as mix between a museum and a community center. I find exhibitions still incredibly valuable and useful, there is a history that we have to hold onto because of its critical value, thinking about the history of representation, but I see a need for exhibitions to become spaces for actions, rather than contemplation. We have to take audiences that we want to reach seriously and to address them as collaborators, with their own voice, not as consumers.
LD: There is something quietly radical in your insistence that audiences be treated as collaborators. It shifts the institutional economy away from consumption and toward co-authorship. Not every institution is ready to surrender authority so openly. In your role at the Berlin Biennale, how are you thinking about inclusion - not just in representation, but in authorship, process, and decision-making? AW: I see the Berlin Biennale as a project that happens in dialogue with the city – with the architecture, but also the inhabitants. We have just started to work on the next edition and we don’t want to tell much yet, but one important aspect is that we plan to extend our work with other organizations as co-programmers, not just as venues, as one way of opening up to the rich, amazing cultural networks that exist in Berlin.
LD: What forms of collaboration or participation have you found most effective for amplifying underrepresented voices?
AW: I want to mention two great examples from the past, first the live program that we organized with Bergen Kunsthall. Most parts happened in the space called Landmark that was during daytime our café, so the program was also called Landmark. Many parts were organized with partners and initiatives and included from talks, film screenings, to concerts and club nights. Part of the aim of the program was also to support smaller or new initiatives from diverse, really manyfold backgrounds, to empower people who had ideas and ambitions, and to give access to our infrastructure and the team. We made many wonderful events happen, from discussion circles of young art lover with BIPOC backgrounds to Amapiano nights, that were organized by people from communities for their communities – but also all of our other audiences. A second initiative I want to mention is the Teen Advisory Board that we founded for Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation in Stockholm, where I was working as director 2014–18. We offered small paid positions for 6-8 young people who worked with us over a year, we took them to meetings, organized special events and had regular discussions on feedback and ideas from their end, but most importantly invited them also to program own events, such as a festival on the water, with boats, in the center of Stockholm. The best is that the initiative still exists, with a changing board every year.
LD: Are you reframing of the institution’s identity? By opening the café space to new initiatives and letting its character transform with each event, the institution becomes less a host and more an infrastructure for encounter. There is something crucial in that shift: diversity is not staged; it is lived through the building. Looking back at Pro qm, your early experimental platform, what lessons from that experience continue to shape how you build institutional programs today? AW: Pro qm was built on self-organization, it was our stable base to work simultaneously on other, less formalized or temporary projects. This aspect of self-organization is still incredibly important for me.
LD: Does it not become a minefield of inclusion, exclusion? How do you avoid that? AW: Yes, I agree that we have to remain aware of how we constantly draw lines of exclusion, even if we aim to be inclusive. It’s a task that doesn’t stop. Working for a public organization, I find it incredibly important to continue to broaden our outreach, to lower unjust barriers.
LD: It is refreshing to hear the treatment of inclusion not as a solved problem but as a maintenance practice - a constant tuning of thresholds, invitations, forms of access. This kind of work is rarely visible, often unglamorous, and yet foundational for public institutions. How is the planning for the next Berlin Biennale going? Can you divulge the theme?
AW: We have just announced with whom we are working as the curator for the next edition of the Berlin Biennale – Vasyl Cherepanyn. We have now around 18 months to develop the project.
LD: Yes, I heard. A great choice! We will have to wait then a little. Where is the best coffee in Berlin?
AW: A great place for coffee is Kajumi, or their sibling Material, both in Prenzlauer Berg.
LD: Which gallery we cannot miss?
AW: ChertLüdde – because of its inhouse bookshop and wonderful courtyard.
LD: What female writer has inspired your the most?
AW: Two of the many: Felicity Scott and Jennifer Kabat.
LD: Can digital replace physical meeting, art, thinking?
AW: It’s a helpful tool but I like cafés, exhibition spaces and chance encounters in trams, which only work physically.