Beitragende der Nachbarschaftsakademie 2019

Mojisola Adebayo, bankleer, Silvia Baptista, Julia Bar-Tal, Silvia Baptista, Daniel Bejarano, Stephan Bernardes, Elisa T. Bertuzzo, Brett Bloom, Elizabeth Calderón Lüning, Marco Clausen, Bonnie Fortune, Paula Gioia, Ekhart Hahn, Guy Hazwi, Naomi Hennig, Marc Herbst, Nicolas Humbert, Initiative Prinzessinnengarten Kreuzberg und Commons-Abendschule, Hagit Keysar, Kiki von Ende Gelände, Marion Louisgrand Sylla, Barbara Marcel, Kerstin Meyer, Sabine Meyer, Shalev Moran, Camila Nóbrega, Klaus G. Otto, Jan Rolletschek, Hans Rombach, Åsa Sonjasdotter, Blanka Stolz, Studiengruppe des Instituts für Kunst im Kontext an der UdK (Marisa Benjamim, Wen-Ling Chung, Marcos Garcia Pérez, Moritz Gramming, Daniela Zambrano Almidon, betreut von Claudia Hummel), Michelle Teran, Yvonne Volkart, Werner Wiartalla, Nicole Wolf, Florian Wüst.

Nachbarschaftsakademie

Åsa Sonjasdotter, Marco Clausen (Kuratorische Leitung), Anthea Engelhardt (Projektassistenz), Marc Herbst, Michelle Teran (Publikation), Florian Wüst (Kurator Filmprogramm), Common Grounds e.V. (Organisatorische Unterstützung)

Kurzbiographien

Mojisola Adebayo has worked in theatre, radio and television, over the past two decades, performing in over 50 productions, writing, devising and directing over 30 plays and leading countless workshops, worldwide, from Antarctica to Zimbabwe. She trained extensively with Augusto Boal, and is an expert in Theatre of the Oppressed, often working in locations of conflict and crisis. Publications include her plays in Mojisola Adebayo: Plays One (Oberon), 48 Minutes for Palestine in Theatre in Pieces (Methuen), The Interrogation of Sandra Bland in Black Lives, Black Words (Oberon), The Theatre for Development Handbook (with John Martin and Manisha Mehta, available through www.pan-arts.net) and several academic chapters. Plays Two (Oberon) is out in 2019. Mojisola is an Associate Artist with Pan Arts, Building the Anti-Racist Classroom and Black Lives, Black Words; a Visiting Artist at Rose Bruford College; Goldsmiths and a Lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London. Her next play STARS will be staged in 2020. She is currently writing Wind / Rush for the Royal National Thea atre. See www.mojisolaadebayo.co.uk for more.

bankleer (Karin Kasböck & Christoph Maria Leitner) produzieren seit 1999 zusammen skulpturale Performances, dokufiktionale Videos und interaktive, raumgreifende Installationen zu gesellschaftlichen Ver awerfungen und Transformationsprozessen. BANKLEER waren neben Dietrich Heißenbüttel und weiteren Unterstützer*innen maßgeblich an der Projektkonzeption und -durchführung von RE:EDEN beteiligt.

Silvia Baptista identifies herself as a black woman of Quilombola origin. She is above all a fighter for social concerns. Sílvia was part of the feminist social movements of the 80s in Brazil, when she worked in the popular housing movement and against expulsions. She was co-founder of the Association of Farmers of Vargem Grande (Agrovargem), where she developed local strategies in the field of agroecology. She is a member of the Coletivo Popular de Mulheres da Zona Oeste of Rio de Janeiro. She is part of the project management of the project „Living and Planting in the Metropolis“ (Morar e Plantar). She is articulator of the Feminist Network of Communication in Agroecology (Teca). She has an educational background, specializes in innovation management in phytomedicine and has a master’s degree in natural sciences, worked as an assistant in the research of the Fitorixi Network: Ethnobotany and Conservation of Medicinal Plants as a subsidy for the introduction of native Amazonian species into the Unified Health System of Oriximiná – Pará, Brazil. She is currently a PhD student in Urban and Regional Planning (IPPUR-UFRJ).

