Prof. JP Raether is part of the group exhibition Land and Soil. How We Live Together  which opens on Friday, 28 November at K21 in Düsseldorf. For the closing event on 19 April 2026, a performance by Sybling (JP Raether & Sarah Friend) will lead to the nearby open-pit coal mine Garzweiler, a place of tensions between industry and preservation, capital gain and activism, that underpin this exhibition.

Professor JP Raether hosts and directs Live Art Form master's program at the AdBK Nuremberg. He has also been vice-president since September 2025.

The exhibition Land and Soil. How We Live Together leads us back to the foundations of human coexistence. It invites visitors to gather around questions of living, owning, and sharing, and to envision a just and sustainable future. For the first time, an exhibition will span the entire former parliament building of K21 and extend to the adjacent Ständehauspark, addressing the ground the museum stands on—both geographically and historically. Around thirty international artists and collectives will present various models of administrating resources —from indigenous ways of planning to co-ownership and utopian blockchain projects

Coal, earth, lotus silk, pine needles, chocolate: the exhibition touches on elementals in both material and form. It takes us to Brazil, Korea, the Congo, Japan, the USA, China, Peru, Vietnam, Iraq, Sri Lanka, the Middle East and back to Germany. It explores the newest fantasies of libertarian thinkers who seek to build their own states or occupy Mars. And it looks at the foundations of the industrial wealth of Düsseldorf.

Featuring: Havîn Al-Sîndy, Maria Thereza Alves, Asche Lützerathi (otherhosted by Sybling – JP Raether & Sarah Friend), Joseph Beuys, AA Bronson, Cercle d'Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (Congolese Plantation Workers Art League, CATPC), Liu Chuang, Simon Denny, Jan Dibbets, Nir Evron, Simone Fattal, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, Jef Geys, Robert Gober, Dor Guez, Andreas Gursky, Christopher Kulendran Thomas, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Richard Long, Gordon Matta-Clark, Boris Mikhailov, Lutz Mommartz, Grace Ndiritu, Simone Nieweg, Chris Reinecke, Ugo Rondinone, Thomas Ruff, Lin May Saeed, Shimabuku, terra0, Ron Tran, Franz West, Alex Wissel

Land and soil. How we live together

29 November 2025 — 19 April 2026
Opening on 28 November 2025, 7 p.m.

Closing event with performance by Sybling (JP Raether & Sarah Friend)