Apocalypse Münsterland

The project

"Apokalypse Münsterland" is a cooperation project of museums and exhibition halls that try out digital mediation methods and visitor-oriented approaches in order to position themselves for the future. Under the project management of Münsterland e.V., more than 25 cultural institutions in Münsterland worked together with the cooperation partners Münster University of Applied Sciences, Department of Architecture (Münster School of Architecture, MSA), BOK + Gärtner GmbH (agency for communication design and scenography) and the FabLab of münsterLAND.digital e.V..

Central fields of action of the project are cooperation, participation, digitalisation and mobilisation of cultural offerings. Against the backdrop of a digital apocalypse and a cry for help from the future, the museums and exhibition houses posed the following guiding question to their visitors: "Which cultural asset do you want to preserve and why?". This could be an exhibit, but also ideas, concepts and other treasures came into question.

The concrete result was a digital and mobilised exhibition. It toured to 16 stations in Münsterland in summer 2019 and helped the participating institutions gain more visibility in the region. In addition, it aimed to reach new groups of visitors.

The story

Münsterland has received an SOS from the future: People have lost their roots. Always on the wire, in the matrix, looking for distraction. The downfall came insidiously: mobile phones, tablets and smart TVs were only the first harbingers of total digitalisation. After the digital apocalypse, nothing is real any more, nothing has substance.

Everything is uniform and standardised. Society is in danger of collapsing. But scientists find the longed-for cultural diversity: in the past, in us. A dose of digitised culture from the present is to be sent into the future and fed into it. A call for help overcomes the boundaries of space and time.

"Send us culture! Art, artefacts, literature, objects, ideas, concepts, treasures!" reads the SOS from the future. The future wants to know what is important to people. What moves them. What they want to preserve.