Dirck Möllmann
Dirck Möllmann dedicated his master’s thesis in 1996 to the work of the US-American land art artist Robert Smithson. This examination seems to have influenced his entire career – especially his work as a curator for art in public space.
Dirck began his career at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, where he worked as a freelance staff member in the field of media and contemporary art from 1996 to 2009, digitizing the holdings of the media collection alongside curatorial projects. Through 2009 Dirck was involved in a great many important projects that shaped discourse within the City of Hamburg, and far beyond: as curator at the Gallery for Landscape Art and STILE DER STADT and as a member of the editorial board of The Thing Hamburg.
In 2009, he moved on to the sculpture project kunstwegen in Nordhorn. By 2012, he had carried out projects with Tamara Grčić, Eva Grubinger, Hans Schabus, Christoph Schäfer, Willem de Rooij, and others. From Nordhorn, Dirck moved to Styria in 2012 to serve as a curator in the Institute for Art in Public Space. There he curated a mediation project on art in public space, the aim being to build on this to illuminate the issue of “social sculpture.” This presented an appropriate thematic framework for realizing, in subsequent years, important projects with artists like Joseph Kosuth, Susan Philipsz, Tue Greenfort, and Atelier Van Lieshout, among others. What political, social, economic, and ecological issues can be addressed with art in public space?
“Hamburg Maschine” was then the motto of the Stadtkuratorin program headed by Dirck Möllmann as of 2018. He commissioned artists to illuminate digital flux, data security, codetermination, and management of natural resources. How are we dealing with new communication media? The first project, “ElbeBees” by Belgian artist AnneMarie Maes, dealt with the disappearance of the honeybee and involved a newly created beehive recording the live data of temperature, humidity, and imagery in the bees’ home. The video simulation “Western Flag” by John Gerrard was installed at the Rathausmarkt in Hamburg and showed a flagpole with big plumes of black smoke in Texas. This digital landscape alludes to the first oil drilling in Texas in 1901, which started the oil boom in the USA.
Dirck succeeded in updating the discussion about art in public space by responding to the changed conditions for society caused by globalization, digitalization, migration, and ecological challenges. In the program Stadtkuratorin, Dirck was thinking well into the future, as he worked to develop a model institute in Hamburg for art in public space. Dirck understood working with art as a social act. This came to a far too early end with his death on September 21, 2019.