Who – and what – belongs here? In this museum – and in this city? Manchester-based artist group Quarantine transform the ground floor of Museum Gunzenhauser with their new project The Questions, as part of Chemnitz 2025: European Capital of Culture. Through live exhibition, conversation and an ever-changing installation, you’re invited to gather, reflect and respond to ideas about belonging across generations. All welcome, whatever you think….
The takeover includes Telescope, a live exhibition of borrowed belongings, and their owners’ thoughts about where they themselves belong; Would Like To Meet, a cross-border intergenerational exchange between pairs of artists working in various forms who are at least 20 years apart in age; Moving Boxes, a participatory installation of the cardboard boxes that we use when relocating from one place to another; and Art of Assembly, one of a nomadic series of lectures and conversations, speculating on the potential of assemblies in a time when not much seems certain.
Beyond the museum, Quarantine take up residency in three libraries across the city over two weeks with their project Building of spines. Quarantine artist Kate Daley hand makes a book containing a work of collective fiction based on conversations with people who are present in those libraries. The texts are shaped by local writer Gabi Reinhardt.
Moving Boxes – public call
(7 Nov. 2025 – 14 Nov. 2025)
**** We are looking for your moving boxes ***
We’d like you to lend us your empty moving boxes for the duration of the exhibition.* We want boxes that have the history of their journeys written on them. You can bring them into Museum Gunzenhauser from Friday 7 – Friday 14 November between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. Let us know how many you’ll bring and when you arrive by contacting leo@qtine.com. We’ll log each box and where it’s been in a public archive. The installation of boxes will form an invitation to visit to arrange and re-arrange them in ever-changing constellations – shaping walls, pyramids, cities – whatever you choose….
*We cannot guarantee that you will get the same box back, but if you would like a similar box with a different story at the end of the exhibition, please let us know when you bring it…
Quarantine: Telescope – live exhibition
Sat 15 & Sun 16 Nov, 12–5pm
Wed 19 – Sun 23 Nov, 12–5pm
Tue 25 – Fri 28 Nov, 12–5pm
Sat 29 Nov, 12–4pm
Young people on the cusp of adulthood and older people who’ve lived a life have been invited to lend something to display at Museum Gunzenhauser – maybe something they’d be devastated to lose, something they’d like to get rid of, something they found and kept… Over three weeks, this evolving exhibition is animated by a live dialogue, as Quarantine ask the lenders a series of questions as starting points for conversations that are by turns complex, funny, familiar, extraordinary – and profoundly human. It’s an insight into what we hold on to; what we value and why, both individually and as a society.
Moving Boxes – a participatory installation
(15 Nov. 2025 – 30.Nov. 2025)
Do you still have the boxes you last moved house with? What does it say on them? “Chemnitz”? “Bedroom”? “Miscellaneous pots and pans”? Are they empty now? Or still waiting to be unpacked? The installation of boxes will form an invitation to visit to arrange and re-arrange them in ever-changing constellations – shaping walls, pyramids, cities – whatever you choose….
Quarantine: Would Like To Meet – artists’ open studios
(24 – 30 Nov. 2025)
Would Like To Meet brings together 5 artists from Chemnitz with 5 artists from Manchester, each with a generational age gap, asking what questions they might have for each other. Working in textiles, ceramics, ikebana, visual art, performance, photography and illustration, the artists will relocate their studios to Museum Gunzenhauser, open to visitors.
Quarantine: Art of Assembly
(29 Nov. 2025, 4–6pm)
The Questions will culminate with Florian Malzacher’s The Art of Assembly, which brings together artists, activists and thinkers in a longitudinal research study into how and why it matters that we physically assemble, and what this enables – socially and politically – in a time when so much is uncertain. In Chemnitz, the focus will be the subject of intergenerational assembly and the layers of experience a city holds.
The Questions at Museum Gunzenhauser is part of the museum’s exhibition programme Best of II: Visitors’ Choice, running from 20 September 2025 – 18 January 2026.
About Quarantine
Founded in Manchester in 1998, Quarantine is an award-winning ensemble of artists and producers making cross-disciplinary work that explores what it means to live right now: qtine.com
‘Quarantine is a remarkable theatre company that has created a body of beautiful, fragile and authentic work, which finds the extraordinary in the ordinary lives of real people.’ Guardian
In collaboration with ASA-FF e.V.
Part of Chemnitz European Capital of Culture 2025
In cooperation with Allianz Foundation
Supported by Cultural Bridge, Manchester City Council and The Skelton Charity
This project is part of the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025. This project is co-financed by tax funds on the basis of the parliamentary budget of the state of Saxony and by federal funds from the Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media).
