“A garden is…” – A ritual for the end and a new beginning of the Prinzessinnengarten Kreuzberg

DEUTSCH

 

In marking the 10th anniversary of the Prinzessinnengarten Kreuzberg, we would like to celebrate the transformation of the garden. The end of the year signals a new process of emptying out of the Prinzessinnengarten. Nomadisch Grün is moving out at the end of the season, relocating the mobile elements of the garden and the gastronomy to a cemetery in Neukölln. The move marks an end, as well as a beginning of a new phase for the terrain –  a reopening of a wild, free and as-yet-undetermined space for growing new seeds and ideas. As the leaves fall and start to wither away, their decomposing matter provides the fertile ground for things to come. A fallow period of a fallow ground invites future growth and future transformation for the upcoming 99 years. In the past 10 years, the circumstances around the garden changed, and they will keep on changing. A lot of these changes suck, especially the rising rents, the loss of non-commercial spaces, and the Pandion construction site next door. So does the ongoing climate crisis, the mass-extinction of plants and animals, the collapse of ecosystems, and the ongoing inaction of the governments. Will the luxury towers on the construction sign, which were previously only a fake, soon become bitterly serious? What will come next? Is another fight on the horizon? Will Prinzessinnengarten Kreuzberg remain as a space to discuss possible futures, to experiment, to grow, to be rooted in the neighborhood, its celebrations, and struggles? We fight to remain!!

 

Therefore, in this process of transformation, we are ever more strongly reminded to celebrate life and our connection to the soil. Celebrate the fights that made it possible to stay, celebrate the people who took part, celebrate the plants and the bees, and celebrate the time spent creating and caring for it. Thus, in a day-long early winter ritual, we will use this opportunity to say goodbye to the old cycle and set out our minds to curiously anticipate the future, and what is coming. We want to open up space for spontaneous vegetation, spontaneous meetings of people, plants and other living beings. Like a compost pile, we want to lay the political humus to grow roots for the next 99 years. But, we refuse to enter this process alone! We would like to do that with You and with our community. With the event “Ein Garten ist…”, we would like to once again show the richness/fertility of our soil, the importance of uniting the “social humus” of all the engagement of the past, and the “roots” that are already deeply spread in the neighborhood, and way beyond. This process can succeed only if we think and act together, unite, and let the many diverse seeds grow into a meadow of wildflowers. 

 

Organized by Marco Clausen, Michelle Teran, Elena Veljanovska from the Initiative Prinzessinnengarten Kreuzberg 

 

Participants: Anke Westermann, Åsa Sonjasdotter, Bilgisaray, Chor der Statistik, Danja Schilling & Ronald Gonko, The Incredible Herrengedeck, Jochen A. Liedtke, Marco Clausen, Melissa Harrison, Michelle Teran + more

 

Program: 

13:00 – 16:00 at Prinzessinnengarten Kreuzberg

13:00 – 16:00 “The heart” by Jochen A. Liedtke – Spatial installation

          “Projektor” by Anke Westermann – Spatial installation

13:15 Danja Schilling & Ronald Gonko – Duo performance and speeches 

14:00 Chor der Statistik – Concert

15:00 A letter to the garden – reading

15:15 “Protest of the future” with Michelle Teran 

 

16:15 – 18:00 at O 45 

16:30 – 17:15 The Incredible Herrengedeck – concert 

The communal meal will be prepared by the neighbourhood canteen Bilgisaray 

 

***As part of the celebration, we would like to invite you to send letters to the garden. Just

write down, what the garden meant to you in the past, and how do you see it in the future.

 

Send your letter to:

Address: Common Grounds, Oranienstraße 45, 10969 Berlin

Email: gemeingut@prinzessinnengarten.net

Or share it on instagram: prinzessinnengarten Kreuzberg

 

More about the works and the participants:

 

“Projektor” – Spatial Installation by Anke Westermann

“Projektor“ is a project by Berlin-based artist Anke Westermann. It consists of a nomadic, house-like wooden construction equipped with neon lights. This spatial object functions as a mobile visual sign that critiques hegemonic constructions in publicly accessible spaces that are worth protecting. “Projektor: manifested first in empty inner-city spaces and potential construction sites – locations that have so far escaped economic exploitation – where it aims to raise awareness for the increasing compression and commercialization of urban space, and the decreasing of green areas in the city. What does the usage of public space mean? How can spaces be created that can be used by all actors and neighbours involved? Which conflicts and challenges do we face? How can we build a shared city? The point of departure for “Projektor“ is a toolbox from which a spatial sculpture can grow that functions as a ‘projector’ for subjective phenomena in the urban landscape. It uses scaled elements of built architecture, modified and combined anew. “Projektor“ projects individual imaginations of an alternative city. Continuously, the empty space, the ‘void’, is contained, made visible, reversed and transformed, and as such recognized as an object in itself. Until now, “Projektor“ has been installed on various locations in Berlin.                                                      (Excerpts from the text „Art as /is social” by Lianne Mol)

