The Berliner Key is a two-sided-key that was designed to "force people to close and lock their doors (usually a main entrance door or gate leading into a common yard or tenement block)", produced to replace the concierge, whose job it was to open the door all through the night.
Acting as a tool for power mechanism, the key granted permission for the door to be opened on both sides towards and away from two different vistas—standing for a series of binary divisions: inside and outside; tenants and owners; institutions and audiences; known and unknown.
Taking the Berliner Key as the as a 'key' object Cabinet of the Unknown exhibition project dwells with the unknown through the processes of knowing and creating acquaintance. It pursues the goal to connect the known to the unknown by linking the museum in the backyard to the street in front, making the unknown of the museum knowable to its environment.
The long tradition of museum practice calls for museums as institutions to provide knowledge—in traditional museology, knowledge is that a museum offers where the visitor entering the museum has already accepted the knowledge that will be given as correct.
This project invites the already untraditional Museum der Dinge to expose its more fragile aspect and share this with its community.
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