Julia Bar-Tal is a Farmer in Brandenburg. She is part of the collective farm „Bienenwerder“ and engaged in local and international struggles on social and ecological justice. She is engaged in the alliance of young agriculture (Bündnis junge Landwirtschaft) against land grabbang in eastern Germany and in the network „15th garden“ supporting farmers in Syria and the region.

Elisa T. Bertuzzo verflechtet eigene Beobachtungen und theoretische Diskurse der Anthropologie, Kulturwissenschaften und Stadtforschung, um über Recht auf Stadt, Raumaneignung und Translokalität vor allem im Kontext Südasiens zu schreiben. Mit dem Habitat Forum Berlin beforscht sie seit 2010 die selbstorganisierte Siedlung Karail in Dhaka, Bangladesch. Sie war bis 2018 Mitglied des Forschungsteams „Territories of Extended Urbanisation“ am Future Cities Laboratory des Singapore-ETH-Centre und ist aktuell Gastprofessorin im MA „Raumstrategien“ der weißensee kunsthochschule berlin. Neben ihrer Dissertation Fragmented Dhaka (2009, Franz Steiner Verlag) ist sie Autorin der kürzlich erschienenen Monografie Archipelagos. From Urbanisation to Translocalisation (2019, Kadmos).

Brett Bloom is an artist, activist, writer and publisher based in Indiana. He works mainly in collaborative groups and situations, often dealing with ecological issues. He is the cofounder of the long-running art group Temporary Services. Bloom co-edit-ed the double-book Belltown Paradise/Making Their Own Plans (WhiteWalls, 2004), which profiles long term neighborhood efforts in 5 cities that preserve open spaces, build sustainable city infrastructures, and create new public spaces. In the summer of 2015, Bloom coordinated two intensive training sessions—part of a multi-year effort called Breakdown Break Down—in London and rural Scotland that aim at the mobilizing for an articulation and construction of a civil culture to prepare for and survive climate chaos and breakdown. One key goal is to generate new stories that replace western petro-subjectivity, our industrialized sense of self and place, with other narratives and possibilities.

Elizabeth Calderón Lüning is associated researcher in the UDK at the Weizenbaum Institute. In her research she explores the potential role of digital technologies in shaping urban futures and policy-making issues related to questions of inequalities and digital sovereignty. As co-founder of Common Grounds e.V., she has advised and taught on topics such as local participation, organizational development and social and technological networking. As part of the Prinzessinnengarten and the Nachbarschaftsakademie, she has led the community efforts of the Berlin pilot project MAZI, a European research project on local digital networks.

Marco Clausen is co-initiator of Prinzessinnengarten (since 2009) and the Neighborhood Academy (since 2015). He contributes to the question of local self-organization for social and ecological justice in urban and rural areas through lectures, publications, participatory research, international exchange programs, and cooperation with artists and activists. Clausen ist specifically interested in non-institutionalized forms of collective learning and political education on topics like the commons, food sovereignty, or the right to the city. In 2012 he published “Prinzessinnengarten. Anders gärtnern in der Stadt” (Prinzessinnengarten. A Different Way of Gardening in the City). Clausen is active in different movements, networks, and working groups on democratic land access and part of the Initiative Prinzessinnengarten Kreuzberg. Together with Kerstin Meyer he organized the Fact-Finding Committee on green commons at ZK/U and published „Gemeingut Grün: Ein Dauergartenvertrag für Berlin“ (ZK/U Press 2018).

Bonnie Fortune is an artist and writer whose work looks at ecology–social and environmental– and the communication of affect. Fortune recently edited An Edge Effect: Art & Ecology in the Nordic Landscape. The book focuses on artists and arts groups who are working in expanded ways, connecting with others via interdisciplinary and discursive modes of artistic practice. The artists are conducting their own research into plant breeding, bio-diversity, and bio-remediation. They are saving seeds, composting, and collaborating in the field. The artists in this book are above all responding to the rapid changes that are occurring in our anthropogenic era.

