All art is a cry for help.

Die Kunst muss raus

Die Kunst muss raus

Wieder einmal steht ein Berliner Künstlerhaus vor dem Aus. Der Atelier- und Ausstellungsort in der Landsberger Allee 54 wurde am 20.10.2011 offiziell für die Öffentlichkeit gesperrt.

Grund: Bauliche Mängel und Gefahr in Verzug für Mieter und Besucher. Viele der 70 ansässigen Künstler und Galeristen reagierten geschockt auf diese Nachricht. Hofften sie doch noch am Mittwoch, die drohende Räumung durch den neuen Eigentümer, die Estavis AG, abwenden zu können. Das nun das Berliner Bauaufsichtamt als letzte Instanz in einem Konflikt auftritt, der seit Monaten zwischen Pächter Daniel Künzel, der Estavis AG und den Mietern herrscht ist trauriger Höhepunkt in dieser Angelegenheit.

Denn immer wieder wiesen die Mieter, die Verantwortlichen auf gravierende Mängel am Gebäude hin, ohne dass diese reagierten. Um die nötigsten Reparaturen zu finanzieren, gründeten die Kunstschaffenden im Jahre 2010 den Kunstverein LA54. Im Glauben bis 2015 in den Räumen bleiben zu können, investierten sie gemeinsam in die Renovierung des maroden Gebäudes und hielten so den Ausstellungs- und Atelierbetrieb am Laufen. Dass ihre Bemühungen umsonst sein sollten, erfuhren die Künstler aus einer offiziellen Pressemittelung, die am 3.3.2011 in der Berliner Immobilien Zeitung erschien. Die Estavis AG informiert darin die Öffentlichkeit über ihre anstehenden Sanierungspläne für die Patzenhofer Brauerei. Geplant sind Eigentumswohnungen im höheren Preissegment. Weder Pächter noch Investor kontaktierten die Künstler persönlich, um sie über die neue Situation zu informieren. Erst auf Initiative der Mieter sind Pächter und Investor bereit für Gespräche. Diese führten zu keiner Einigung, doch die Estavis AG lehnt jedes weitere Gespräch mit den Künstlern ab. Zwar sicherte der Pächter den Künstlern ein Bleiberecht bis Ende des Jahres zu, doch nur unter der Bedingung, danach bindend in ein Ausweichquartier in Hohenschönhausen umzuziehen. Doch der Bezirk Hohenschönhausen ist für viele der Mieter keine Alternative zu ihrem jetzigen Standort in Friedrichshain. Auch die Aussicht auf weitere Verträge mit Daniel Künzel lockt wenige der Künstler. Denn viele der Mieter, die sich in der Vergangenheit wegen fehlender Renovierungsarbeiten beschwerten und sich gegen die geplante Räumung durch die Estavis AG zur Wehr setzten, wurden durch den Pächter unter Druck gesetzt und schikaniert. Mitten in diesen anhaltenden Konflikt fällt nun die Entscheidung des Bauaufsichtamts, das Haus sofort zu schließen. Für die Mieter eine Katastrophe, da sie nicht nur ihren Arbeits- und Lebensraum verlieren, sondern auch noch mit finanziellen Ausfällen zu rechnen haben. Daniel Künzel und der Estavis AG dagegen, kommt die sofortige Räumung des Künstlerhauses sehr gelegen.

Doch mit der Schließung des Kunststandortes in der Landsberger Allee verlieren nicht nur die Mieter ihre Arbeits- und Lebensgrundlage. Auch die Berliner Kulturlandschaft ist wieder um einen einzigartigen künstlerischen Freiraum ärmer. Angesichts des anhaltenden Trends, alternatives Berliner Kulturgut zu veräußern, sollte sich der Berliner Senat fragen, was die Lebensqualität einer Stadt ausmacht, die weltweit mit seiner Kreativenfreundlichkeit wirbt. Innovative Kunsträume oder vereinheitliche Luxusquartiere?

Text: Gesa Steeger, freie Publizistin

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Playground Berlin at Mica Moca: AykoWnOmiCa

Photo courtesy Amit Elan

Adar Aviam, Amit Elan & Liav Gabay - AykoWnOmiCa (installation)

"AykoWnOmiCa" is a living-room environment with surreal twists and grotesque figuration, custom made for one of Mica Moca's spaces using paint and cardboard. The installation thematizes homeliness, bringing private atmosphere into a public space.

