The Berlinische Galerie stands in the middle of a residential neighbourhood built mostly in the 1980s. Ever since the museum opened on Alte Jakobstrasse in 2004, art for the urban space has had a role to play. Back then, a sculptural pathway was designed to lead through the area to the entrance. Just how much attitudes to art in the public space have changed since then is illustrated by the “Park Platz” project.
The concept for “Park Platz” combines art with interactive events. A temporary pavilion by architects c/o now and new works by Berlin-based contemporary artists from many different countries will transform the museum car park into an urban forum. A public theatre is emerging with an exhibition area and space for collective action, performance, debate, video screening and workshops, but also for cooking together and relaxing on a summer’s day.
Exhibition
Zuzanna Czebatul
Works on display: “Within Meadows And Rolling Hills” (2016) and “Psy Away” (2019)
Architecture is a central theme in sculptural art by Zuzanna Czebatul. Her work explores it as a language and symbol of power in the public space. Her objects elicit a sense of distance and yet suggest immediacy: these gates, for example, create both access and a barrier. They reference a city closed off by rules and boundaries. Or else we can simply walk around them.
Biography
Zuzanna Czebatul (*1986 Miedzyrzecz, Poland) studied at the Städelschule in Frankfurt/Main and was a Fulbright scholar at Hunter College, New York, and a SOMA scholar in Mexico City. Venues creating solo exhibitions for Czebatul’s work include: Kunstpalais Erlangen (2021); EXILE Gallery, Vienna (2021); Owned by Others, Berlin (2020); IG Metall Haus, Berlin (2019); Futura, Prague (2018) and MINI/Goethe-Institut Ludlow 38, New York (2015). She has recently participated in group shows at: Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen (2021); Athens Biennale (2021); Wrocław Biennale (2021); Kunsthalle Bratislava (2020); Trafo, Szczecin (2020) and Somerset House, London (2019). Czebatul lives and works in Berlin.
Lucas Odahara
Work on display: “Os Desorientes da Pantera (The Disorients of the Panther)” (2021)
Lucas Odahara’s eight-metre-long catwalk of painted ceramic tiles links the car park to the pavement on the street. The tiles show various depictions of gender and sexuality. They were inspired by the “Baile Pantera Gay” (Gay Panther Ball)—a series of events held between 1986 and 1989 in the north-west of Brazil (Rio Branco). Hunting scenes drawn from historical paintings and newspaper reports broaden the thematic spectrum to include violent displacement, the plundering of natural resources and conventional views of the “exotic”.
Biography
Lucas Odahara (*1989 São Paulo, Brazil) studied Product Design at the State University of São Paulo, then Digital Media and Fine Arts at the University of the Arts (HFK) in Bremen. His work has been seen at many exhibitions, including: Kunstverein Grafschaft Bentheim (2020); Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi, Pakistan (2019); Schwules Museum, Berlin (2017); NUDA magazine, Stockholm (2017); Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2016); Weserburg Bremen (2015) and Künstlerhaus Bremen (2015). He has been a DAAD scholar and in 2019 he won the Urban Design Prize awarded by the Senator for Culture in Bremen. He lives in Berlin.
Marinella Senatore
Work on display: “Bodies in Alliance” (2021)
Marinella Senatore’s artistic, activist approach is expressed in interactive and performative works. They create social spaces and involve vis- itors. For “Park Platz” she has adapted a work from her series “Luminaria”: a temporary light installation familiar from street parties in Apulia, Italy. The striking gate displays a phrase coined by Judith Butler, “bodies in alliance”, which signals the importance of social assemblies and the key role of the body in political and revolutionary acts. Everyone welcome.
Biography
Marinella Senatore (*1977 Cava de’ Tirreni, Italy) was awarded the international art scholarship of the Stiftung Kunst und Musik in Dresden (2017), the Maxxi Prize (2014) and the New York Prize (2010). Her scholarships include Castello di Rivoli (2013), Künstlerhaus Bethanien (2011) and the American Academy in Rome (2011). She has taken part in many international biennials, including São Paulo (2021); Manifesta/Palermo (2019); Shenzhen (2017); Thessaloniki (2015); Liverpool (2014); Athens (2013); Havana (2012) and Venice (2011). Her works have featured at solo and group shows at: MAXXI Museum/Rome (2018); Schirn Kunsthalle (2018); High Line, NY (2018); Centre Pompidou (2017); BAK Utrecht (2017); Queens Museum, NY (2017); Kunsthaus Zürich (2017); Palais de Tokyo (2015); Madre Museum/Turin (2015); Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen (2014); Petach Tikva Museum (2014); Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation (2013) and Serpentine Gallery (2012). Marinella Senatore is currently living and working in Rome.
