In The Flow

Originally, I was asked to do a tour to art sites in Berlin. When I thought about what is the most exciting at the moment, I did not think of places but rather of exhibition organizers, who usually do not work in just one place. Today, curating does not only refer to maintaining a collection or making never before seen references between artistic works tangible because you are a genius. But then, shouldn’t art sites instead be called art spaces? Actually, art space or spaces for the arts are terms that you often hear in Berlin nowadays. What is changing and what kind of influence do these changes have on art sites and exhibitions? On my tour, I will introduce you to some exhibition organizers and to their viewpoints. In passing, we will of course also see the places where they work.

One

At Kunst-Werken with Ellen Blumenstein

I pour out of the tram at Oranienburger Straße at half past eleven. Passing through the sleepy little Scheunenviertel (Barn Quarter) that used to be a center for the occupation of houses in the East Berlin of the 80s, I slowly make my way to the Kunst-Werke (short: KW). Before going to the exhibition, I really need an espresso and a croissant from Café Bravo, which is in the courtyard of the KW and one of the few interesting architectures in Berlin—a mirrored pavilion designed by the Canadian artist Dan Graham. In the three stories of the KW—the library, the office space, rooms for events and the book store—only contemporary art is produced and displayed. When I visit an exhibition here, I often feel as if I am in something between a walk-in book, a cinema or a theatre and intertwined art works—and in the end I often ask myself where art begins and where it ends. It is better not to go here by yourself, because most of the time you get into an interesting conversation during the exhibition. Afterwards, you might catch yourself spending a few hours at Café Bravo—talking, debating and friendly arguing about art and everything else.

A creaking wooden staircase winds towards the place where all the different formats are realized. This is where Ellen Blumstein works, the woman who has been head curator of the KW for one year now.

AB: Ellen, you have been head curator of the internationally recognized Kunst-Werke Berlin since January 2013. You had already curated an exhibition called ‘Regarding Terror: The RAF Exhibition’ with Felix Enslin and Klaus Biesenbach at the KW a few years back. In your opinion, is organizing an exhibition today more about social and political topics outside of the field of art than it was a few years ago?

EB: References in exhibitions to what is happening in the world— politically, socially, economically and ecologically—have surely increased. This phenomenon is not new: During the general politicization in the 70s, artists as well as exhibition organizers commented on specific global political situations through their works. The counter movement followed immediately in the 80s, where art was often deliberately apolitical.

There is a big difference, let’s say, between the occupy movement directly moving into a museum and a place of art with an exhibition like ‘Regarding Terror’ trying to find out how pictures of your surroundings change over the years. In the first example, the objective is to capture some of the power of activism and to preserve it in a museum. We on the other hand wanted to learn something about how we deal with (political) pictures and as a result sharpen our view on society and our own awareness.

AB: The KW emerged from a collective in the 90s. Back then this was quite uncommon for an art organization, though such working methods had already been used in the field of theatre for some time. In what way has organizing exhibitions and curating become more collective since then?

EB: In think there is less collective curatorial work, at least in our field of work. I suppose the interest in a joint discussion and design in the arts is stronger when the respective environment suddenly experiences a radical change. That was the case in

Berlin in the 90s and the same goes for WHW (What, How & for Whom) in Croatia and also for Beirut, a curatorial initiative in Cairo that was founded in 2012. If the conditions and possibilities to act under these conditions are (seemingly) clear, most curators rather try to find their own position—and to be different from the others.

CAFÉ BRAVO IN THE COURTYARD OF THE KW

KUNST-WERKE BERLIN

AB: In what way have the art sites in Berlin changed over the past ten years? What do you think?

EB: The city focuses more and more on tourism and the same goes for art sites. Maybe it will be less obvious to smaller art associations and studios than to bigger institutions like Hamburg main station or the KW. But the atmosphere of the city market spreads over the entire city and leaves not only specific economic marks, but also distinctive marks in the minds of the organizers and the audience. Artists, curators and institutions calculate what they do less from an inner work or production logic point of view, but more from the effect it has on the public, the statistic success so to speak. The audience seems to be ok with that. At least the number of visitors increases everywhere and more attention is paid to project spaces and free initiatives. Considering this, the role of the so-called independent scene is changing—maybe this was inspired by the theatre, as you suggested. Cities like London, where the economic pressure is still unequally high compared to Berlin, also have independent artistic and curatorial initiatives, but the number is significantly lower than here. On the other hand, they get more attention and are considerably more professionally organized than ours.

