Valeria Schwarz has been active in the international culture scene since 2007 as a feminist artist, curator, culture manager and communicator. Her work has been presented at, among others, the Triennale du Valais, the Bern Museum of Art, Spielart, the Lisbon Architecture Triennial, Parallel Events Manifesta 8 and 9, Museu da Fotografia, Matadero Madrid, the Buenos Aires Night of Museums, the School of Intermedia Arts (2013, Hang Zhou, China) and in Berlin. In 2009, she cofounded “iCollective e. V.”, a collaborative platform run by creative people working at the interface between art, interventions in the urban area and socially-engaged projects. Since 2016, Schwarz has been sharing her time between professional and caring activities.
Which topic turns up again and again in your artistic activities?
The focal aspect of my art projects is location-specific interventions in the public sphere as a location for political, economic and social communication.
What do you seek to achieve with your arts education activities?
In my workshops, I seek to actively involve participants so that new, alternative histories are experienced and internalised and, ideally, result in direct action for more global justice.
What, in your view, is the essence of an artistic intervention in arts education?
An artistic intervention in arts education ought to support the process of developing new visions of society based on solidarity and mutual understanding.
Experiencing cultural education and making it alive, 2018
In 2018, I conceived the ongoing project “Kulturelle Bildung Er(be)leben” (experiencing cultural education and making it alive). Er(be)leben invites young people to participate artistically in the discourse on public spaces as creative urban inhabitants and engage in urban development. How does the everyday perception which young people have of the urban area differ? How does their current life relate to the history of Berlin?
What have you taken home from this project for your artistic activities
This project showed me how little the wishes and needs of young people are addressed in the discourse on urban development. Since then, I have been attempting to integrate insights of the young generations in my activities.