“Odyssey” is an evolving initiative that came out of Rita McBride’s teaching at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. The core idea is to explore how knowledge circulates and intersects with different aspects of time, materials, language, technology, and institutions. It does this through exhibitions, lectures, publications, and collaborations across different regions.
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The inaugural exhibition, „If You Can’t Open It, You Don’t Own It“, takes the idea of"opening" as a metaphor to rethink ownership. Asking the question: Do you truly own something if you don’t understand it? How does knowledge shape the meaning of objects? How do systems emerge through processes of deconstruction and reconstruction? The exhibition doesn’t follow a strict, linear perspective but instead allows for multiple interpretations. Ultimately, it uses art as a method to explore contemporary questions of access, control, and agency.