The word “project space” is almost misleading to me. Projects do not have to take place in spaces. Radio shows, Instagram takeovers, and outdoor screenings are also projects. To focus on the aspect of space itself is to take a narrow view of what could – and is – happening in Berlin at the moment.
The ideal project space would come with a budget for production and overhead costs. Ideally, also the curators ought to get paid.Art should first and foremost raise questions that are important for present and future societies. In the last decade, art has moved closer to science, technology, and society. It has become less commercialized and more diverse. We would like art to become not only illustrative and speculative, but also functional, embedding even more science and technologies within itself. This would encourage the audience to be even closer to art, perhaps more critical, diverse, tolerant, and creative.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.