Bonnie Fortune and Brett Bloom collaborate on artistic research projects around ecology, habitat, conservation, and protecting land. Fortune and Bloom have completed numerous projects dealing with urban habitat and ecology, including projects for the city of Urbana, Illinois and public art works in Copenhagen, Denmark. Their most recent collaboration was a “Deep Map” of ACRES Land Trust, a conservation organization in the Midwestern United States that “protects land forever.” They both write regularly on topics of art and ecology.

Paula Gioia is beekeeper and farmer in a collective farm in Brandenburg. She represents the Arbeitsgemeinschaft bäuerliche Landwirtschaft (AbL) in the coordination committee of Via Campesina Europe (ECVC).

Ekhart Hahn ist einer der Pioniere des Ökologischen Städtebaus und Stadtumbaus. Seit 1975 stehen diese Themen im Zentrum seines beruflichen Wirkens. Im Jahre 1979 führte er den Begriff und das Forschungsfeld „Siedlungsökologie“ ein, mit anschließender Buchveröffentlichung im Jahre 1982. Seiner Zeit voraus formulierte er damals die These, dass vor allem die Stadt- und Siedlungsentwicklung zentrale Ursachen von Klimawandel und Umweltzerstörung seien. Ein grundlegendes ökologisches Umdenken in Theorie und Praxis des Städtebaus sei Voraussetzung für eine nachhaltige Entwicklung. Ökostädte und ökologischer Stadtumbau würden zu zentralen Herausforderungen des 21. Jahrhunderts werden.

Guy Hazwi is a self-taught engineer. He comes from a background of industrial manufacturing in his family owned and run novelty product factories where he would be challenged in solving manufacturing needs with technological innovations. In 2009, realising the extent of human impact on the ecological systems of the planet, Guy became involved in the work of the Metabolic Studio in Los Angeles as a technical solution developer for unique social and environmental projects through the use of artistic interventions and the creation of “Devices of Wonder” as instruments for catalysing change. In 2013 Guy left the United States to live closer to his family in Israel, and chose in 2018 Berlin as his new home. Guy is a recent addition to Prinzessinnengarten and has an interest in merging increasingly more ubiquitous advanced technologies of materials, electronics, information and more into the service of nature and the responsible interconnection of humans with nature. Guy is also associated with maker space MotionLab, A technology development space and startup incubator in Berlin.

Naomi Hennig lives in Berlin, where she works as artist, curator and project coordinator. She has been involved in artist-run initiatives and institutions, including nGbK and District, Berlin. Her artistic work is based on moving image, as well as archival and multidisciplinary research, covering areas such as art history, antifascism, economics, gentrification and land issues. Her current research focusses on the history of neoliberalization and its ecological implications. Curatorial collaborations include Galerie im Turm exhibition program (2013-2015), Artist Placement Group (Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Berlin & Summerhall, Edinburgh, 2015/16), Oh So Solid, All That Air (Museum für Fotografie, Berlin, 2017).

Marc Herbst is an artist, editor, researcher, and some-times activist, with a deep and inter-disciplinary approach across the ranges of art, art theory and social sciences and experience with natural sciences. Herbst is a co-editor of the Journal of Aesthetics & Protest- www.joaap.org, a serious and independent project publishing (in print and online) texts on art, culture and critical theory. In this way, as an editor, organizer and publisher he has supported many other artists and theorists. He has worked more then 20 years as an independent researcher, social justice advocate, journalist and publisher for also for  governmental institutions and universities. Rather than anything schematic, he likes the name „weirdo think-tank“ for the Journal Project. Herbst completed his PhD at Goldsmiths Centre for Cultural Studies in October 2018.