Playground Berlin Weekend at Mica Moca
site-specific installations & performances
July 16th & 17th 2011

An international selection of artists has been invited by Playground Berlin to conceive site specific work for the Mica Moca building, a former safe factory in Berlin Wedding. The presentation covers performances, installations, video-art and concerts. Curated by Marcela Donato & Kunstraum Richard Sorge with Tiago Oudman.

Established in 2009, Playground Berlin is an international collective dedicated to independent art collaboration and presentation. Blurring generational, national, cultural and sexual boundaries, Playground Berlin's projects offer a delirious convergence of visual art, music, mixed media installations and performances.

www.playground-berlin.org/
Photo courtesy Amit Elan

TAZ Newspaper on Mica Moca & Playground Berlin Weekend

Playground Berlin at Mica Moca: Joana Dias

Joana Dias - Lost in Between (installation)

Joana Dias is a visual artist born in Rio de Janeiro, based in Berlin since 2008. She graduated in Cinematography at Univercidade Gama Filho and currently studies photography at the Neue Schule für Photographie in Berlin.

Joana Dias' installation presents the viewer with an associative photographic narrative, expressed in links, graphics and contrasts, connecting different places, perspectives and colors.

From the Playground Berlin Weekend at Mica Moca; site-specific installations & performances, July 16 & 17 2011.
An international selection of artists has been invited by Playground Berlin to conceive site specific work for the Mica Moca building, a former safe factory in Berlin Wedding. The presentation covers performances, installations, video-art and concerts. Curated by Marcela Donato & Kunstraum Richard Sorge. Thanks to Tiago Oudman.

Established in 2009, Playground Berlin is an international collective dedicated to independent art collaboration and presentation. Blurring generational, national, cultural and sexual boundaries, Playground Berlin's projects offer a delirious convergence of visual art, music, mixed media installations and performances.

www.playground-berlin.org/
www.micamoca.com/

Playground Berlin at Mica Moca: Przemek Dariuz Fronczak

Przemek Dariuz Fronczak - The String and the Light Bodies (video installation)

Przemek Dariusz Fronczak is a 24 years old video artist living in Berlin. After finishing art school, he has developed an oeuvre of installations and paintings. Through his website he created a platform for artists under the name “Dear-us”.

Przemek Dariusz Fronczak presents an installation inspired by string theory, incorporating prints and analogically manipulated video beamer.
www.behance.net/gallery/String-bodys-%28string-theory-con...

From: Playground Berlin Weekend at Mica Moca site-specific installations & performances July 16 & 17 2011

An international selection of artists has been invited by Playground Berlin to conceive site specific work for the Mica Moca building, a former safe factory in Berlin Wedding. The presentation covers performances, installations, video-art and concerts. Curated by Marcela Donato & Kunstraum Richard Sorge. Thanks to Tiago Oudman.

Established in 2009, Playground Berlin is an international collective dedicated to independent art collaboration and presentation. Blurring generational, national, cultural and sexual boundaries, Playground Berlin's projects offer a delirious convergence of visual art, music, mixed media installations and performances.

www.playground-berlin.org/
www.micamoca.com/

Playground Berlin at Mica Moca: Nick Dewar

Nick Dewar - Soapbox (installation)

New Zealand Berlin-based artist Nick Dewar uses digital animation, sound and analogue objects such as domestic equipment to create his installations.

"Soapbox" uses sound and video to explore ideas of reality and its corruption through learned information and experience. The soundtrack and installation provide a glimpse of an alternate dimension, where the dissonance and discord hidden beneath the surface of ordinary life is brought to the foreground.
www.nickdewar.tv/

From:
Playground Berlin Weekend at Mica Moca
site-specific installations & performances
July 16 & 17 2011

An international selection of artists has been invited by Playground Berlin to conceive site specific work for the Mica Moca building, a former safe factory in Berlin Wedding. The presentation covers performances, installations, video-art and concerts.
Curated by Marcela Donato & Kunstraum Richard Sorge. Thanks to Tiago Oudman.

Established in 2009, Playground Berlin is an international collective dedicated to independent art collaboration and presentation. Blurring generational, national, cultural and sexual boundaries, Playground Berlin's projects offer a delirious convergence of visual art, music, mixed media installations and performances.
www.playground-berlin.org/
www.playground-berlin.org/pdf/micamoca.pdf
www.micamoca.com/

Playground Berlin at Mica Moca: Clemence de la Tour du Pin

Clemence de la Tour du Pin
"What owes the space to the silence? Still not sure" 2011
(video projection, neon light and writing)

Clemence de La Tour du Pin is a French artist currently working in Berlin. Her performative installations "become messy monuments to their own creative process," capturing elements of the everyday, with found materials and familiar themes recurring throughout the spaces she manipulates.

