Let’s Talk: Berlin Exhibition Opening
The opening of
NINE URBAN BIOTOPES : Negotiating the future of Urban Living
A First Iteration of all Nine Projects
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“Let’s talk: 30 days at the Spreefeld”
Final Presentation of the project by Terry Kurgan
Exhibition 6 to 8 September 2014 from 12 to 5 pm
Opening 5 September 2014 at 7 pm
at Boathouse Spreefeld / Spreeacker, Köpenicker Str. 48/49, 10179 Berlin
NINE URBAN BIOTOPES (9UB) is an international, socially engaged art project delivering artistic research and cultural exchange. From January through September the artists Antje Schiffers, Marjetica Potrc, Armin Linke , Anthony Schrag, Athi-Patra Ruga, Dan Halter, Taswald Pillay, Ra Hlasane and Terry Kurgan realised their projects within and among social citizen and art initiatives in 7 cities in South Africa and Europe. This week-end the results of all the projects will be displayed in form of a first iteration. ISSS research&architecture, in collaboration with urban dialogues have developed a mobile exhibition unit to dispaly and travel the exhibition in Europe and South Africa.
During the last six weeks the South African artist Terry Kurgan has researched the uniquely Berlin phenomenon of ‘Co-Housing’. Wheeling about with her mobile ‘Spreelab’ she has explored the relationship between private lives and public space in the neighbourhood surrounding the three newly erected, and barrier free buildings of the Spreefeld Genossenschaft, situated in a former no-man’s land, but now rapidly gentrifying neighborhood on the banks of the Spree River. Kurgan’s final presentation includes a short stop-animation film, which humorously evokes her outsider sense of a range of pressing contemporary Berlin urban and social issues evoked by the very particular one square kilometer upon which her project’s been based. The juxtaposition of extremely contrasting, but seemingly happily co-existing people, co-housing communities, lifestyles, buildings, objects, activity, and layers of past and present, form a fragile eco-system that is under threat as the surrounding neighbourhood is subjected to pressure by both the city and private developers. See the film here.
The venue of the exhibition is a former GDR police river patrol boathouse, which became “Kiki Blofeld”, a legendary Berlin night club when the wall came down.