Initiative Prinzessinnengarten Kreuzberg und Commons-Abendschule. Aus den sozialen, kulturellen und Bildungsaktivitäten sowie dem Engagement gegen Verdrängung und Privatisierung in dem urbanen Gemeinschaftsgarten ist die Initiative Prinzessinnengarten hervorgegangen. Sie knüpft an die erfolgreiche Kampagne zur Verhinderung der geplanten Privatisierung der Fläche von 2012 an und setzt sich zum Ziel den Freiraum dauerhaft als ein Gemeingut und ein Modell für „Dauergärten“ und eine sozial-ökologischer Stadtentwicklung von unten zu sichern. In Form gemeinschaftlicher, nicht-kommerzieller Raumnutzungen (Laube, O45), einer Garten- und Kompostgruppe, künstlerischer Interventionen und durch die Organisation von Nachbarschaftsversammlungen soll bereits heute die Keimzelle eines dauerhaften Erhalts für alle entstehen. Begleitet wird dieses Engagement durch die selbstorganisierte politische Bildungsarbeit in der Commons-Abendschule, die unter anderem die „Wunschproduktion 99 Jahre Prinzessinnengarten“

Instituts für Kunst im Kontext an der UdK, Studiengruppe mit Marisa Benjamim, Wen-Ling Chung, Marcos Garcia Pérez & Moritz Gramming, Daniela Zambrano Almidon, betreut von Claudia Hummel

Hagit Keysar is a researcher and activist based in Jerusalem and Berlin. Her work brings together creative practice and critical theory, and explores the politics and imaginations spurred by aerial imageries and technologies. In recent years she worked to advance the potentials of DIY practices and civic technoscience as a way of materializing counter-dominant visual practices in human-rights activism. She is currently exploring the use of drones by indigenous groups and human rights activists for articulating rights and visualizing land claims in settler-colonial settings.

Marion Louisgrand Sylla is the director of Kër Thiossane ((House of welcome), a media art centre with an artist-residency programme, based in Dakar (Senegal). Together with Momar François Sylla she founded this cultural and artistic place in 2002 . The aim of Kër Thiossane is the integration of multimedia in artistic practices (music, dance, theatre, and visual arts) and the culture of open access, numeric creation through computer science and communication technologies. Through research, residence, creation and training, Kër Thiossane has become a place for social and artistic innovation addressing issues of citizenship, ecology and urban development. Technology and artistic practice are taken as tools for knowledge that can be appropriated by all. A space of sharing, the centre is deeply rooted in the neighbourhood while connecting with international arts, movements and groups. Regularly, events are hosted for a public that is not so used to contemporary art. In 2014, Ker Thiossane initiated a public garden in the neighbourhood, the “Garden of resistance”, and a School of the Commons. The fab lab Defko AK Niep (do it with others) is also based in the public space and links traditional practices and numerical machine.

Jumana Manna is a visual artist working primarily with film and sculpture. Her work explores how power is articulated through relationships, often focusing on the body and materiality in relation to narratives of nationalism, and histories of place. She was awarded the A.M. Qattan Foundation’s Young Palestinian Artist Award in 2012 and the Ars Viva Prize for Visual Arts in 2017. Manna has participated in various film festivals and exhibitions, including Henie Onstad Museum, Norway, 2018; Mercer Union, Canada, 2017; Jeu de Paume and CAPC Bordeaux, France, 2017; SculptureCenter, USA, 2014; Marrakech Biennale 6, 2016; The Nordic Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale; as well as the 54th and 56th Viennale International Film Festivals, 66th and 68th Berlinale and CPH:DOX 2018, where Wild Relatives won the New:Visions award. She is based in Berlin.

Barbara Marcel is an artist, filmmaker and writer interested in the cultural roots of nature and the troubled heritage of colonial imagery. Marcel is graduated in Film Studies in Rio de Janeiro, holds a M.A from the Art in Context Institute, Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK) and is currently a PhD candidate at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar as a fellow researcher of the Heinrich Böll Foundation. Her artistic research PhD investigates the essay film as a historiographical tool for decolonial thinking with and through images, focusing on issues related to the history of social-environmental connections between Germany and Latin America. Parallel to her individual research, she often collaborates with other artists, researchers and activists on projects resulting in visual and sound pieces, installations, lectures, publications and participatory workshops about ecological processes of thinking and practicing in times of environmental crisis and increasing social inequalities. In Berlin, she is part of the collective GIRA – Festival de Resistências, RefrACTa and Fórum Resiste Brasil. http://www.barbaramarcel.com