I could imagine that Berlin will also undergo a development of that kind. The possibilities to try new things simply under the radar of the own internal public and maybe to deliberately not be professional, are vanishing. The lines are becoming more transparent. We have to wait and see whether or not different publics can survive in this process or if there is only going to be one public left.

AB: Is Berlin exemplary for changes in the role of exhibition organizers and exhibition sites?

EB: Berlin is a very conservative ground for organizing exhibitions. In the Anglo-Saxon context for instance, the lines between art and curatorial practices, but also between art and non-art are much less strict than here, experimenting with formats and constellations is a lot more common. I don’t know why that is. Someone recently claimed that Berlin was a discursive city. I doubt that. Berlin has a strong tradition in self-organized fields, social and artistic ones. But there is also a strong ideological division between the different groups, which makes a discourse on a high and differentiated level more difficult. What you are ‘allowed’ to do and what is ‘an absolute no-go’ is clearly defined in the respective context. And the worst part is that the participants are unaware of that most of the time. Such conventions complicate experimenting and Berlin is probably still provincial in this respect.

Two

At the nGbK wiht Karin Rebbert

It is about 2:30 p.m.—the afternoon is hazy—and I arrive on Oranienstraße in the quarter of Kreuzberg and go to a brand new nGbK exhibition called ‘LARS2 - Love, Aids, Riot, Sex’. I meet Karin Rebbert who has been managing director of the New Society for Fine Arts (nGbK) since 2011 in the spacious rooms on the first floor. The nGbK is an art association—and a very special one at that. Not only because of its first-class and smart exhibitions, but also because of how exhibitions are organized here. Contrary to other art societies, the members (860 in total, 63 % of which are women) make the decisions concerning the program. Teams of five, mostly made up of artists and theorists, realize the exhibitions. As a result of the student movement of 1968, the nGbK was the first art society to plan and organize exhibitions in Germany addressing art, politics and labor. This of course caused a stir in the 70s and 80s and today you are still drawn into inspiring questions about art and society. In front of the exhibition hall is a well-assorted bookstore where you can browse through a bit and directly opposite of it is the Bierhimmel coffee bar, where the nicest waiters in Berlin serve incredibly delicious spinach coco quiche.

AB: Do exhibition organizers today see themselves naturally as researchers who create something in a political and social context?

KR: You could say that, but there are several intertwining dynamics and fluctuations. In the 1960s, exhibition organizers were first seen as auteurs—meaning the idea of a curator with an artist-like nimbus. That can be traced well to Harald Szeeman. Such auteur-curators were mostly male, white and heterosexual. At the moment, artistic production is seen as a product of knowledge in itself. The artists see themselves as researchers and are also described as such. Over the past few years, for instance, universities have introduced PhD programs for artists. This is also kind of a fluctuation.

AB: The nGbK has been practicing collective curating since its foundation in 1969. That was unusual at the time, but today we think more in terms of networks. Since then, has organizing exhibitions and curating become more collective in general?

KR: The common opinion about how to organize exhibitions is deeply rooted in the different art institutions and that in turn affects staffing. Since the 1990s, however, where people reflected more on politics again, collectives started to reemerge. The same happened in the art and culture production, which of course questioned the deeply embedded ideas. Compared to those times, the nGbK has been working in transdisciplinary groups for a long time. Yet not every group is automatically a collective. Our teams choose how they divide the work. The project however, the idea itself, always comes first.

AB: In what way, would you say, have the art sites in Berlin changed over the past ten years?

nGbK Berlin

KR: The debate about how contemporary art should not only be displayed in art societies and galleries, but also in public museums, is always present. And then there is also the obvious trend towards project spaces. For some time now, there has been a multitude of scenes that merge, link with one another or co-exist. The spaces and institutions have increased their PR—but so have those who produce art—almost like small businesses.

