Press release
ARTotale – Leuphana Urban Art Project
September 22, 2009
Internationally renowned street artists alter the urban visage of Lueneburg – 1,200 students support artists with self-produced videos – Collaboration between city and university facilitates a new-student orientation program unique in Germany.
LUENEBURG. With the unique academic program “ARTotale,” one of a kind in Germany, Leuphana University Lueneburg is kicking off the new semester. From October 1–9, Lueneburg will become an arena for the international street art scene. Over 35 internationally prominent artists in collaboration with 1,200 new students at Leuphana University – marking the start of their first year – will be altering the historical visage of the Hanseatic city of Lueneburg by intervening in public space with their artistic works. Along with graffiti, paste-ups, installations, and sculptures by the involved artists, 350 video films will be produced by the students and subsequently evaluated by a discerning jury of film experts.
The 1,200 first-semester students at Leuphana University have been given the challenge of participating in the process of artistic creation by making their own video clips. The short films, conceptualized and produced in small teams under the direction of experts, will then be reviewed by a jury and published online. Chair of the jury will be Dieter Kosslick, director of the Berlinale – Berlin International Film Festival.
Holm Keller, chancellor and vice-president of the Leuphana University Lueneburg responsible for this event, considers ARTotale not only to be a significant art event but also a crucial step in an academic program, as offered at Leuphana, that is geared toward developing interdisciplinarity and social competency: “Here, right at the beginning of their university education, young students are confronted with a challenge that requires and fosters social and communicative competence and demands interdisciplinary thinking and creativity. They therefore realize at the outset that a university education at Leuphana asks more of them than a narrowly conceived Bachelor’s program.”
Renowned Hamburg curator and collector Rik Reinking has taken on the artistic direction of ARTotale. The Lueneburg project brings together well-known names from the international urban art scene, including players such as Zevs, a pioneer of the French street art scene who in 2002 became famous in Germany through a visual kidnapping action in Berlin, or DAIM, aka Mirko Reisser, who in the same year realized the 2,000-square-meter Dockart Project at the Hamburg Harbor. These two – like their fellow artists from a total of 10 countries – have long been active in the sphere of visual arts and have been represented by prestigious museums and art collections. A comprehensive list of participating artists can be found on the website www.artotale.com.
Over the past three years, Leuphana University Lueneburg has been involved in a widely noted process of conceptual realignment. One innovative academic model is offered by Leuphana College in the form of a Bachelor’s degree program for first-degree-level university education. In turn, the Leuphana Graduate School assimilates the Master’s and doctoral programs. And the Leuphana Professional School houses continuing education and collaborative projects pertaining to knowledge transfer. In the year 2007 Leuphana University, alongside four other institutions of higher education, was distinguished by the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft in their “Strategies of excellence for small- and medium-sized institutions of higher education” competition. Taking center stage in the campus development plans at the University is the central building designed by Daniel Libeskind forming a hub for students, research, conferences, including the large-scale auditorium maximum. Daniel Libeskind has been teaching as a guest lecturer at Leuphana University since 2007. With the “Innovation Incubator” – a project enjoying immense EU support and boasting an investment volume of nearly 100 million euros – the University this year initiated a particularly ambitious project striving for the advancement of regional economic development through scientific research. At present, 7,500 students are enrolled at Leuphana University, with approximately 600 scholars involved in instruction and research.