At the midpoint of the Mica Moca project at this location, Clemence de la Tour du Pin presents an animation which refers to the ephemeral nature of such art projects. With Berlin changing and getting more commercially developed, she questions whether the possibilities it offers to artists will still be available in the future.
clemencedelatourdupin.blogspot.com/

From:
Playground Berlin Weekend at Mica Moca
July 16 & 17 2011
site-specific installations & performances

An international selection of artists has been invited by Playground Berlin to conceive site specific work for the Mica Moca building, a former safe factory in Berlin Wedding. The presentation covers performances, installations, video-art and concerts. Curated by Marcela Donato & Kunstraum Richard Sorge. Thanks to Tiago Oudman.

Established in 2009, Playground Berlin is an international collective dedicated to independent art collaboration and presentation. Blurring generational, national, cultural and sexual boundaries, Playground Berlin's projects offer a delirious convergence of visual art, music, mixed media installations and performances.

www.playground-berlin.org/
www.playground-berlin.org/pdf/micamoca.pdf
www.micamoca.com/

Playground Berlin at MIca Moca: Amit Elan - Dejuweeshgäimedjetju

Photo: Amit Elan

Amit Elan is a 22 years old Berlin based Israeli artist. He studied at Hamidrasha Art Academy and has since developed mixed media installations. His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions throughout Europe, Asia and Israel.

"Dejuweeshgäimedjetju" was presented at the Playground Berlin Weekend at Mica Moca, July 16 & 17 2011 feat. site-specific installations & performances.

An international selection of artists has been invited by Playground Berlin to conceive site specific work for the Mica Moca building, a former safe factory in Berlin Wedding. The presentation covers performances, installations, video-art and concerts. Curated by Marcela Donato & Kunstraum Richard Sorge with Tiago Oudman.
Established in 2009, Playground Berlin is an international collective dedicated to independent art collaboration and presentation. Blurring generational, national, cultural and sexual boundaries, Playground Berlin's projects offer a delirious convergence of visual art, music, mixed media installations and performances.
http://www.playground-berlin.org/

Stand der Dinge - J.Jackie Baier at Playground Berlin/MIca Moca

J.Jackie Baier - Der Stand der Dinge (slide-installation, triptych)

Noted photographer and documentary filmmaker J.Jackie Baier presents us with a deeply personal and unglamorized view of Berlin's sexual underground. Baier portrays in a non-voyeuristic way the lives of transsexual prostitutes, drag queens and other "misfits".
www.jackielynn.de/

From
Playground Berlin Weekend at Mica Moca, July 16 & 17 2011, site-specific installations & performances.
An international selection of artists has been invited by Playground Berlin to conceive site specific work for the Mica Moca building, a former safe factory in Berlin Wedding. The presentation covers performances, installations, video-art and concerts.

Established in 2009, Playground Berlin is an international collective dedicated to independent art collaboration and presentation. Blurring generational, national, cultural and sexual boundaries, Playground Berlin's projects offer a delirious convergence of visual art, music, mixed media installations and performances.
www.playground-berlin.org/
www.micamoca.com/

Playground Berlin at Mica Moca: Madeline Stillwell - Machine Pipe Drawing

Madeline Stillwell's live performances & installations have been exhibited at institutions in Sweden, Germany and North America. In Berlin her work is regularly presented by Wilde Gallery. She has lectured as a Visiting Artist extensively and currently teaches Performance at several institutions. She lives and works in Berlin.

"Machine Pipe Drawing" is a two parts performance, an exploration of public space, internal dialogue, and shared experience. Stillwell aims to investigate conflicting extremes within the human mind, while generating cyclical relationships between self & collective, energy & entropy, production & waste.

madelinestillwell.com/

Playground Berlin Weekend at Mica Moca
site-specific installations & performances
July 16 & 17 2011 at Mica Moca Project

An international selection of artists has been invited by Playground Berlin to conceive site specific work for the Mica Moca building, a former safe factory in Berlin Wedding. The presentation covers performances, installations, video-art and concerts. Curated by Kunstraum Richard Sorge & Marcela Donato.

Established in 2009, Playground Berlin is an international collective dedicated to independent art collaboration and presentation. Blurring generational, national, cultural and sexual boundaries, Playground Berlin's projects offer a delirious convergence of visual art, music, mixed media installations and performances.

www.playground-berlin.org/
http://www.micamoca.com/