Berlin attracts many interesting people from all over the world. So far, in comparison to other big cities, you were able to live on a low budget, and renting a studio was affordable. This is all changing. Local and federal authorities are called up to keep common spaces available so that all these interesting people do not move on to other locations and also so that residents with a lower income can keep living in the city center. The nGbK is going to work on the question of center and periphery, because everybody is talking about how people are driven out of the city center. Where would they go? What is ‘out of the city center’? What are living spaces and social structures like there?

Three

At the Alten Finanzamt (old tax office) with Lorenzo Sandoval

I take a subway at the station ‘Kotti’ aka Kotbusser Tor moving south to the Rathaus Neukölln, a very lively area. Turning into a side street, I arrive in the surprisingly quiet neighborhood surrounding the Altes Finanzamt, which is now the studio of an art initiative. The Altes Finanzamt, that was awarded the Berliner Projekträume prize last year, organized a public program with exhibitions, film series, dance and experimental music. I am meeting Lorenzo Sandoval, who is curating an exhibition here at the moment. The Madrid-born gentleman describes himself as a culture producer—a mixture between curator, artist and designer that helps him avoid the conservative labels that artistic professions often carry. Together with Susanne Husse, who I will meet later, he is developing a continuous research platform called ‘dissident desire’.

AB: Lorenzo, is organizing exhibitions today tied closer to social and political topics?

LS: That depends on those organizing the exhibitions, on their themes and their strategies. But since the crisis has become more obvious, more and more artistic experiments deal with this unfortunate situation and its alternatives. In art and culture, you can overstep boundaries and experiment with ideas, social formats or organizations that think of money in a different way. Today, we reflect more on what pictures actually are, what message they want to convey— what performance is and what is supposed to be displayed in the sense of role expectations and actual performances for an audience. Situations could be staged that reflect our society. Of course you immediately think of the 90s that we experienced in the Western world. There were, however, also artistic and cultural reactions to the economic crisis of the 20s. And during the French Revolution, the Louvre was the first museum with a political orientation towards the left. Looking at that, art has always been a good place to practice political imagination.

AB: Does it only seem that way or are exhibitions organized more collectively today?

LS: This very interesting development probably comes from the Internet and the question of ownership, of authorship of ideas. On the one hand, due to digitalization, Creative Commons and YouTube, we have become more aware of the fact that knowledge is created collectively, which also makes it less protected. On the other hand, the idea of the creating author is a cultural idea that we carry in us. It is easier for us to associate a collective composition with one author. I do not want to judge that, it is simply a fact.

AB: In what way have the art sites in Berlin changed over the past ten years?

LS: I have lived here for four and a half years now and got here directly after the polemic exhibition Based in Berlin. At that time, the scene of independent art spaces organized itself and eventually the senate provided an award for project spaces. That is a start, but in order to manage a project space, you need resources. With a little bit of luck, you receive the award that covers the rent and maybe a small production. But when this award was created, nobody thought of fees, even though this is an important factor. Berlin has to realize how many exciting projects the independent spaces create.

AB: What role does the organization of different sectors of the public play?

LS: The big institutions are under pressure to attract more people and to do scandalous exhibitions in order to sell more tickets. That is a very business-like way of thinking. But the numbers do not paint a picture about the quality of exchange between the visitors. Mostly, people do not think that those going to the exhibitions can think for themselves and as a result everything is set up like in a TV show. There are of course positive exceptions, like the HKW (House of World Cultures) in Berlin, the Reina Sofìa in Madrid and a few others that work with different audiences, involve minorities and offer accompanying programs including workshops, talks, screenings, food and concerts. Without such a program, there will always be a rift between the artwork and the public. However, if you can meet the artist in a workshop, you enter into a dialog about what is shown in the exhibition. We need more real exchange and places that are inviting to this free floating knowledge that changes with every conversation. It is important to me that this kind of access to culture and art does not degrade another. I am sure that you can combine them

AB: Is Berlin exemplary for a change in the organization of exhibitions?

