2018,

stay hungry

2018,

2014

Initiative

stayhungry-projectspace.de

Michel Aniol & Meike Kuhnert, In Medias Res, 2017, Foto: Michel Aniol

Pätzug/Hertweck, Revisionsklappe, 2018, Foto: Michel Aniol

For many decades Berlin has developed a lively, diverse, and independent way of producing culture and counteracting government decisions, based on, local, generous, and enthusiastic, but also worried, social communities that exchanged resources and ideas within a larger political debate. The city became a “natural” shelter and fertile environment for dissidents, artists, political refugees, and immigrants with any background also due to the need to overcome a traumatic past full of human generated atrocities that are still present in people memories and behaviour.The Project Space Prize has not only saved many spaces and kept them alive for a longer period but basically generated a unique experimental and diverse art scene in Berlin. The Prize has also very much encouraged the founding of new spaces, fueled by the hope of receiving funding at some point. More than anything, it is an example of how much a certain public funding strategy can completely shape a local art scene.I have never really been a friend of these kinds of networks, but from what I can see, you have done a pretty good job for the visibility of and necessity for free spaces.