oval office, 2018-2022
With the opening of the Oval Office in November 2018, a new media arts centre was created in Bochum which explicitly addresses the issues raised by a media-saturated present and examines the relationships between humanity, nature and technology. Its oval exhibition space serves as a platform for alternative aesthetic utopias and presents interdisciplinary installation artworks that feature elements of installation and performance art in addition to periodic experimental music projects and talks. Exhibitions in the Oval Office are openly accessible to everyone – regardless of gender, cultural allegiances, social status or sexual orientation. Entry is free of charge.
an interdisciplinary space: The Oval Office’s physical location in direct proximity to a state theatre raises questions about the interaction between different art forms and disciplines. Through a series of heterogeneous installation-based artworks that continually challenge visitors' perceptions in different ways, the Oval Office focuses on themes around identity, liveness, immersion and the shift between realities. The Oval Office presents itself as an interdisciplinary art space, which remains distinct from other institutions of a similar nature by focussing on media arts from the perspective of the performative.
Tobias Staab founded the exhibition space in 2018 and curates all the exhibitions that take place at Oval Office until summer 2022.
