Morten Jensen Vågen, born 1987 in Haugesund, is a Norwegian multidisciplinary artist with a background in skateboard and graffiti culture. His artistic practice is driven by a curiosity for how we use – and misuse – the city.
During July 2026, Vågen will extend his ongoing mapping project "Loophole" from Oslo into the densely populated Ruhr area, which hosts Manifesta in 2026. He will identify and document small openings within the logic of the city: hidden shortcuts, overlooked resources, improvised uses of infrastructure, and other moments where urban systems reveal unexpected flexibility.
The result may take shape as sculpture, video, publication, or another site-responsive format. The project will reveal the city not only as infrastructure, but as a space of friction, imagination, and unofficial possibility.
Since graduation from the Oslo Art Academy in 2017, Vågen has presented work in a range of contexts in Norway and internationally. Most recently he had a solo show titled “Power Structures” at Galleri 69, Oslo, and was part of the group shows Common Ground at Cabanon in Paris and the annual autumn showHøstutstillingen (known for Edvard Munch’s debut in 1883) in Oslo.
“Residens i Residensen Ruhrgebiet 2026” ist eine Kooperation zwischen dem Künstler*innenhaus Dortmund und der Kgl. Norwegischen Botschaft Berlin.
In August 2023, Künstlerhaus Dortmund announced a curatorial grant for the realization of a group exhibition for the first time. The in-house jury awarded it to Julian Volz for his project Inner Mining / Outer Mining: A global constellation. The show deals with various forms of extractivism in the 21st century and brings artistic positions from Southern Africa and Western Europe in a dialog. The exhibition will be on display at the Künstlerhaus from February 3 to March 14.
Julian Volz works as a curator, art critic and editor. He is also currently working on a dissertation on Franco-Algerian contemporary art as part of the graduate program "Cultures of Critique" at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg. In his projects, he is mainly interested in critical perspectives on neo-colonial contemporary capitalism, as well as the legacy of (cultural) revolutionary movements, with a focus on the awakening around 1968 and anti-colonialism.
Volz studied "Cultures of the Curatorial" with Beatrice von Bismarck and Benjamin Meyer-Krahmer at the Academy of Fine Arts (HGB) Leipzig, as well as political science in Frankfurt am Main and Lyon. His essays and reviews have appeared in magazines such as Texte zur Kunst, Gallerytalk, Soziopolis, Missy Magazine, Sabzian and Neues Deutschland. He has already implemented curatorial projects at institutions such as the Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, the Belgian Cinematek Brussels, the Theater Oberhausen (as part of the "Schlingensief 2020" festival), the Kunsthalle Darmstadt and Galerie Anton Janizewski.
The sound artist Anja Erdmann (*1976, Erfurt) studied media art/media design at the Bauhaus University Weimar, specialising in sound art and electroacoustic sound design.
Noise, sound, light, shadow, movement, space - these characterise the artist's works. For her intermedial installations, she prepares, for example, DC motors, solenoids and computer fans and stages them as noisy sound objects. The combination of light, electromechanical movement and sound creates special acoustic and audiovisual spatial experiences. Erdmann also plays with her sound objects in musical improvisations with other musicians. Her artistic works have been exhibited in Germany, France, Finland and the Netherlands. She lives and works in Weimar.
Until mid-September this year, I was a scholarship holder at the Künstlerhaus Lauenburg Elbe. It was a completely new acoustic experience for me, as I had never lived on a river before. By living here on the water and by observing, listening to and recording the passing boats and barges with their chugging engines, I became curious about the subject of inland navigation and the transport of goods. about inland navigation and the transport of goods on artificial waterways.
During the 2 weeks I would devote myself further to this topic and be inspired to ideas ideas for new projects. The port of Dortmund, as the largest canal port in Europe, could be my next connection for research and field recordings.
When someone asks me what I do as a visual artist, my answer is: "I am a world builder!"
My organically growing constructions are neither models for something nor models of something. They are life designs, proposals and suggestions for new ideas and spatial concepts, but also designs for unrealisable constructions from a utopian parallel world.
During the 2 weeks of Tapetenwechsel in Dortmund, I would like to develop a temporary installation that will consist of objects found on site and also borrowed from the Künstlerhaus. These will be returned to the owners at the end of my residency, and the installation will be organically transformed back into its individual elements as it has grown.
In 2020, due to the Covid 19 situation, we decided together with our originally selected guest artist from Korea (Summer Residency) to postpone the residency for one year. The one international guest was replaced by four domestic artists. "Tapetenwechsel" was born.
The four-week residency at the Künstlerhaus Dortmund became four one-week "changes of scenery" for:
Magdalena Los (Köln)
Paul Reinholz (Köln)
Gabi Steinhauser (Berlin)
Charline Zongos (Bremen)