Making Things Very Public

Mischa Kuball’s “public preposition” is a group of works, interventions, projects, and performances made over a period of several decades. What they have in common is that they appeal to a public sphere and implicitly question in what locations and under what circumstances what we mean by “public” is constituted and how it could be understood. Discussing “public preposition” in a public lecture of its own, must itself be seen as a gesture towards creating a "public sphere" in a larger context.

Mischa Kuball has been working in the public and institutional sphere since 1977. He uses light as a medium to explore architectural spaces as well as social and political discourses. Public and private space merge into an indistinguishable whole in politically motivated participation projects, providing a platform for communication between the audience, the artist, the work itself and public space. Mischa Kuball is since 2007 Professor for Public Art at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, and associate professor for media art at Hochschule für Gestaltung/ZKM, Karlsruhe. In 2016 he was honoured with the German Light Award.