urban occupation : berlin

The Final Presentation

is in the Kubus (by Volksbuehne) 

C O L O U R S

Author_ Ryan Finn

Project_ COLOURS

_Initial Concept

Grand Finale

Two weeks after the final presentation, the final submission is due. The end of a long, and short, semester. Some will go back home to their home countries, some will continue their studies in Berlin. Afterall an exciting experience, i hope, for all of us. Helene and I enjoyed working with you a lot. All the best.

Please see here for the final occupation

Kubus Occupation : Mid-Semester Critique

A day of discussions and presentations! Our external Guest Critics included Prof Peter Aribert Herms from the State Academy of Fine Art in Stuttgart, Hannah Hurtzig from Mobile Academy / Blackmarket Archive, Thomas Arnold from Oxford Brooks and Suzie Attiwill from RMIT University, Melbourne. At the end of this long day Hannah Hurtzig presented the projects from Mobile Academy, Kiosk, and Black Market Archive in the Kubus. Hannah is currently exhibiting one of her projects at the Art Biennale in Venice. A very productive day with exciting projects and great conversations. See the mid-semester presentations here >

Kubus Occupation : headphone event

Another test and experiment was a headphone event we were throwing on a public holiday, June 1, in the Kubus on Rosa-Luxemburg Platz. We were only using digital platforms and tools, which are generally used for social networks in virtual space to create a crowd in real space, on Rosa-Luxemburg Platz. More than 100 visitors joined us to listen see our videos of occupations, to listen to our soundtracks and to hear the sound of the videos we did set up our won (pirate) radio station and broadcasted within the Kubus. Alternatively one could download the sound files beforehand onto ones mp3 player. and See the event  website, or connect top the facebook event page.

Video of the occupation here>

Kubus Occupation : Concepts

On May 29 the students of the international design studio Urban Occupation were presenting their very first concepts with diagrams, storyboards, collages and text, to a number of guest critics.  Here You find the written feedback on all the different projects. The results can soon be seen here>design concepts

Urban Occupation : Action

We learned from the instant occupations, a first test in occupying public space, and formed teams to collaborate on further actions/occupations. We did interact with space and public through active inhabitation, provocation, happenings and installations in order to discover the diversity and potential of a given public space. Many thanks to our guest critics Michael Roper (architect) and Alex Martinis Roe (installation and performance artist).

check out the cool urban occupation : actions here>

urban occupations

Instant Occupation

The first test, in a way a self-experiment in scale 1:1 was the exposure of oneself individually on the 1st of May in public space. A quite different experience of the public space for most of us, engaging with strangers, starting conversations, …Many thanks to Antonia Pont, our guest critic on that day.

see examples of the instant occupations here>

instant occupations

Kick Off - Precedents

The workshop started with individual research on precedents in art and architecture, using a common shared indesign template to fill in informations concerning authors, actors, title, date, location and most important the manifesto.

have a look at the precedents here>

precedents

For those of you who weren’t there: here’s some impressions of the demonstration on 23rd of May, starting from RLP.

Tiny ‘film’

More (biased, german) INFO

View over crowd

Volksbühne

Members of the 'Wurstpartei'

Weydingerstraße

position: rike feurstein hat store

Today we send out the invitation to a number of guest critics for the first presentation of concepts.
dear friends and colleagues, including Sebastian Kaiser and Stefan Rosinski (both from Volksbuehne), Olga Skaba and Hartmut Flothman (both from claim), Michael Roper (Australian architect, and Guest Critic at the urban occupation : Action event), Prof Peter-Aribert Herms (Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Kuenste Stuttgart) and Birgit Klauck (ADIP/TU Berlin).

‘The Students from the international urban occupation design studio at the Architecture Design Innovation Program (ADIP) at the TU Berlin, led by Rochus Urban Hinkel with Hélène Frichot, would like to invite you to be a guest critic for the presentation of the very first concepts.
The studio brings together students from Australia, Bulgaria, France, Great Britain, Spain, Poland, Canada and Germany in an exploration of the social and political dimensions of public space through a number of ‘actions’.’

URBAN OCCUPATION DESIGN STUDIO flyer2905

Here’s the pdf of the short lecture about the history of RLP on last friday. It comes with two remarks:

On the occasion of the 60ieth anniversary of the Federal Republic of Germany, there is a manifestation against state, nation and capitalism on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz (May 23rd, 6 pm). Motto: “Something better than the nation. Against the rule of the wrong freedom”. If you want to expirience the political atmosphere of the place, I guess this is your chance…

Info (german)

If you like it a bit more peaceful, on the first of June (Yes, the day we occupy the Cube and will probably be busy, but anyway) there is a guided tour through the Scheunenviertel following the track of Alfred Döblin and Joseph Roth, starting at Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz at 2pm (fee: 7€, probably only interesting if your german is decent).

Info and registration (german)

by Ivan Andonow (BG) Jakob Pawlowski (PL)

The Rosa Luxemburg Platz today is not a centre for left activism or a meeting point of the left intelligenzia. It has become a cliché of it’s past. The area is neat and clean, quiet and fantastically white-bread. People living and working there use symbols, behaviours, language, ideas of the left as attachments to their identity, rather then living the ideas they use to make themselves appear more interesting, different.

Berlin offers all the problems of the modern (urban) life in a nutshell, failed immigration, the failed transformation from a industrial society to a service economy, the failed social reunification of Germany, the lack of money spent on education and social money, the imbalance between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the people etc. However, none of this is actually visible there. Instead, the Rosa Luxemburg Platz and the people using this space have created for themselves a peaceful island within reality, from which they observe the world around them like animals in the zoo.

However, this behaviour not only occurs to the people using the area and not only affects political/social activism. It is within everyone that with time we feel overburdened by the social, political, global reality and try to find/create a peaceful niche for ourselves. This might be good for us to close our eyes in order to feel better, safer, happier. But it doens’t change reality and only bridges the time gap until we ourselves become victims of what we ignore.

“Maybe you forgot something” aims questions to passers-by, that aren’t political, although some can be interpreted this way. The messages on the speech bubbles don’t mean to have an instant, even radical imapct on people. The questions are subcutaneous, maybe even formal and not communicating aggressively. They are meant to stay in people’s minds and maybe, in a different context, be the trigger for individual experience of self awareness.

documentation (pdf): maybe you forgot something

We established a new category for another level of engagement, researching on the political, historical, social, cultural, build and legal/illegal conditions of Rosa Luxemburg Platz. Resources is a collection of individual research shared with the whole studio team.