The Questions: in pictures

In October and November 2025, Quarantine presented The Questions in both Manchester and Chemnitz.

Across the two cities, we brought together 10 artists, 5 from Manchester, 5 from Chemnitz, across generations, to collaborate for a week in each place – an open-ended, creative exchange called Would Like To Meet, with 2 hubs, in Manchester at HOME’s artist development space, The Arches, and in Chemnitz at Museum Gunzenhauser.

In the months preceding, after our call out for Would Like To Meet artists had finished, we were busy speaking with people – both on the cusp of adulthood and in the later stages of life – to join us in our new work Telescope.

These people became lenders of objects that formed a live exhibition and durational performance – sharing with us things they treasured, had held onto, or felt were important, for a whole variety of reasons. In dialogue, in pairs, in groups, in public, people reflected on ideas of belonging, as around them we gathered a growing display of these various things. Hundreds of people visited, listening to the conversations, looking at the objects, taking a moment to pause. After, this new work premiered at Manchester Museum, we re-made it as part of a month long residency on the ground floor of Chemnitz art gallery Museum Gunzenhauser, for Chemnitz 2025: European Capital of Culture.

‘[it was] useful and enlightening when I realised how much [my items] meant to me and all the other emotions that came with them’

– Telescope lender

In the space next to Telescope at Museum Gunzenhauser, we also created an installation called Moving Boxes. It was an invitation to make, reshape, and build with cardboard boxes, in response to a changing series of prompts – to shape walls, pyramids, cities, that were each day broken down to start again and be remade the next day. This installation remains, and continues until 18 January 2026, alongside the archive of objects from Telescope in the gallery next door.

Elsewhere, over 2 weeks in 3 libraries across Chemnitz, Quarantine artist Kate Daley handmade 3 books containing works of collective fiction based on conversations with more than 60 people in different Chemnitz libraries – the first in our Building of spines series published in another language (German). The texts were shaped by local writer Gabi Reinhardt. (Hear from artist Kate Daley about the project in this interview with the Allianz Foundation on Instagram.)

As sort of discursive book-ends to these layered, concurrently unfolding projects, we invited Florian Malzacher to curate and host two editions of his nomadic in-conversation series The Art of Assembly. The first, at Contact in Manchester, brought together Jenna Ashton, Linda Brogan and Alistair Hudson; the second, on the final day of our time at Museum Gunzenhauser, was with Sajad Habibi, Darren O’Donnell and Cecile Sandten. As visitors made imaginary cities with cardboard boxes in the space next door, these artists, academics and cultural workers probed through conversation the question: what makes a city?

Thanks to everyone who joined us over 8 weeks to talk, listen, share and question.

‘It was wonderful to hear from young and older people, speaking so honestly about where they live, what’s important to them.’

– Telescope audience member

We’d love to present The Questions’ strands again, in new places and contexts. If you’re interested, please email Executive Director Kevin Jamieson kevin@qtine.com.

The Questions by Quarantine was presented in collaboration with ASA FF e.V., Manchester Museum and Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz – Museum Gunzenhauser

In cooperation with Allianz Foundation
Part of Chemnitz 2025: European Capital of Culture
Supported by the British Council, Cultural Bridge, Manchester City Council and The Skelton Charity

Photo credits

Photography of Telescope and Would Like To Meet in Manchester is by Solomon Hughes.

Photography of Telescope, Moving Boxes and Would Like To Meet in Chemnitz is by Mark Frost.