Issue 65 / July 2026
eds. Zoran Erić, Mischa Kuball, Dorothee Richter and Simone Voigt

if walls could tell – East-Central European Perspectives on Participation

The project if walls could tell by Mischa Kuball transformed blank white walls in public spaces into open, uncensored platforms for collective civic expression. This deceptively simple intervention formed the basis of a transnational initiative that unfolded across seven cities — Sarajevo, Bucharest, Skopje, Chișinău, Ljubljana, Kraljevica, and Čačak — between August 2024 and June 2025. 

The project proposed a specific artistic position, that of the artist as catalyst and the curator as mediator, creating an open framework for public expression without predetermined scripts or aesthetic expectations. This issue documents and critically reflects on that process through more than thirty contributors, moving between theoretical essays on participatory practice, commoning and care aesthetics, curatorial reflections, and city-specific panel discussions that engaged with the particular socio-political urgencies of each context. Together, the contributions raise questions about the role of cultural institutions at the semi-periphery of Europe, the limits and possibilities of participatory art, and the capacity of shared public space to build or repair social bonds in societies marked by fragility, contestation, and ongoing civic unrest.