"Weltstadt – Who creates the city?", we wrote in our review of the eponymous exhibition at the Deutsches Architektur Zentrum, DAZ Berlin, "is about promoting a dialogue, of encouraging discussion and for all about motivating each and every one of us to think about our own communities and our own cities and to consider what could be improved. And for all how."
Practical examples of just how projects to achieve such could be organised and what they could, potentially, achieve can currently be studied in the exhibition We Traders. Tausche Krise Gegen Stadt - We Traders. Swapping Crisis for City - at the Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien Berlin.
The similarities between "Who creates the city" and "We Traders" is naturally no chance occurrence; We Traders is, in effect, a sub-project of Who creates the city and is funded from the same funds made available by the Goethe-Institut, the German state culture institute. Following showcases in Madrid and Turin, Berlin represents the half way point on the exhibition's tour.
Presenting 24 projects from 5 European cities We Traders aims to show the possibilities offered by alternative, de-central initiatives while at the same time inspiring visitors to think more critically about their own town, community, environment.
And so we have, for example, the Miraorti urban gardening project in Turin, Cozinha popular da Mouraria, a collective cooking project in Lisbon that seeks to foster a closer, more integrated community or Bois & Cie in Toulouse which seeks to promote and encourage more recycling of timber and better, more environmentally and socially responsible, construction. That the exhibition is currently showing in Berlin projects from the city naturally form a central focus; specifically the urban gardening organisation Allmende-Kontor, the betahaus co-working space, Open Design City co-workshop space, the Initiative Möckernkiez which is building a communal residential district in Berlin and Rütli-Wear, a clothing company established in a Berlin school in context of an anti-stigmatisation programme.
Despite the relatively limited space available in the Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien the intelligent exhibition design concept from Berlin based designer Alex Vader allows for an easy to follow, accessible and for all entertaining exhibition.
Yes there is a lot of voting to be done on the way round and opinions to be expressed, but then given that most of the projects set very loud "plenum" alarm bells ringing, that is probably to be expected.
And doesn't in any way distract from the enjoyment.
Not least because, and unlike your average plenum, you don't have to participate. Or indeed spend the first two hours of a half hour meeting discussing if you can begin or not.
Probably more important than the exhibition however is the fringe programme of workshops, presentations and discussion by and in context of the 24 featured initiatives and We Traders' wider foci. More or less every day of the exhibition's six week stay in Berlin sees some form of event.
The background to We Traders is relatively simple: the effects of the financial crises in Europe have focussed attention on the need to analyse our existing social, cultural and economic models while at the same time looking for possible alternative structures, different ways of organising ourselves, to ensure a more resilient society and so avoid the problems currently being experienced in many regions of Europe.
Not all featured projects represent new ideas. The context in which they are being tested is however new. And that is what makes them, and the exhibition, so interesting and worth exploring. As with Who creates the city, you won't like all the projects nor agree with all the positions. But they are all worth getting to know.
We Traders. Tausche Krise Gegen Stadt runs at the Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien, Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin until Sunday August 17th and is presented bi-lingual German/English.
Following Berlin the exhibition can be viewed in Lisbon and Toulouse.
All projects can also be viewed on line at www.goethe.de/ins/be/prj/wet/enindex.htm
(A truly ridiculous URL which tends to indicate that the Goethe-Institut themselves need to alter the way they approach everyday problems and situations........)