Kerstin Meyer is an economist who works internationally to advise on strategy and organisation in developing democratic policies. She also advises businesses in Berlin and Brandenburg on economics for the common good, initiates and participates in artistic projects and publishes the political street theatre texts of artistes debout with Mohammadou Diol and Archive Books in Dakar and Berlin. She has been active in Berlin city politics since the petition and referendum to preserve Tempelhof Field. Together with Elske Rosenfeld and Jörg Franzbecker she published “On the Constitution. Research, Documents 1989–2017” in 2017 as part of the series “Berlin Booklets on the City’s History and Present”. Kerstin Meyer is engaged in the Initiative to secure Prinzessinnengarten Kreuzberg for the next 99 years and, together with Marco Clausen she organized the Fact-Finding Committee on green commons at ZK/U and published „Gemeingut Grün: Ein Dauergartenvertrag für Berlin“ (ZK/U Press 2018).

Camila Nóbrega is a Brazilian journalist and researcher. She has published in different media vehicles, such as The Guardian newpaper (Global Development Professionals Network), O Globo, Le Monde Diplomatique, Canal Ibase, Nzinga Effect among others. In the last years, however, she has worked directly with community based communication and independent journalism, especially focused on social-environmental justice and Gender issues, The journalist is also a member of Intervozes, a collective on the struggle for media democratizatio and right to communication in Brazil. Camila is a PhD candidate at the Political Science department at Free University of Berlin, holds a scholarship of the Heinrich Böll Foundation and works with different communication languages, such as Text, Photography, Audio and Video.

Jan Rolletschek ist Kulturwissenschaftler und beschäftigt sich im Rahmen seiner Dissertation mit den Verbindungen zwischen dem Philosophen, Schriftsteller und Revolutionär Gustav Landauer und dem Philosophen Baruch de Spinoza. Er ist in der Gustav Landauer Denkmalinitiative in Berlin aktiv. 2019 hat er die Ausstellung  „Die Anarchie ist das Leben der Menschen, die dem Joche entronnen sind.“ Gustav Landauer in Berlin 1889-1917 und das Begleitprogramm zur Ausstellung mitorganisiert.

Åsa Sonjasdotter is the Humanure Lab’s educational coordinator. For several years she worked on the cultural narratives surrounding cultivation, cultivated plants, soil and humanure. She is a founding member of Nachbarschaftsakademie, a bottom up learning site and a branch of Prinzessinnengarten Kreuzberg, as well as she is co-initiator of the Prinzessinnengarten Kreuzberg Humanure Lab. She has been professor at Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art in Norway, an institution she took part of establishing in 2007. Projects and exhibitions reflecting humanure include: Peace With Earth, Project Art Space, Dublin, Ireland, 2018-2020; Peace With Earth, The Museum of Gotland, Sweden, 2017-2019; Fertile Bodies, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo, Norway, 2016. For more info: www.potatoperspective.org,

Blanka Stolz is the Humanure Lab’s re-distribution coordinator. She has worked on farms and gardens for several garden-seasons in the Swiss mountains, in Berlin and in Brandenburg; she is editor of “Die Philosophie des Gärtnerns“ (mairisch Verlag 2017) and editorial assistant of “Von Pflanzen und Menschen” (Deutsches Hygiene Museum Dresden/Wallstein Verlag 2019); since 2017 she is part of the Abendschule, in the Prinzessinnengarten Kreuzberg she is working on projects experimenting with compost techniques and the cultivation of soil.

Michelle Teran is an educator, practicing artist, and researcher working within the interdisciplinary field contemporary art and whose research areas encompass socially engaged and site-specific art, transmedia storytelling, counter-cartographies, social movements, urbanism, feminist practices, critical pedagogy, and activism. Her multidisciplinary works span film, text, bookworks, performance, installation, public readings, online works, participatory events and interventions in public space. Michelle Teran is currently Research Professor in Social Practices at Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam. She completed her doctoral studies at the Bergen Academy of Art and Design (KHIB) within the Norwegian Artistic Research Fellowship Programme. “Future Guides: From Information to Home” is an artistic research project on following: how to practice and theorize following.

