KRIEG? is an initiative founded in 2016. As a university gallery, it is affiliated to PXL-MAD School of Arts (Hasselt, BE), offering a public-oriented and autonomous artistic program. KRIEG? places artists at the center, and seeks to foster experimental connections between presentation, education and research.

The added question mark echoes a series of letters between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud written in 1932 and published one year later under the title Warum Krieg? (Why War?) Both authors were trying to come to terms with the nature of war and violence as pervasive forces in the history of mankind, and the limited capacity of intellectual and spiritual leaders to directly influence the course of political events leading up to it. In turning to the founding father of psychoanalysis, Einstein was seeking explanations for the collective “psychosis of hate and destructiveness” that he saw reflected in the atrocities of war. KRIEG? is not meant as a political statement, but as an act of self-reflection on its nominal identity and an open invitation to further debate.