Przemek Pyszczek
Work on display: “Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys” (2021)
Art and utensils combine here in the works presented by Przemek Pyszczek. Benches, chairs and stools are important features of public life. Pyszczek’s furniture made of metal and wood is inspired by structures in the public space and by social thinking in post-communist Poland: concrete housing estates, fences and playgrounds derived from socialist mass production, but also adornments for façades, colours, ornamentation and graphic structures.
Biography
Przemek Pyszczek (*1985 Bialystok, Poland) studied Environmental Design (Architecture) at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg/Canada. He has had solo exhibitions at: Last Resort, Copenhagen (2020); Galerie Derouillon, Hôtel Cromot du Bourg, Paris (2019); Galerie Belenius, Stockholm (2019); Leto Gallery, Warsaw (2019); Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg (2018); High Gallery, Poznań/Poland (2017) and Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles (2016). Pyszczek has participated in a number of group exhibitions, including at: Manana Bold, Frankfurt (2020); Ribot Gallery, Milan (2020); Contemporary Art Biennial, Coimbra/Portugal (2019); public art festival, Gdańsk (2019); Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin (2018); Museo Archeologico e d’Arte della Maremma, Grosseto/Italy (2018); NGBK, Berlin (2016) and Office Baroque, Brussels (2015). Przemek Pyszczek lives and works in Poland and Berlin.
Daniel Lie
Work on display: “Sopro (Sigh)” (2021)
Daniel Lie’s works have a life of their own: natural, non-industrial materials, plants and fungi are carefully combined in organic compositions. They celebrate primary substances that decompose by themselves, examining the renewal of ecosystems and biological cycles of decay. These site-specific installations speak of processes in which time and the metamorphosis of untreated matter are the principal agents.
Biography
Daniel Lie (*1988 São Paulo, Brazil) is a non-binary Indonesian-Brazilian artist. Lie studied Fine Arts at the University of São Paulo and was a scholar at the Indonesia Institute of The Arts, Yogyakarta (2020), the Sharjah Art Foundation (2019) and Teresina Tohoku, Campo Teresina/Brazil. Lie has had solo exhibitions at the Cemeti Institute for Art and Society, Yogyakarta/Indonesia (2020); Casa do Povo, São Paulo (2019); Jupiter Art Land, Edinburgh (2020); Performeum/Vienna Festwochen, Vienna (2017); Change, Budapest (2016); Kampnagel, Hamburg (2016) and Centro Cultural São Paulo, São Paulo (2015). Works by Daniel Lie have featured at many group exhibitions, including in Solar dos Abacaxis, Rio de Janeiro (2020); Galeria Prego, Porto Alegre (2019); Sesc Belenzinho, São Paulo (2018); Bouge B Festival, Antwerp (2018); Osage Foundation, Hong Kong (2018); 14th Yogyakarta Biennale (2017); Q21, Vienna (2017); Hellerau, Dresden (2016); Espacios Revelados, Santiago/Chile (2016) and Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo (2014). Daniel Lie lives and works in Berlin.
c/o now
c/o now have created a pavilion for “Park Platz” out of pre- fabricated components used to create shade in agriculture and horticulture. To allow for flexible assembly, dismantling and conversion, the materials chosen can be moved about and extended. Through-out the summer months, this temporary architecture will be an urban meeting-place and a stage for art and interaction. The Berlin architects c/o now are guided by collective practice. The team consists of Andrijana Ivanda, Duy An Tran, Tobias Honing, Markus Rampl and Paul Reinhardt.
