Team: Philine Schneider, Verena Liebel, Amanda Robledo, Antonia Venter
In cooperation with: Berlin Mondiale, kulturnetzwerk neukölln, Thikwa Werkstatt für Teather und Kunst,
ROSA Architekten
With the opening of the former school garden on Dammweg by Berlin Mondiale / Kulturnetzwerk Neukölln, a “new” (green) space has been created for the general public (in the meantime) that was not previously available to the neighborhood in this way. The use of public space shared by society should also meet the needs of local residents and be collectively negotiated in a participatory manner. With the Freiraumlabor we want to contribute as a local Neukölln initiative to the exploration and documentation of this process on site. The Freiraumlabor therefore deals in principle with questions of cultural and social participation in green spaces and accessibility to experiences of nature. Furthermore, we see green spaces in general, and the old school garden with its history in particular, as a very suitable learning and research laboratory for questions of democratic and sustainable urban development. A multisensory library was created as the heart of the lab, serving as a place for project development, archive and documentation space of the experiences and projects taking place in the Freiraumlabor. The exploration and artistic engagement with the garden becomes a projection space for cultural-ecological processes and co-habitation. With the help of a botanist and various workshop leaders in the fields of art, culture, environment and construction, a diverse, low-threshold program will be developed.
Using found materials from the environment, salt dough, natural dyes, plant presses, herbaria, and microscopes, on-site research, drawing, mapping, and discovery are used to stimulate emotional, historical, aesthetic, social, and ecological engagement with the environment. The results of the work will be collected in a collective effort and finally projected in a final exhibition on the garden area at Dammweg in the form of posters, cinematic projections, collages, models.
Over a period of 8 weeks, artists from the THIKWA workshop are invited to participate in an artistic-research garden residency. Together, the garden is explored as a diversity space. Under the guidance of invited workshop leaders, various artistic techniques will be tried out. The artists also pass on their knowledge as art mediators in the garden studio that follows.
Monday afternoons in the garden studio are spent together exploring the garden as a place of diversity and co-habitation of humans and animals. The impressions are transformed artistically. It can be worked individually or in groups. Premises and materials will be provided (paper, canvas, paints, clay, wood, metal, etc.) On 15.12. the results will be shown in a final exhibition on the site.
Every Thursday afternoon we invite you to the Laboratory of Living Things. Experts from the fields of art, botany, sociology and culture will provide insights into the main theme of the garden as a space of diversity. Visitors are invited to discuss, use the mobile open space lab and its materials, and explore the garden through play.