Whether families, communities, artistic collectives or research networks - people organise themselves in the most diverse forms of togetherness. Communities offer protection, resonance and a sense of belonging, they open up spaces for exchange and new ideas. At the same time, they are always characterised by negotiation processes, conflicts and power relations.

The exhibition "merry company" examines these tensions using historical and contemporary artistic positions and invites visitors not only to observe community, but also to experience it by playing, participating and trying things out together.

The title of the exhibition refers to a motif from 17th century Dutch painting, where the theme of the "merry company" was particularly popular. "The starting point is a painting by Jan Steen, which shows a merry company on a terrace. Behind the seemingly cheerful scene, a closer look reveals a chaotic excess with humorous allusions to the relationships of those depicted," says Professor Katja Pfeiffer, Director of the Kunsthalle Barmen, about the motif, which is also reflected on the current exhibition poster.

Collective processes and shared authorship

The exhibition spans a wide range from historical genre paintings to urban everyday cultures and questions of collective knowledge production. The exhibition includes artistic collectives: the student collective "Wir sollen eine Gruppe gründen" (We should form a group), whose members did not know each other beforehand and were brought together from three universities, developed an expansive painterly-sculptural work that changes during the duration of the exhibition and thus makes negotiation processes visible. Another student collective translates individual drawings into embroidery and invites visitors to participate and become part of the anonymous collective "mackerinnenanstalt" themselves.

Research networks and their interconnections - from the smallest exchange to global structures - will also be addressed, as will parlour games, to which the artist and game developer Josef Kirschner invites visitors on site. Other artistic positions examine which systemic influences promote or prevent communities.

In Cornelia Schleime's work, for example, it becomes clear how drastically political intervention by the Stasi in the GDR could influence collective and individual artistic work. Meltem Er's photo series "Türkler in Deutschland / Zwischen Blicken" shows how communities develop dynamically within a society, while Valerie Feldhaus interweaves the microcosm of the Café Bar Mazzino in Wuppertal with literary quotations from Else Lasker-Schüler in a video installation.

Institutionally, the project is also a collaborative process: the Kunsthalle Barmen is cooperating thematically with the Pina Bausch Centre for the exhibition, thus continuing its approach of linking art, science and urban society.