About us

Kunsthalle Dortmund is the exhibition venue of HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein e. V. at Dortmunder U. Founded in 1996, the association is now one of Germany’s most renowned institutions for international contemporary (media) art. Its programme includes exhibitions, performances, film programmes, lectures and other educational formats, with a particular focus on media art and the social issues of our time. The renaming of the exhibition venue as Kunsthalle Dortmund strengthens the institution’s public visibility. The organisation’s legal entity and operator remains unchanged: HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein e. V. HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein is funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and the City of Dortmund / Dortmunder U.

Since its foundation in 1996, HMKV has realised numerous exhibitions, film, video, music and performance programmes, workshops, lectures, symposia and conferences in Dortmund as well as in various cities throughout Germany and abroad. In Dortmund, these included the 2,200-square-metre PHOENIX Halle Dortmund (2003–2010), a former spare parts warehouse of the Phoenix-West steelworks built in 1895, and, since 2010, the Dortmunder U – the centre for art and creativity located in the former Union Brewery.

Among the exhibitions of the past two decades were numerous significant projects, including Reservate der Sehnsucht (1998), games – Computerspiele von KünstlerInnen (2003 – “Special Exhibition” of the Year 2003 (German Section of AICA); 2004 Innovation Award of the Fonds Soziokultur), History Will Repeat Itself (2007), Anna Kournikova ... Art in the Age of Intellectual Property (2008), “Wach sind nur die Geister” – On Ghosts and Their Media (2009), Building Memory and Arctic Perspective (2010 – Arctic Perspective was listed by ARTFORUM among the “Best Exhibitions of 2010”), The Oil Show (2011), Sounds Like Silence (2012 – “Special Exhibition” of the Year 2012 (German Section of AICA)), His Master’s Voice: On Voice and Language (2013), INDUSTRIAL (Research) and Requiem für eine Bank (2013–2014).

In 2014, HMKV presented the exhibitions World of Matter: On the Global Ecologies of Raw Materials, “Jetzt helfe ich mir selbst” – The 100 Best Video Tutorials from the Internet and Böse Clowns. Das Mechanische Corps (2015) followed the traces of Jules Verne, while Digitale Folklore explored the archaeology of the World Wide Web. In 2016, Whistleblower & Vigilantes presented key figures of digital resistance.

The year 2017 began with an exhibition on the topic of Brutalism. The exhibition Afro-Tech (2017) presented Africa as a continent of technological innovation, while Sturm auf den Winterpalast examined the history of one of the most successful “fake news” stories: the famous photograph of the “storming” of the Winter Palace, which in fact originated from a theatrical re-enactment staged in 1920.

Computer Grrrls (2018) explored the relationship between women and technology throughout history and in the present. The exhibition Der Alt-Right-Komplex (2019) investigated racist and identitarian (so-called “new” or “alternative”) right-wing networks, while Artists & Agents. Performance Art and Intelligence Services examined the peculiar connection between intelligence practices and artistic practices (2019–2020).