Mischa Kuball's transnational art project “if walls could tell” will conclude in October 2025 at the WELTKUNSTZIMMER Düsseldorf with the international symposium “Voicing the Commons. Participatory Art and New Public Imaginaries.”

The project “if walls could tell,” which has been running in Southeast Europe since 2024, examines the permeability of art institutions to broader social groups and their integration into collective processes of artistic participation. Symbolic museum walls were installed in public spaces in various cities in Southeast Europe—as temporary stages on which citizens could leave their marks, stories, and opinions. These walls, symbols of the openness and mutability of institutional spaces, returned to their respective museums and galleries after their presentation in public spaces to spark discussions about participation, publicity, and the role of art institutions.

The project began in August 2024 in Sarajevo, in the immediate vicinity of the future Ars Aevi Museum of Contemporary Art. Subsequently, “if walls could tell” was shown in Bucharest, Skopje, Chișinău, Ljubljana, Kraljevica, and Čačak—in each case in cooperation with local partner institutions. In each city, the installation served as a catalyst for public discourse on the significance of participatory art in an urban and social context.
Now, the two-day symposium at WELTKUNSTZIMMER Düsseldorf marks the conclusion of this multi-year process.

In times of increasing social fragmentation, contested historical narratives, and authoritarian tendencies—especially in the post-socialist context—participatory art has proven to be a powerful tool for reclaiming public spaces and amplifying marginalized voices. The concluding symposium at WELTKUNSTZIMMER brings together artists, curators, theorists, and representatives of cultural institutions to reflect on the experiences of if walls could tell: How can “white walls” – as symbols of institutional openness – become platforms for expression, dissent, and collective imagination?

The project, which was implemented in a wide variety of urban contexts, has shown that public space is a deeply political terrain in which art not only reflects social realities but also actively generates new forms of civic engagement.

The conference focuses on key questions: How can shared spaces in divided societies be reimagined and redesigned? What role can participatory art play in redefining belonging, responsibility, and participation in public space? Building on the experiences of if walls could tell, participatory art is examined as a practice of “commoning”—not only as a form of artistic production, but as a social action that gives rise to new relationships, solidarities, and structures of care.



Mischa Kuball
Born in Düsseldorf in 1959, Mischa Kuball lives and works in Düsseldorf. Since 1977, he has been creating works in public and institutional spaces. Kuball uses the medium of light to explore architectural spaces and social and political discourses, reflecting on a variety of aspects ranging from socio-cultural structures to architectural interventions, whose monumentality and architectural-historical context he emphasizes or reinterprets. In politically motivated participatory projects, public and private space merge into an indistinguishable whole, providing a platform for communication between the audience, artist, work, and public space. Mischa Kuball has been Professor of Art in Public Space at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, since 2007 and was Professor of Media Art at the University of Design/ZKM, Karlsruhe, from 2002 to 2008. Since 2015, he has been a member of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Düsseldorf. In 2016, he was awarded the German Lighting Prize. Since spring 2024, he has been an associate member of the Cluster of Excellence Humboldt University Berlin ‘Matters of Activity. Image Space Material’.