It’s March 2015, and something very special is happening in a disused shopfront turned artist-run theatre in Kreuzberg, where artists have become writers and poets, DJs masquerade as actors and critics write the script. Rent is still cheap, video-editing software is in everyone’s pocket, spaces are still readily available, and creative solutions are easy to come by. Someone in the German capital has thrown away the rulebook and it’s like 1993 again, except with iPhones, characterised by a DIY ethos and experimental approach to art-making. Identities and practices have shifted and become unfixed, merging online with offline, the artist with the writer and curator, and the work with the project, encompassing Vilnius, Brooklyn, London and beyond.
Mark Pieterson
The protagonists are numerous but include: Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff, who run the New Theater, producing off-kilter plays and musicals; Christopher Kline from exhibition-cum-musical O.K. and artist space Kinderhook & Caracas co-run with Sol Calero; Santiago Taccetti and Mirak Jamal, the brains behind curatorial collective Stoneroses; Egle Kulbokaite and Dorota Gaweda of Young Girl Reading Group, a bookish society organised by artists with a show on Berlin Community Radio, an online station, and Clémence de la Tour du Pin, the artist responsible for experimental exhibition space, Center.
However, collaboration has always been a feature of the Berlin art scene; and creating spaces outside the commercial concerns of the traditional gallery scene has been vital to the city’s success. Nonetheless, unlike previous forms of collaboration, this is something new and more akin to a process than a series of fixed events, with projects, collaborators and events, shifting, merging, changing. There is no ID, no USP and no ROI. Working outside the traditional confines of the gallery or the project space, shifting their practice to new venues or online, this group of peripatetic artists is keeping Berlin on its toes.
Sarah Miles and Anastazja Moser
It’s organic, darling
“I have people coming by my workspace all the time, but not just for a studio visit,” says Santiago Taccetti. “Most of the people who come to see me are other artists, who drop in, sit on my couch, bounce ideas and discuss random things. For me, it’s one of the best things about this city.”
Traditionally, collaboration has involved artists working together and producing an end product that adheres to a clearly defined aim, but in Berlin, the lack of calculated strategy is conspicuous. Ideas develop spontaneously, and their execution is an organic process. Testament to this is Young Girl Reading Group, a nomadic, member-fluid organisation reading texts by authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin and Roselee Goldberg that “just happened”, according to Kulbokaite and Gaweda.
This ‘just happened’ mentality, where projects materialise based on a shared motivation towards a goal, may sound intuitive but is difficult to achieve in practice. Despite this, just doing things because they seem interesting, without waiting for funding and hierarchical blessings, can be a liberating step, and is an attitude that’s shared by many of those who work collaboratively in Berlin.
Clémence de la Tour du Pin is a good example of this. Accustomed to creating work within unplanned structures, her project space Center recently hosted a collaborative show with a group of artists – including YGRG – who created a post-gender virtual character called Agatha Valkyrie Ice. “Working with other people is important,” she says. “But it’s never really something that’s planned – it always happens quite naturally.”
Santiago Taccetti
Rage Against the Authorship
“The current approach to authorship is outdated. Why do we pretend otherwise?” says Kinderhook & Caracas’ Christopher Kline. Kline, who is equal parts artist, musician, director and project space co-initiator, continued: “Working with other humans, experimenting in roles and counting a wider girth of society as your audience can be trying, but it’s a way to steer away from the whirlpool of ego that we’re all susceptible to.”
Today, Berlin’s creatives are frequently using collective identities and collaborative gameplans to shift the focus away from their personal brand and back onto the calibre of the work itself. Such is the case with the aforementioned Agatha Valkyrie Ice, who is also credited with a show on Berlin Community Radio and a two-year curated programme at the Swiss project space OSLO10.
“We started our collaboration with a series of texts titled ‘for a future’,” say Young Girl Reading Group’s Kubolkaite and Gaweda, discussing their collaborative involvement in the creation of Agatha. “We all wrote together, on top of each other, deleting and transforming each other’s text at will. We often used Google Docs to develop ways of creating text that attempted to defuse defined notions of authorship.” Borrowing from the precedent set by previous collectives like Bernadette Corporation and Claire Fontaine, Agatha’s members are constantly changing, and every new participant is free to experiment without the pressure of conforming to what’s happened previously.
Other Berlin-based artists are confronting the tired notion of the isolated creator, too.
When asked about “O.K.–The Musical” at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Kline referred to his project as, “an artwork that functions like a community theatre company”, which, at times, included 70 participants.
“I like how in film or theatre everyone is credited for what they’ve done, and the roles are understood,” he continues. “In the commercial art world people must be aware that a certain artist isn’t capable of producing all of this work, but the assistants or fabricators responsible are rarely credited in order to maintain some kind of mystique, even if they lent ideas to the conceptual elements.”
