In 2017, a group of political scientists and democracy activists visited an annual democracy festival on the Danish island of Bornholm. “There were 100,000 visitors and lots of politicians in their fancy summer suits, but in fact almost no one was talking about democracy,” said Zakia Elvang, who is a democracy advisor and Executive Director at We Do Democracy, a leading organization for democratic innovation in Denmark. No one had asked how democracy was actually doing, she continued, and how it could be reinvented. The group thought and discussed at length until someone finally said, “Democracy has become weak. We need a gym for it.” Since then, Elvang and her team have been running the Democracy Fitness program. They have defined 10 Democratic Muscles and have now trained democracy fitness trainers throughout Europe who work with groups of 20 to 200 fellow exercisers to strengthen muscles such as empathy, composure, the ability to compromise and active listening.

On this basis, we set up a democracy gym in the “All In!” exhibition, a selection of interactive design and art pieces for visitors to train their democratic muscles. zweintopf, for example, two artists from Styria, Austria, contributed the work “Langer Atem” (staying power), a four-meter-high inflatable sculpture. The statue is modeled on the “Goddess of Democracy,” which art students erected on Tiananmen Square in Beijing just days before brutal police violence ended the democracy protests in 1989. In the Bundeskunsthalle, the inflatable “Goddess of Democracy” was connected to a pump station. The message to visitors was clear: if air is not pumped into her regularly, the goddess will collapse, and democracy will be nothing but an empty shell. Democracy needs active citizens, and cardio training, as we know, is just as important as building muscle.
A shout-out to curator and culture manager Viviane Stappmanns, whose joking remark was the beginning of our democracy gym.