 

Link: http://www.ankewestermann.de/installationen/projektor/prinzessinnengarten.html

 

Åsa Sonjasdotter

Åsa Sonjasdotter worked for several years on the cultural narratives surrounding cultivation, cultivated plants, soil and humanure. She is a founding member of Nachbarschaftsakademie, a bottom up learning site and a branch of Prinzessinnengarten Kreuzberg, as well as she is co-initiator of the Prinzessinnengarten Kreuzberg Humanure Lab. She has been professor at Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art in Norway, an institution she took part of establishing in 2007. Projects and exhibitions reflecting humanure include: Peace With Earth, Project Art Space, Dublin, Ireland, 2018-2020; Peace With Earth, The Museum of Gotland, Sweden, 2017-2019; Fertile Bodies, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo, Norway, 2016. For more info: www.potatoperspective.org,

 

BILGISARAY in ORA 45 

The Bilgisaray is a non-commercial neighborhood space for all, an open-space of solidarity, and upcoming stage of political awakening, right on Heinrichplatz. We offer a neighborhood kitchen where we can cook and eat together. Our food and use of the room is free. We finance ourselves through donations. If you want to become a supporter, contact us.

Since 26.03.2019, every Tuesday in the O45, Bilgisaray organizes the neighborhood canteen in order to establish a mutually supportive and non-commercial meeting point. From 3 pm: Café with tea and coffee, from 7 pm: warm food, cooked by changing cooks.

Contact: bilgisaray@mail36.net

Link: www.facebook.com/bilgisarayberlin

 

Chor der Statistik 

It was founded in the early summer 2019 by raumlaborberlin and the songwriter and unconditional choir conductor Bernadette La Hengst. All singing-interested people from the urban society and the neighborhood are addressed in order to voice the change processes around the HdS. Together, the participants sing and write utopian songs about the future of the city, about neighborhoods and the neighborhood around the HdS. At the same time, it is an artistic way to address urban issues such as rent increases and repression. As a singing archive of the Haus der Statistik, the choir led the audience through the house at the opening of the Berlin Art Week in September, inviting the audience to sing along.

 

Meeting point: WERKSTATT Haus der Statistik, Karl-Marx-Allee 1, 10178 Berlin
More information: lahengst@gmx.de
Link: http://lahenst.com 

 

Ronald Gonko and Danja Schilling 

Ronald Gonko is a composing musician and sound-artist from Berlin with eclectic styles such as experimental electronics like Berlin Synthesizer Orchestra and anti-electro Stop Disco Mafia, to acoustic expressions as in groups like Kapaikos (Polka-Punk, PP) and Mariahilff (obscure singer-songwriter stuff). In solo performances, he is exploring the boundaries between serious artistic approach and non-sense neo-dada noise by utilizing signal processing audio devices, lo-fi electronics, found sound artifacts and Gong-like pots and pans and hats.

In addition to her studies in philosophy and cultural journalism (HU/UdK) Danja Schilling (a.k.a. Anita Groschen) trains her lyrical mezzo-soprano and sings with the EuropaCHORAkademie on tours through the great works of choral literature.

Early on, she seeks proximity to Berlin’s performance and theater scene. Solo or choir? Both have their own charm: Et al she works with PKRK, Dogtroep (NL), Kerstin Fuchs, Señor Depressivo, Mex Schlüpfer and Ole Wulfers, for Castorf, Kuttner and Thalheimer.

The so-called cross-over in vocal technique, performance practice and the expectation of the listener, to contrast, to break, synthesize or transcend them is one of their performative elements.

For the ritual of the Prinzessinnengarten on December 7, they bring excerpts from their performative concert ANGSTBLÜTEN (TIMOR FLORES).

