2021,

COVEN BERLIN

2021,

2013

Initiative

covenberlin.com

Kiona Hagen Niehaus, Dr. Self, video work in the frame of PROBAND WERDEN, Foto: Billie Sara Clarken

future babies, performance in the frame of the exhibition LUCKY, 2018, Foto: Judy Landkammer

Art has the unique ability to help us expand our imagination and the way we think about the world. By bending the lines of logic and rational approaches, it offers a gateway to our collective unconscious and provides a terrain where everything is possible, hence pushing our thinking process forward. We see art and artists as seismographs for changes in society. There is also great freedom in art, addressing big and timeless questions that are independent of current economic and political realities and interests. Art can be a space for utopias, or for histories outside of history books. Art is important because it keeps us going through the difficult and dark times. Art keeps us alive.Zum Erhalt von Kultur allgemein ist wichtig, sie aus dem ökonomischen Primat zu lösen; dafür stehen alle nicht kommerziellen Projekträume als selbstbestimmte Orte von experimentellen Fragestellungen, Versuchen, neuen ästhetischen Formulierungen, Untersuchungen sozialer Realitäten … und es wäre noch viel wichtiger, diese Szene insgesamt in ihrer Vielfalt zu erhalten, als vereinzelte Räume „auszuzeichnen“.The art scene, spaces, artists, and initiators in the past ten years (being a continuum of what has gone before) in a nutshell, can be seen to have changed from individual authorships to more collective ones. They act in opposition to the anonymized corporate structures, in particular the giant housing conglomerates (these destructive collective edifices that have the same legal rights as a sentient individual human being) that threaten to dissemble the unique fabric of the city of Berlin that provided a fertile ground in which these initiatives could rise, connect, and thrive. So the project room scene provides a positive counter-weight to these destructive development processes as a living, breathing, collaborative, and inclusive network. I hope that this fabulous project room network does not drown in the indifference of mainstream political thinking in the city of Berlin.