The exhibition What Are the Clouds? takes as its point of departure the Reformation Anniversary in order to reflect on freedom, emancipation, and imagination. The exhibition’s starting point is Pier Paolo Pasolini’s short film Che cosa sono le nuvole? (What Are
the Clouds?) from the year 1968, with the artist staging Shakespeare’s Othello as a marionette theater with actors on strings. The exhibition thematizes the multifaceted aesthetic and discursive planes of What Are the Clouds? and takes them even further—all the way to contexts like colonialism and decolonialism, forms and cultures of resistance from the 1960s, and questions of the “emancipated spectator.” It shows artistic works that correlate historical and contemporary perspectives in their reformulation of freedom and emancipation. Accompanying the exhibition is a detailed program featuring guided tours, performances, films, workshops, lectures, and discussions.