LS: That is a difficult question to answer. Berlin is rather a place people pass through—many do not plan to stay permanently and that makes the city interesting. There are different lifestyles and ways of living that come together and influence one another. There are Latin American, Thai, African communities and many more. Berlin is a perfect melting pot, because it is in the center of Europe and at the same time close to Eastern Europe. However, there is not really a ‘Berlin way’ to do projects. Luckily, there are many different ways of doing projects here.

Four

At SAVVY Contemporary with Elena Agudio | Saskia Köbschall | Bonaventure Ndikung

Walking down Karl-Marx-Straße with its countless little stops that persist next to big shopping malls, I walk to the SAVVY Contemporary in the direction of Rixdorf, a former Bohemian settlement with cobblestones and quiet streets. The SAVVY Contemporary is a project space founded in 2009 that was able to move from a small shop to a former substation thanks to the Berliner Projekträume prize. The exhibition space, the library and the bar have a raw industrial charm. SAVVY Contemporary sees itself as a platform where you can rethink Western and non-Western perspectives and topics such as postcolonialism, identity and gender through prism of art. I arrive at the perfect time and meet with Elena Agudio (EA), Bonaventure Ndikung (BN) and Saskia Köbschall (SK) at the Botanico café on the other side of the street. These three managers of SAVVY come from very different backgrounds: Elena Agudio has a PhD in art history and runs the platform AON for neurosciences and art.

Bonaventure Ndikung has a PhD in bio technology and works in the field of medical technology, as a curator and editor-in-chief of a bilingual magazine about contemporary African art. Four years ago, he founded the initiative SAVVY Contemporary . He is also part of a team at the nGbK with Elena.

Saskia Köbschall studied anthropology and is pursuing a PhD in New York. In the past years, she worked a lot on film projects about African pop culture—for example about hip hop in Ghana. Two years ago, she joined the SAVVY team.

AB: In your opinion, is organizing an exhibition today more about social and political topics outside of the field of art than it was ten years ago?

EA: Art has always been political, but in the past years, political aspects in art have gotten a lot more attention. I have to admit, it is a perfect time to start radical debates about selfempowerment.

SK: And we put them in a clear, critical and theoretical context.

EA: SAVVY is independent, we do not have to answer to anyone—not to any institution, any political movement or public authority.

SK: SAVVY could probably survive without the three of us, because it is about an idea that inspires certain people.

BN: We want to include our concepts in certain debates. That is how we set ourselves apart from our surroundings in Berlin.

AB: Shouldn't curating that is committed to ideas, rather be a collective process?

EA: Absolutely.

SK: We have curated the current and the last exhibition together.

EA: Since we all come from different working backgrounds, we automatically and immediately reflect. We actually debate quite a lot.

SK: And you can see this in our results.

BN: I grew up around bibliophiles. When I came to Europe from Cameroon, I wondered why international debates about gender and Eurocentrism had not taken root here. It still is quite rare that non-European artists have big exhibitions in Berlin. Those are rather shown in an ethnographic context and there they are conventionalized to something foreign and different. That was really shocking to me and I wanted to fill this gap through communication between the West and non-West. It seemed natural for me to do that through art.

SK: Compared to other big cities such as New York or London, Berlin is far behind when it comes to the presence of non-Western artists in galleries and museums, and I am not talking about exoticizing exhibitions and contexts.

BN: We knew we had to try something different. So we founded our own art initiative—not in the city center, but in Neukölln with its special history. Two hundred seventy-six years ago, the Bohemians found themselves in what was then called Rixdorf. We started working in this part of the city four years ago and opened our new studio last July. When we won the award last year, we were able to pep up the old building from the 20s. From the director of the Goethe Institute in Lagos to neighbors—everyone came to help us. We are a true neighborhood project.

AB: How have the art spaces in Berlin changed in the past ten years?

