DELLBRÜGGE & DE MOLL

Artists, Berlin

The survival of a worldview  can be ensured only by eliminating, rejecting, or  ignoring these intrusive and dangerous elements  that preclude the continued coexistence of differing worldviews. These elements that elicit such responses  constitute the cultural category  »rubbish.«

Michael Thompson, Rubbish theory: the Creation and Destruction of Value, 1979

Her coach, our neighbor told us, advised her to think of every project  starting from its end, be it career, a relationship, or a life plan. Did the  toilet attendant in Bonn take this to heart as she worked 40,000 euro past the tax office peu à peu, cent for cent into the garage of her small  suburban home? The tax investigation officials, it was said, waded through the loose change that had to be loaded with shovels onto the ramp of a truck. Did they wear rubber boots in this glut  of the small change of the tax quagmire? Did the coins stink of the toilet business? how many  cubic liters of excrement and urine had been flushed away for these tips? 40,000 euro is an im- pressive sum. Nonetheless, this story was not reported as if about a treasure dug up but rather as if about something fishy, about rubbish.  What is considered rubbish is defined by society, and we artists are familiar with this: the crossover from transitory to lasting value and vice versa is also a question of convention. the interleaving of work  and value, the convertibility of work into value, is connected to how it is presented. »the production of art revolves around an exhibiting of art, which revolves around  a production of exhibitions,« states Peter sloterdijk1. artists not only constantly need a project, even worse:  those who do not exhibit are considered to be redundant.  the humiliation that results from non-recognition is the  flipside of the desire for recognition. If the right to be  noticed and to receive a response is denied, according to Judith Butler, we die a social death. and  the unappreciated work becomes rubbish. the alchemistic process of transforming a trivial material into gold, as the toilet attendant practiced it, is fragile and reversible.  in Berlin there is much talk about a decreasing number of production spaces and a lack of opportunities to exhibit. the storage problem is not discussed, and if so, then only on the quiet. it  is connected with shame. successful artists do not have storage problems, instead they have a  gallery and collectors who put themselves on waiting lists in order to acquire what one makes. a  good friend has all of his work housed in his parents’ garage in West Germany. Another maintains five storage spaces scattered around the city at the same time. A third compares the square meter price of his rent with the value of his objects in order to decide what to keep, whether he  can produce something new, and what has to be dumped.

When the situation of the 8,000 visual artists in Berlin is considered in terms of having and need-  ing, we have cubic meters aplenty of art works and desperately need an art hall. if not for exhibiting, then at least for storage—a huge depot under conditions that, in light of rising commercial rents, do not inhibit artistic production but promote it. Direct support for artists in the form of storage space. how storage space can also become exhibition space is demonstrated, for example, by the schaulager in Basel.

And while we are thinking the situation from the end: let us assume that artists decide against an  exodus to scandinavia (where exhibition fees for artists have been considered unobjectionable  since the 1970s and guaranteed income cushions the precarious situation) and grow old in Berlin—  where to put thousands of old artists in twenty or thirty years? Does a retirement home with stu-  dios, exhibition spaces, and a discourse disco suffice? 8,000 artists—that is already a veritable vil-  lage. Shouldn’t an Artist Colony in direct proximity to the Art hall be considered in good time?  There is enough space on Tempelhofer Feld. There are sufficient, long-forgotten models for this:  for example, the Vienna’s settlement movement of the 1920s, which came into being as a result  of a wild settling of open areas within the city, and was shaped by architects and intellectuals  such as adolf loos, Josef Frank, and Margarete schütte-lihotzky. »great architects for small  houses« was the motto of the building school organized by loos, which advised and supported  settlers. the settlements were »independent of civic structures, cooperatively organized and  managed, urban, free, and oriented toward self-administration.«2 at the same time, in germany,  municipalities provided settlers with land and a construction budget.3 today, architects such as  raumlabor_Berlin and Lacaton & Vassal see the challenge, specifically in the dearth, to deal  creatively with resources and create appropriate space solutions. We artists are still sprightly  enough to build our own sun City.

1 Peter Sloterdijk, »Die Kunst faltet sich ein«,in: Kunstforum International 104 (1989).

2 See http://www.demokratiezentrum.org/wissen/wissenslexikon/siedlerbewegung.html (accessed August 20, 2011).

3 See Hartmut Häußermann, Walter Siebel, Soziologie des Wohnens (1996).

Source: P/Act for Art: Berlin Biennale Zeitung