Laboratorium Berlin

By Laura Schleussner & Dorothea Jendricke

Since the fall of the Wall there has been extensive discussion about the opportunities Berlin has to offer. For art, i.e. for the artists in Berlin, the low cost of living, empty and abandoned spaces and the migration from art communities throughout the world are some of the factors that have made Berlin a place with unique energy and potential. A city with possibility. A worthwhile investment.

Now, despite a bank crisis and spending cuts, artists, critics and curators are still moving to Berlin. Within the larger international art community the city is viewed as a vital artistic center. However, in a period of economic downturn the word “opportunity“ can be easily used as an optimistic euphemism for a financial low. Today, people still speak of the opportunities in the city, but within a different context from 5 years ago.

Is it just the unique situation Berlin´s long-term post-war, post-communist transition that is responsible for the city’s varied artistic and cultural landscape? Could or should one talk about something else? About freedom?

Freedom is difficult to define. Personal freedom, social freedom, freedom in the sense of independence? For art, freedom primarily has a lot to do with the having the possibility to create an individual forum or platform. And also with the desire to be able to determine and mark out one’s own critical approach. This desire for an alternative to or independence from established institutions is the point of departure for non-commercial exhibition spaces and initiatives, which are in part initiated or run by artists themselves.

Perhaps this is the very point at which art producers and facilitators come together with the joint desire to independently take part in a larger discourse. The temporary and improvised cross-over formats of the art spaces of the nineties live on in Berlin’s new project spaces and initiatives of the current decade. In study groups, art networks, communication platforms, off-galleries, open studios and computer clubs, the model of an interdisciplinary laboratorium remains. It seems that Berlin has positioned itself a kind of symbol for a move away from traditional exhibition models. Despite the recent gentrification of Berlin-Mitte and radical municipal spending cuts, the city continues to function as a test bed for projects of all kinds.

As a member of the generation that came to Berlin in the early to mid 1990s, one asks to what extent the concept of freedom has played a role in the independent projects of Berlin. Or to what extent the term is associated with certain mindsets of the past. After catch phrases and titles, such as "Children of Berlin" or “Spielzone” (Play Zone) in the nineties the question arises if the carefree attitude of this period is slowly shifting to another kind of openness and willingness to risk? Responsibility is perhaps more an aspect of freedom than of opportunity and carries with it a certain weight. A sign of maturity?

Are the city’s opportunities at the core of the freedom it offers? What about the openness that enabled the countless initiatives in recent years? Ultimately Berlin has a long tradition as a symbol of freedom - for a part of the world - and as a center of the artistic avant-garde. To what extent does it still carry this symbolic function for the arts today?