BN: I have been here for 15 years now and find the people in Berlin truly brave and committed. But Berlin is a bubble. When I gave Reuters an interview eight years ago, they said Berlin would be the next art capital. But attracting many artists does not make it an art capital. That does not contribute anything regarding the contents. I would say that the exhibitions in the past years asked better questions. Berlin has become a little bit more curious. However, if you take a closer look at the quality of all exhibitions here, I doubt that Berlin is the capital of anything. We should ask ourselves which exhibition in Berlin was the most innovative in the past years and then look at how innovative it really was.

Five

At District with Susanne Husse

The evening brings me to the Southern edge of the city’s railway loop, where I meet curator Susanne Husse in the interdisciplinary work, exhibition and experimental space called District, which was founded in 2010. In collaboration with local and international guests, artistic projects, exhibitions, discussions, workshops, interventions and performances are produced here in a public space. You should have some time for this place so that you can stay for a glass of beer or wine after one of the events. When I come here by myself, I always meet a lot of people and have interesting conversations with them.

242AB: Is organizing an exhibition today more about social and political topics than it was ten years ago?

SH: I don’t think so, because organizing an exhibition is only part of curating. For the most part, curating is about social developments and already recognizing socio-political contexts during the production and then including them as part of conveying the artistic practice. With regards to your question— it is apparent how art and contemporary culture as a whole are more and more becoming the Band-Aids for the wounds and fractures with which our Western-democratic society is overwhelmed.

Today’s artists and cultural producers work as social workers, society’s therapists, gardeners, scientists, economists and so on. This hybridity of course has a huge potential and working with it is exciting. But the perception of art as a cure is also somewhat obsessive and consuming. And at the same time, this demand is constantly increasing and being realized under the marginalizing conditions of the regime of flexibility.

AB: To what extent has it become a collective process?

SH: Maybe it has become a collective process because people wanted or had to create their own structures. The examples for this kind of work are collaborative forms of work and of self-organization that have been developing in art and political activism since the 60s and 70s, or at least at the point where they merge. The questions and formats of joint authorship and conveyance that arose in groups of artists, collective initiatives and alternative spaces had a great influence during that time. I have been dealing and experimenting with collective contexts for such a long time that it has almost become my way of thinking. I always look for a form of joint thinking or controversy when I work with an artist and try to open them up to it. Curating works like a translation. I believe that these collective microcosms are temporary social mini models. What you learn and the way you can redefine yourself also helps you to deal with the collective of personalities, stories and capabilities in your own body. ‘Everyone in their own world, so many worlds…’ is a quote from Durs Grünbein that I really like. I am all for working together and for going away from specializing on a subject.

AB: What role does organizing the exhibitions play?

SH: We open spaces in exhibitions in which certain topics play a role for some time and then we see where it takes us. With ‘dissident desire’, a project for dealing with your body as a place of resistant knowledge and a project that we have realized over a period of six months at District, we work with growths and branches of political topics that follow different groups—in an activist way, in theory or within artistic practice. These groups are linked to certain cultures of debate or criticism. The challenge is to not obsessively insist on set structures, but to stay open and let yourselves stray from old ways of thinking. Meaning to understand space as an elastic membrane where it is all about understanding the spaces in-between in which you can try other ways of thinking and forms of acting.

For me, it is exciting to combine a project with the Vietnamese community in Berlin with a project on queer body strategies or body politics. I have been working on project series with an open outcome for some time now. Those projects can go on after they are officially done and different topics and people get confronted with each other and get connected.

AB: Is Berlin exemplary for changes in the organization of exhibitions?

SH: Berlin is a place that loves to think it reflects on itself, but does not do that in the end. I for one look at the huge amount of international people living in Berlin as unused potential. In art, these people are often only visible in the area of project spaces, where the resources are too limited to experience more than an approach, a sketch for interesting forms of artistic and curatorial work that is in the process of developing. What I find interesting about Berlin is the permeability, the links between the different scenes. Many curators work for big institutions, do free projects with or without money or organize their own space—all at the same time. I could imagine that this constant passing from one role to another, the constant drifting between infrastructure and contexts and also the forms of survival in this line of work, that those aspects are exemplary.

Text by Anna Bromley, Photos by Sandy Volz