Yvonne Volkart is lecturer in art theory and cultural media studies at the Institute of Aesthetic Practice and Theory IAeP, Academy of Art and Design, FHNW Basel, and at the Master of Arts in Art Education, Zurich University of the Arts. She is senior researcher of the SNF-funded project «Times of Waste» at the Institute of Experimental Design and Media Studies IXDM, Academy of Art and Design FHNW Basel. She was research fellow of the SNF-funded project «RhyCycling – Esthetics of Sustainability in the Basel Border Area» (2010 – 2013), and she was project leader of the research project «Cyborg Bodies», “Mediaartnet” (ICS/ZHdK/ZKM Karlsruhe). From fall 2017 – 2020, she will lead the SNF-funded research project «Ecodata – Ecomedia – Ecoaesthetics. Yvonne Volkart is a regular contributor to «springerin. Hefte für Gegenwartskunst». From 2009 – 2011 she was curator at Shedhalle Zurich. From 2007 – 2009 she curated the touring exhibition and the book «Ecomedia. Ecological Strategies in Today’s Art» (together with Sabine Himmelsbach and Karin Ohlenschläger). Her main concerns are ecological, political and digital aesthetics; the Anthropocene; climate change; New Materialisms; gardening, landscape, nature, and technology; the non-human; trans- and intermedia; history of modernity; art and science; curatorial practices; queer and gender theory (i.e. cyberfeminism, she was member of Old Boys Network); history and performativity in the arts.

Werner Wiartalla ist diplomierter Physik-Ingenieur und beschäftigt sich seit über 30 Jahren mit Ökologieprojekten. Er arbeitet interdisziplinär mit Themen der Nachhaltigkeit die die Kultur, Ökologie, Ökonomie und das Soziale gleichberechtigt verbinden. Neben der Dachbegrünung und vor Allem der Klimatisierung mit Pflanzen, stehen Regenwassernutzung und Solaranlagen auf seiner Vita. In den letzten Jahren widmete er sich der Baubiologie und entwarf super gut gedämmte und vor allem bezahlbare Strohballenhäuser. Wiartalla lebt und arbeitet in der Ufa-Fabrik.

Nicole Wolf is Senior Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research, writing, pedagogical and curatorial projects concentrate on political cinemas, cinematic/political alliances in the face of conflict, war and occupations and the poetics of artistic and activist practices towards critical ecologies. The latter is currently developed through practice based research on agri-cultural resistance and an explorations of ‚Cinématics of the Soil‘. Her participation in ‘Living Archive – Archive Work as a Contemporary Artistic Practice’ and ‘Archive ausser sich’ (both projects by Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art, Berlin) include research and writing for the restoration of the feminist film collective Yugantar’s (1980-83, India) works, the interdisciplinary ‘Soil – City- Solidarity. An urban permaculture design course’ and ‘“Tell me what matter was the ground” – Repair beyond Redemption, both part of the project Stoffwechsel.

Recent publications are: “In the wake of Gujarat: The social relations of translations and Futurity” in: Critical Studies 4. 2019; “Is this just a story? Friendships and fictions for speculative alliances. The Yugantar film collective (1980-83)”, in MIRAJ 7.2. 2018; “Fugitive Remains: Soil, Celluloid and Resistant Collectivities”, with Sheikh, Shela; Gray, Ros; César, Filipa; Grisey, Raphaël and Touré, Bouba. 2018. In: Cooking Sections, ed. The Empire Remains Shop. New York: Columbia Books.

Florian Wüst is an artist, film curator, and publisher. His work deals with social, economic and technical progress in modernity as well as with urban political issues. He has curated film programs for international art institutions, cinemas, and festivals. In 2015, he co-edited the DVD edition The Modern City. Film essays on the new urbanity of the 1950s and 60s. He is the co-founder of the Berlin Journals–On the History and Present State of the City and, since 2016, the film and video curator of transmediale. Wüst is part of the curatorial team of Licht Luft Scheiße. Perspectives on Modernity and Ecology (2019).