Protest Exhibition: SPECULATIVE PROPERTIES
The bbk berlin informs:
Kreuzberg artists community mark their upcoming eviction with an exhibition weekend, events and party - with a protest exhibition against real-estate speculation and investors’ greed for profit.
The weekend of June 16th–18th in Kreuzberg's Adalbertstraße 9 is dedicated to an artistic action that focuses on the on-going loss of artists’ studios in Berlin and the eviction of the Adalbertstraße 9 artist community. The protest-exhibition came about as a reaction to the takeover of the Adalbertsraße 9 building complex at Kotti by the real-estate company Coros Management GmbH and the imminent de-facto eviction of ca. 40 local and international artists and cultural workers who had up until recently been occupying its studio spaces.
A group exhibition of the affected artists takes place in situ, as the studios become an exhibition space where the effects of the imminent loss of the working spaces and the network that was created throughout years are reflected upon. Both the economic and the emotional dimension of the imposed situation are expressed in the exhibited works. The media range of the approximately 40 artistic positions includes photography, installation, performance, graphics as well as video and sound art.
The exhibition will open on Friday with several public talks with prominent activists and committed cultural protagonists. On Saturday evening, visitors can attend a party with concerts, performances and DJs. Finally, on Sunday, film screenings will take place in Kotti-Shop, not far away. Another exhibition, also on view at Kotti-Shop, shows the results of workshops that artists developed together with school students of the Jens-NhydalGrundschule, in cooperation with the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum.
With the eviction of the artists community, a neighborly structure of the Oranienkiez that has grown over many years and is characterized by the synergies between the artists and the surrounding art and cultural institutions is lost. Events created in cooperation with the KottiShop and the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum illustrate the enriching effects of such a network for neighborhood life.
At the same time, this takeover by real-estate speculators is also exemplary of the disappearance of the so-called Kreuzberger Mischung, a historic, long-lasting and unique city planning policy that characterizes the district and combines living and working spaces within one residential block. By driving up rent prices to such an extent that they are no longer affordable to artists, the studios housed in the workshop spaces of former Kreuzberg craftsmen's businesses, will soon probably give way to luxurious commercial space affordable only to highly profitable companies.
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More information on Instagram: www.instagram.com/speculativeproperties