Luise Willer is a research associate at the Collaborative Research Centre Intervening Arts at Freie Universität Berlin. In her dissertation project, she examines contemporary artistic practices that make use the interventionist character of assemblies to influence political and social orders and institutions. She completed a master’s in museum studies at the École du Louvre with a research project on the relationship between nationalism and museum reform at the beginning of the 20th century. She obtained a master’s degree in International Art History and Museology at the University of Heidelberg; in her thesis, supervised by Monica Juneja, she examined the relationship between world-making in video and exhibitions about the former "East".

Research areas

- Transcultural Studies and Global Art History
- Museums and Nationalism
- World-making and Futurity
- Art and Social Justice
- Institutional Critique

Teaching and Research Presentations

“Encounters” mit Chantelle Lue und Lena Pozdnyakova, SAE Greenhouse Lab, Stretching Thresholds, Holding Streams, Migros Museum Zürich, 16.12.2024

“Assembling as Institutional Possibility,” Workshop and talk at PSi #29 - Assemble!, University of London, 22.6.2024

“Living Archives: contemporary artistic practice ,” as Guest speaker in Eric de Bruyn’s Seminar The Archival Turn: Documentary Practices in Contemporary Art and Media, PUC Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, 7.11.2023

“Relational Aesthetics and its Discontents,” as a Guest Speaker in Eric de Bruyn’s Seminar Intervention, Participation, Assembly, Freie Universität Berlin, 25.01.2023

“Critical Reflections on Artists as Organizers: Marina Naprushkina and Caroline Woolard,” conference presentation with Lena Pozdnyakova and Janette Helm, Contemporary Art Centre Vilnius, 10.05.2024

Projects

Agrupa

agrupa is a series encompassing lectures, workshops, film screenings, performances, and similar events, with a focus on in-between spaces and their constellations. The project explores the potential of socially engaged practices and participatory art in relation to an eclectic spectrum of publics, institutions, and spaces. With the aim of expanding the umbrella term "intervention," it brings community and social work, urban renewal practices, and political movements into dialogue as forms of knowledge production and social engagement.

Institutional Possibility: Protocols for Caring Institutions, a collaboration with Caroline Woolard, CRC Intervening Arts, 28.4.2023

Radical Futurisms. T.J. Demos in Conversation with Lena Pozdnyakova and Luise Willer, n.b.k. Berlin, 21.3.2023

Marina Naprushkina und die Neue Nachbarschaft, workshop and talk, Neue Nachbarschaft/Moabit, 7.12.2022

DETOURS: ein Film von Ekaterina Selekina, screening and talk, WOLF Kino, Neukölln, 1.12.2022

Edited Volumes

Politics of Dis/Assembling. Reflections on Artistic and Activist Interventions. Berlin/Rotterdam: HumDrum Press 2026 (forthcoming). Together with Naomi Boyce, Sambojang Ceesay, Judith H. Pieper, Lena Pozdnyakova and João G. Rizek.

Articles

Janette Helm, Sophie Mak-Schram, Lena Pozdnyakova, Luise Willer (2025): “What is the (Art)Work of Care? Close-Reading the Artistic Labour of Institutional Transformation in the Work of Marina Naprushkina and Caroline Woolard,” in: The Art–Labour Relationship in Contemporary Art in Central and Eastern Europe, 1991–present, AAAV journal 118, 2025, 48-81. (peer reviewed)

Lena Pozdnyakova, João Rizek, Luise Willer: “Intervenierende Versammlungen,” in: Karin Gludowatz und Mathias Warstat (Ed.): Intervenierende Künste. Begriffe – Verfahren – Prozesse, Zürich: diaphanes 2025. 273-296.

Exhibition texts and magazine articles

Luise Willer: “Belonging to a borderless nature. On Kazakhstan’s Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale,” in: Arts of the Working Class, 5/2024.

Sabrina Herrmann and Luise Willer: “Hassina Taalbi. Very close to them,” in: On Mutual Suppot, Issues N°4, School of Commons ZHdK Zürich, 2/2024.

Luise Willer: “The Revenge of the Given,” Exhibition text Iulia Nistor, Galeria Plan B, Berlin, 2019.

Christine Macel und Luise Willer: “Un Nouveaux regard sur la vie et l‘oeuvre de Franz West,” in: Christine Macel/ Mark Godfrey (Ed.): Franz West, Paris: Editions du Centre Pompidou, 2018, 200-215.

Luise Willer: “Henri Danloux, Episode de Déluge”, in: Markus Bertsch/Jörg Trempler (Ed.): Entfesselte Natur. Das Bild der Katastrophe seit 1600, Hamburger Kunsthalle
Fulda 2018.