Our WOW, like the word itself, consists of three parts, three focal points. These are themes that accompany and characterize the KunstRaum’s work with project participants and artists. One thing is central to working on these focal points: the unexpected, the unforeseen, the newly emerging and revealing—the surprising. We hope to carry with us the motto “The artist will always surprise you.”*)

We’re kicking things off now, from February to May, with a focus on empathy, a form of emotional solidarity.

We want to be surprised by people, animals, other living beings, and AI. And we want to surprise! To what, for what, and towards whom am I empathetic? Why do I even need empathy? Can it also be unwanted?

Empathy finds its first manifestation in the KunstRaum cats, but it also spreads to other living beings and forms.

What workshops and new projects focusing on empathy are happening at KunstRaum Goethestrasse xtd in February?

Cats and other manifestations of empathy are drawn, rasterized, enlarged, analog, and digital.

“Does the cat understand me?” is a new multi-part project in which we want to find out what they think, feel, and whether they understand us. The cats become a part of us, and we become a part of them.

With “Stray Cats,” we begin a journey of discovery in our neighborhood, visiting cultural venues we know well as those that are completely new to us. In the newly established film café “The Special Sausage – and Other Creatures,” we screen films on-site in the KunstRaum Keller (Art Space Basement) about unconventional life forms, unique societies, and higher beings. In “Paper. Analog Meets Digital,” starting February 14th, we explore how empathy for paper can be created using digital tools.

*) Xabier Gorritxategi, Innovative Director, Fago, Spain in Training Artists for Innovation, 2013