Biography
c/o now ‒ Duy An Tran (*1988, Bad Cannstatt, Germany), Andrijana Ivanda (*1985, Bad Reichenhall, Germany), Paul Reinhardt (*1985, Rheine, Germany), Markus Rampl (*1985, Reith im Alpbachtal, Austria) and Tobias Hönig (*1980, Amberg, Germany) ‒ studied architecture at the AdBK in Nuremberg, Arkitektskolen in Aarhus, LFU in Innsbruck, OTH in Regensburg, RWTH in Aachen, TU in Berlin and uni in Stuttgart. c/o now have taught to date at the following higher education institutes: AdBK in Nuremberg, Dessau Institute of Architecture, OTH in Regensburg, TU in Berlin, TU in Munich and uni in Stuttgart. Projects so far involving c/o include the following: group exhibition “Birds” at Oldenburger Kunstverein (2018), Tbilisi Architecture Biennial (2020/21), Festival Centre for the international dance festival “Tanz im August” (2018), Berlin, and Home “Where the Wild Morels Grow…” (2021), Schmergow, Brandenburg. c/o now live in Berlin.
Liz Rosenfeld
Work on display: “in which things are heaped together without any attempt at order or tidiness” (2021)
Liz Rosenfeld’s contribution is a reflection on cruising. Cruising means going out into public places to look for anonymous sex and the practice has evolved out of a primarily cis-male, homosexual history. Apart from her sculptural “glory hole” intervention in the car park, Rosenfeld will host one to three evening discussions and performative events about the public space as a setting for desire.
Biography
Liz Rosenfeld* (1979 New York, USA) is a Berlin based artist who works in film/video, performance, and personal experimental writing practice. Liz Rosenfeld holds an MFA in Performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MA in Performance Studies at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Venues to have shown Rosenfeld’s work include: Sophiensæle, Berlin; Hebbel am Ufer Theater, Berlin; Mapa Teatro, Bogotá; Tate Modern, London; Hayward Gallery, London; Kunst Haus, Dresden; Victoria & Albert Museum, London and The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Liz is one of the members of Berlin based film collective nowMomentnow. Liz’s films are represented by Video Data Bank and LUX Moving Image.
Raul Walch
Work on display: “The Three Trees” (2021)
The artistic practice of Raul Walch combines recent urban debates with participation. His works are ephemera that explore the potential of public space. At the same time, he negotiates new strategies for its enhancement. For “Park Platz” the artist has replaced the three Berlinische Galerie flags outside the museum with painted fabric. Over the summer he will also develop a work with local residents and take part in the workshop series “Sundays in the Park”.
Biography
Raul Walch (*1980 Frankfurt/Main, Germany) studied Sociology and Latin American Studies at FU Berlin, Sculpture at the Kunsthochschule in Weissensee and Fine Arts with Olafur Eliasson at UdK Berlin. Walch teaches Art in Public Space and New Artistic Strategy at the Bauhaus University in Weimar. He has taken part in numerous exhibitions, including at the following institutions: Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig (2020); Centre Culturel Régional, Tambacounda, Senegal (2020); Kunsthaus Dresden (2018); Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2017); Kunstverein Arnsberg (2017) and Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2014). He has been artist-in-residence at the Tokyo Arts and Space and the Nida Art Colony in Lithuania. Raul Walch lives in Berlin.
Performances
Hanne Lippard
Performance: “Little Lamp” (2011– 2019), Sat 31.7. 8 pm
The performative works in Hanne Lippard’s language-based art practice refer in multiple ways to the significance of listening and coming together. Everyday life is reflected in language, rhythm and clever word play. In “Little Lamp”, Lippard narrates short, intimate memories of forgotten feelings and experiences: journeys, movements, solitude and forms of contact.
Biography
Hanne Lippard (*1984 Milton Keynes, UK) studied Graphic Design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Her works have been shown at biennials such as RIBOCA 2, Riga Biennial (2020); the Norwegian Sculpture Biennial (2017) and 6th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2016). Solo show venues include the Goethe Pop Up Institute, Minneapolis (2019); Kunsthalle Fribourg (2018) and KW Institute for Contemporary Art (2017). She has featured at various group exhibitions: n.b.k. Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (2019); Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster (2018); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2018) and Haus der Kunst, Munich (2018). Performance venues include: Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin (2020); Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt (2017) and Transmediale in Berlin (2015). In 2016 she was awarded the ars viva prize. She lives in Berlin.