Clemence de la Tour du Pin
Work as a process
The economic situation in Berlin creates an alternative order of labour: relatively cheap rents mean that new and different modes of work are possible, and artists are at the vanguard of this attitude, taking the opportunity to explore projects in a less discrete fashion.
Of course, one of the reasons this kind of utopian approach to collaboration doesn’t work in other environments is the necessary economic limitations on artistic practice. When artists are working towards an end product, there is a clear concept of what needs to happen for a contract to be fulfilled. Conversely, when there is less emphasis on whose money is responsible for what, ideas can blend and merge.
As these organic processes develop, the focus on the climax or end result of the project also tends to diminish. The result is that collaborations can last for as long as their participants want them to, which can sometimes mean that their output can seem a bit looser. Santiago Taccetti agrees, but argues that such artists are nevertheless stronger as a result.
“People have time to share what’s on their mind, and that’s how I feel a scene and the work that comes from it is nurtured,” he says. “It’s also important to note that artists are aware of the low emphasis that the market places on collaborations in general,” says
Center’s de la Tour du Pin.
Kline agrees. “Even when they involve megastars like Warhol and Basquiat, collaborative works sell for a fraction of the price that items made by only one creator can command,” he says. “And the people placing value on things don’t like such complications because it makes them harder to pitch.”
Christopher Kline
Jacks Of All Trades
“I mostly make visual material, but over the past two years or so I’ve intermittently worked with a few independent platforms,” says Mark Pieterson, a Berlin-based artist and writer working with Berlin Community Radio, Trust Magazine and Topical Cream. “I started writing as a way to establish contacts within a network of creatives I admire for the purpose of future collaboration.” Taking on a different type of medium has become much more common across the creative fields, with easily available apps replacing previously hard-won skills. However, in Berlin, there’s a sense that it’s better to work in multiple capacities.
Anastazja Moser and Sarah Miles, the co-founders of Berlin Community Radio are long-time collaborators with the Young Girl Reading Group as well as Mark Pieterson, and note a similar sentiment when asked about their identities: “We are both DJs, curators and editors; Anastazja is also a photographer. It helps to be able to connect with others through music and arts, it’s the best way.”
John Holten, founder of Broken Dimanche Press, believes that exploring an assortment of roles inspired him while writing his novels. “To overcome the boring nature of novel writing, I expanded my fictional practice into publishing,” he says. “I like to work with different writers and artists because it infuses my projects with new points of view and stimuli.” Instead of fragmenting their work, it seems as if the subdivision of labour is shaping the landscape of these artists’ practices.
Egle Kubolkaite and Dorota Gaweda
The Local Internationals
In the world of constant communication across international borders, it may seem odd that this roundup focuses on just one city. Yet the locality of Berlin is of great significance to its artists, and not just for the financial reasons that make it easer for them to live here than in many other European capitals. “We put emphasis on the local aspect of the station and ask that all our radio makers are based in the city and record the shows live in the studio,” Berlin Community Radio founders Miles and Moser say. Their radio show hosts from Young Girl Reading Group agree on the importance of the city’s community: “Much of our activity comes directly from the relationships that developed in Berlin.”
Moreover, the internet expands and multiplies these relationships, allowing work to have an international impact. Indeed, the dilemma for Berlin artists is how to get their work to a wider audience. “The danger with this city is that you can produce work here somewhat easily,” says John Holten. “The important thing then becomes exporting that work and making it relevant to audiences beyond the city.”
“Berlin is our favourite city in the world,” add Miles and Moser. “But the internet and cheap flights together are rapidly erasing the local component of the scenes of each city.” They are undoubtedly correct, but such transformations are not without their merits. Compared to many other cities, Berlin is connected enough to give it the opportunity to affect change.
More importantly, the internet is not only a way for artists to expand the reception of their work – it also functions as a blueprint for this contemporary mode of collaboration. In fact, tools such as Google Docs are enhancing such activity. De la Tour du Pin feels positive. “Collaboration is a living exchange that evolves as it goes along,” she says. “In my opinion it’s very similar to the internet because they both contain the opportunity to subvert hierarchies and create new games.”
This is collectivism in 2015 in Berlin, then: a shifting game where modes of production collapse and identities merge into each other, subverting traditional artistic practice and established boundaries. As Taccetti notes: “Berlin is a global stage where people from around the world look to see what’s going on because they have great respect for what is happening here.” The next wave of collectivism with its intent to disrupt the form and function of art has started here, and who knows where it will lead and which new forms will emerge as a result.
John Holten
Text by Jeni Fulton, Josie Thaddeus-Johns and Nathan Ma
Illustrations by Enver Hadzijaj
Taken from Sleek issue #46, available for purchase on our online shop now.