Letter from Berlin
Produzentengalerien
Sarah James
It has become something of a cliché to say that Berlin offers an appealing alternative for artists, critics, gallerists and curators fleeing London's increasingly prohibitive prices. However, it remains simple fact: if you earn your way by precarious creative means, Berlin is not only a much easier city to survive in, but it makes it so much more enjoyable doing the surviving. Like the rest of the city, Berlin's art world seems to have managed to retain a little more of a historical conscience than London. Its economy and culture have not yet completely forgotten the Cold War, and, perversely, in a world so defined by global capitalism and 'democracy's' armed assault on 'terror' and its fall-out, there is something rather warming about that.
In Berlin, the cultural experiences that shaped the 70s, 80s and 90s have not been binned by art institutions in a feverish bid to transform, compete and profit. Several years ago David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, remarked that the consequence of what he perceived as the 'decline in support for capitalism' was a risk-averse culture where people relied upon the state to protect them. Gordon Brown seems to have taken note. Our economy is increasingly based upon more and more dubious risk-taking and less protection. Paradoxically, risk-taking is not at all common in London's art world, where it would be much more welcome. However, in Berlin, a city burnt badly by the disasters of speculative investment in the early years after the fall of the Wall, the absence of an allencroaching, all-powerful market means that artists, gallerists and curators can still take risks. This has many knock-on effects, perhaps one of the main ones being that Berlin has an incredible culture of artist-run spaces - just like London possessed in the 60s and 70s and early 80s but which are now more or less a thing of the past.
Berlin's art scene is defined by a wealth of what Americans might call 'co-ops' and the Germans produzentengalerien, or producer galleries. There is something brilliantly honest about the idea; artists manufacture and sell art after all. Today, many of Berlin's artist-run ventures cluster on Mitte's Brunnenstrasse. One such endeavour is the artist-led collective Capri. Focusing on artists concerned with the policies and aesthetics of space, the collective works with European artist-run initiatives such as 'Stability-Mobility-Networks', organising exhibitions and residency programmes. Since Capri was founded in 2001 by Ina Bierstedt, Bettina Carl and Alena Meier, it has put on 71 exhibitions of young international artists. Many artists now enjoying commercial success had early shows here. For example, in 2002 they showed the presently popular Thomas Ravens, now represented by Barbara Wien. On the same street is Klemm's (formerly Amerika), a previously artist-led space that is transforming into a more commercial venture, showcasing Leipzig artists. Next door the regional bent continues with Diskus, established in 2005 by a group of artists from Dresden. Such initiatives follow in the footsteps of Sparwasser HQ, established in Mitte by the Scandinavian artists Lise Nellemann and Torbjörn Limé in 2000. The list continues: there is the nomadic Forever and a day Büro, set up by Ben Cottrell and Mariola Groener in 2002, and Zero Galerie, run by Anna Krenz and Jacek Slaski, which aims to create a link between East and West Europe. Cluster was founded in 2006 by 11 artists including Simon Halfmeyer, Sebastian Gräfe and Thea Timm. Based in an old factory in Wedding - and therefore outside the ordinary tourist trail - it is directed by the art historian, critic and curator Barbara Buchmaier. Of course, the fragile state of Berlin's art market means that many such galleries and spaces fold as quickly as they emerge. Another Brunnenstrasse-based project space, Martin Merten's Rekord Galerie, emerged in 2002, only to disappear three years later.
The prevalence of artist-run spaces in Berlin is not only a result of the city's cheap real estate and rickety economy, but is perhaps also a legacy of the Kunstverein, the art societies that have historically played a central role in Germany's cultural landscape. The NBK (New Berlin Art Society) was founded in 1969 by a group of Berlin artists and is subsidised by the Berlin Senate Administration of Science, Research and Culture. It has had an impressive programme of contemporary shows ever since, with exhibitions including Boris Mikhailov, Juergen Teller and William Eggleston. The present exhibition, 'Contemporary photo-art from Hungary', continues their lengthy tradition of showing young international photographers. Similarly, the NGBK (New Society for Fine Arts) in Kreuzberg operates on this committee model, yet here membership enables you to play a role in the curatorial decisions behind the annual programme. Past projects have included the Thomas Hirschhorn installation that brilliantly cluttered Alexanderplatz underground in 2006 (see AM302).
The culture of collaboration and compromise that underwrites Berlin's artist-run spaces arguably permeates wider reaches of the city's art world. For example, the Gallery Weekend initiative, started in 2005, is an annual programme of coordinated openings, this year taking place on May 2-4, and involving 34 galleries. Some, more critical of Berlin's art scene, have viewed it as a desperate attempt to inject some needed capital into the market. Whether it has yet succeeded in so doing is questionable, but it does provide a compelling new model, being less commercial than a fair and less hard work than a biennale. Perhaps because of the lack of aggressive investment, Berlin does not do total commercialisation and corporate encroachment anything like as efficiently as London. Gentrification happens, but it happens differently here. In the past year new galleries and studios have also started to emerge around Neukölln, a previously neglected district and rough equivalent to what London's Whitechapel once was. Both have long been home to large immigrant populations, and gain most of their appeal and character from their markets, food stores, cafés and restaurants. Yet, unlike Whitechapel, Neukölln's nascent galleries and artist-run spaces have not been accompanied by Starbucks and Tesco Metros. Nor, hopefully, will they be. Should that happen, however, one imagines that, unlike in London, this would provoke some collective action. This time in the form of another favourite and equally admirable Berlin pursuit: protest.
This report was originally published in March 2008 / No 314, p40.
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