Ania Nowak
Peformance: “Agonal Respirations” (2021), Fri 9.7. 8 pm, Sat 10.7. 8 pm
In her new piece Ania Nowak addresses memory and its gradual loss. She works with and against a common experience in the everyday life of a pandemic—the mental condition of “brain fog”: it impairs memory, concentration, creativity and our ability to solve problems. The performance deals with breathing, speaking and moving as perishing acts. It gasps at the ruins of what we thought was unforgettable. It delights in the remnants of pleasure our bodies are desperate to retain.
Biography
Ania Nowak (*1983 Kraków, Poland) graduated in Dance, Context, Choreography at the Inter-University Centre for Dance (HZT) in Berlin. Venues showing her work to date include: Baltic Triennial in the Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius (2021); ICK, Amsterdam (2020); Sophiensæle, Berlin (2019); Nowy Teatr, Warsaw (2018); Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (2018); Hebbel am Ufer Theater, Berlin (2017); and Art Stations Foundation, Poznań (2016). In 2021 she is artist-in-residence at Ankara Queer Art in Turkey and at Q21 Museums Quartier in Vienna. She lives in Berlin.
Liz Rosenfeld
Performances:
- “This should happen here more often” An evening of creative insights about spaces of cruising and desire“ (Sat 17.7. 6 pm)
- “CHARPER NOCHY SEEKING THE NIGHT” with Colin Self (Sat 24.7. 7 pm)
- “All My (w)Holes and All My Folds of Cruising” An evening of short films, words, and conversation with Liz Rosenfeld and Marc Seigel (Fri 13.8. 7:30 pm)
Other Protagonists
Kotti-Shop
Kotti-Shop is an experimental, non-profit art and project space located since 2008 right by Kottbusser Tor on the ground floor of the NKZ. This art and project space functions as an interface between local residents and social stakeholders in the arts and the world of culture. It unfolds space for dialogue and seeks to strengthen the local social fabric, not least by adopting artistic formats that people living around the “Kotti” can join on an equal footing. Kotti-Shop regularly hosts exhibitions, performances, readings, experimental concerts and art house films. In addition to this, Kotti-Shop, along with its TRANSFORM platform and SuperFuture art laboratory, is a springboard for collaborative art projects with partners at home and abroad. Since 2016, more and more of these initiatives have involved different neighbourhoods in Berlin. In 2020, Kotti-Shop took part in “Einzeichen”, the “festival to conquer the city by drawing” at the Berlinische Galerie, where it ran a collaborative workshop.
Kunstwerkstatt Kreuzberg der Lebenshilfe e.V.
The artists in the Lebenshilfe Kreuzberg Art Workshop tend to be seen as “disabled”. But that term is not much help in describing a personality. Everyone here has their own skills, impairments, stories and strategies for coping with life. They live in their own homes, go to work and live as independent a life as possible. The Lebenshilfe Art Workshop gives them a forum to try things out and have fun venturing into new terrain. The association Lebenshilfe works to change social perceptions of people with disabilities. Its open practice gives rise to inclusive encounters outside the usual care systems. Since 2017, the artists at the Kreuzberg Art Workshop have fostered a partnership with the Berlinische Galerie.
Atelier Bunter Jakob
The Atelier Bunter Jakob is a place where (almost) anything is possible. Children and teenagers come here to give free rein to their creativity and put their own ideas into practice: trying out paints, techniques and materials, taking photographs, painting, printing, producing animated films and making sculptures – the focus is always on experimenting and on enjoying art. Courses at the Atelier Bunter Jakob are run by artists with plenty of experience in cultural education. They love working creatively with young people and encourage participants to see art through their own eyes and to voice their own perspectives. If works of art come out of it, everyone is delighted with the experience – not just the children and teenagers. Programmes for the Atelier Bunter Jakob are designed and implemented on behalf of the Berlinische Galerie by the association Jugend im Museum.
Bilgisaray
Bilgisaray is Turkish for “palace of knowledge”. It is a non-commercial space for politically subversive cooking, an open space for solidarity. The neighbourhood centre on Heinrichplatz is open to everyone and has its own community kitchen where people can cook and eat together. The food is free and the space finances itself entirely through donations.
Mpower e.V.
Mpower is an association to promote the education and participation of girls and young women who have experience as refugees or migrants. In the sphere of cultural and media education, they address themes such as art and media, identity issues, feminism, society and political education. In 2020, as part of the “Standortwechsel” project to promote encounters between disadvantaged groups and resident artists, the Berlinische Galerie hosted Mpower’s open film club for girls.