Links: https://soundcloud.com/anita-groschen + https://soundcloud.com/rgonko

 

The Incredible Herrengedeck

Three guys, three chords, confetti and the power of imagination. The Incredible

Herrengedeck can turn even the smallest stage into a stadium concert. Or rather, a music cabaret in the stadium. Or stadium concert in the cabaret. Or as they say themselves: „Chanson Punk – live in your corner-stadium“. Since 2006, the boys regularly mix up the Berlin stages, touring through Germany, Switzerland and as far as Kazakhstan. All the missing things, like light-show, speaker-walls and pyrotechnics, the audience will just add in their imagination. 

In return, the three Berliners, with their piano, double bass and guitar, will roll different genres of the past 100 years of pop history into a decent piece of music – the foundation for their political-satirical lyrics and a lot of good humor.

 

Link: http://herrengedeck.org/

 

„Heart“ – Permanent Installation by Jochen A. Liedtke

In 1987 Jochen Liedtke welded a 2 meter high and 100 kg heavy metal sculpture in the SO36, reused from sheet metal from the old Görlitzer Bahnhof. The sheets of old shed were stolen from the Görlitzer station area, before this area became a public park. The heart, whose flaps beat through mechanical devices, for ten years could be seen in Berlin, Dresden, and Hamburg, after which it was stored. Now it starts beating again to remind us of the memory of a different Kreuzberg, the one from the times of the repair-occupations and alternative culture. According to Liedtke, times have changed: „We have the greed of the few on one side, and the lives, habitation and work of the many on the other side. The heart should inspire us to think again about how the quality of life in the city can be obtained and preserved „.

The bombed-out Görlitzer Bahnhof, which was used as a junkyard, only became a park through the involvement of local residents. The workshop, in which the heart was revived, can be found in a formerly occupied house in the Oranienstraße, which was deprived of speculation by a self-administered property structure (Luisenstadt eG). Now the heart is revived and it wanders into the arbor in the Prinzessinnengarten. There, it tells the story about the free spaces that were fought for in the 70s and 80s, and with its beating it emphasises that without the passion of the people involved in the neighbourhood, today they would not exist.

The heartbeat beats daily at 6 pm for 3 minutes.

Link: https://prinzessinnengarten.net/herz-trifft-prinzessin/

 

Marco Clausen

Marco Clausen is co-initiator of Prinzessinnengarten (since 2009) and the Neighborhood Academy (since 2015). He contributes to the question of local self-organization for social and ecological justice in urban and rural areas through lectures, publications, participatory research, international exchange programs, and cooperation with artists and activists. Clausen is specifically interested in non-institutionalized forms of collective learning and political education on topics like the commons, food sovereignty, or the right to the city. In 2012 he published “Prinzessinnengarten. Anders gärtnern in der Stadt” (Prinzessinnengarten. A Different Way of Gardening in the City). Clausen is active in different movements, networks, and working groups on democratic land access and part of the Initiative Prinzessinnengarten Kreuzberg. In 2018 Clausen was co-organizing the Fact-Finding Committee on green commons at ZK/U and published „Gemeingut Grün: Ein Dauergartenvertrag für Berlin“ (ZK/U Press 2018). In 2019 he co-curated the project “Nachbarschaftsakademie. Growing out of the ruins of Modernity” as part of the research and exhibition project “Licht Luft Scheiße. Perspectives on Ecology and Modernity”. 

 

Melissa Harrison

Melissa Harrison was trained as an architect and worked in the profession in New Zealand for several years. Since 2015, she has been living in Berlin and is engaged as a researcher, practitioner, and activist working across urbanism and architecture, social and artistic practice, research and pedagogy to explore the social reproduction of the urban commons. Currently, she is pursuing a Ph.D. through the National Technical University of Athens – under the supervision of Stavros Stavrides – with the title ‚commoning space | commoning knowledge: sharing, (un)making and (un)learning the city‘. At the end of 2017, she co-initiated Common(s)Lab: Nachbarschaftslabor in Berlin-Neukölln and around the same time became actively involved with the Commons Evening School associated with Prinzessinnengarten. 

Michelle Teran

Michel Teran is an educator, practicing artist, and researcher working within the interdisciplinary field contemporary art and whose research areas encompass socially engaged and site-specific art, transmedia storytelling, counter-cartographies, social movements, urbanism, feminist practices, critical pedagogy, and activism. Her multidisciplinary works span film, text, bookworks, performance, installation, public readings, online works, participatory events and interventions in public space. Michelle Teran is Research Professor in Social Practices at Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam. She is a member of Nachbarschaftsakademie and Common Grounds e.V.

Grafic: Anna Busdiecker

Supported by the Projektförderung of the Bezirk Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg