Timeline

OPENHAUS PLUS FOOD AND FOOTAGE

(c) Gabriel Vallecillo Márquez, 2019

OPENHAUS PLUS SPEISEKINO is a special event where multiple ZK/U formats meet to create an exciting and diverse program!

OPENHAUS, organised every other month, opens the doors of our residency and gives the public a chance to discover our residents’ artistic projects, discuss and exchange directly with them. Every 4 months, the Fact-Finding Committee (“UA”), a local project commissioned to investigate current issues faced by Berlin’s urban society, present their findings in a publication, adding the PLUS to the OPENHAUS. SPEISEKINO // FOOD AND FOOTAGE completes this special program: taking place every Thursdays of the summer months, SPEISEKINO brings together a carefully curated screening and meal around changing themes.

For this edition of OPENHAUS PLUS SPEISEKINO, the program weaves itself around questions of use and perception of the urban and green spaces through a variety of formats. 

The Fact-Finding Committee #04 plans to share the results of their research around urban wildlife and urban food production while SPEISEKINO puts the spotlight on urban gardening and the threats they face. Video works from RESIDENTS investigate relationship and synchronicities between humans and nature, and how plants viewed through a cultural lens can be reminiscent of our own social context. Insights into narratives of the Moabiter Stadtgarten is shared by young locals.

Throughout ZK/U, different video installations put the focus on specific spaces through sound and the notion of “indistinct”, or give a mythical interpretations of flight accidents. Police repression is powerfully evoked, while the public is invited to share their own experience of military urbanism. Misplaced architectural ornaments and statue-washing uses elements of the public space as reinterpreted symbols. Other works question social bonds through the give and take cycle, shared and unshared maps of meaning, and collective investigation of emotion, gender and movements in public spaces. Finally, a workshop invites people to redefine digital design through the lens of collective rights.

Don’t miss the opportunity to meet the artists and researchers in residence and explore ZK/U’s space and surroundings, to ask questions, to discuss and to exchange ideas about ongoing projects and artistic practices.

Program:
Thursday, 22 August 2019

16:00 Workshop: Urbanizing the digital #1
17:30 Himmelbeet panel: No remaining wastelands
19.00-22.30 Open studios and installations
19:00 Food in the frame of SPEISEKINO: Salad from the Himmelbeet garden
20.00 Guided tour
21:30 Screening SPEISEKINO // The Opposite of Grey (2017)

Participants: αGOAT - die Berliner Ziegenbande, Kerem Ozan Bayraktar, Semâ Bekirović, Jan van Esch & Nicolás Concha, Julia Gryboś & Barbora Zentková, Fatma Hendawy, Pawel Jankiewicz, Kristina Miller, Silke Riechert, Sophia Schultz, Mu Tian & Nu Li, Gabriel Vallecillo, Jonas Vansteenkiste, Andrew Wilson, Aiwen Yin, ZK/U Fact-Finding Committee #04 (Stadtfrauenküche), Zona Dynamics

Free entry

SPEISEKINO // FOOD AND FOOTAGE

Title: The Opposite of Gray (2017, 90 min)
Director: Matthias Coers
Language: German with English subtitles

Menu: Salad from the Himmelbeet garden

Fallow land, vacancy, anonymity, stagnation – not everyone living between Dortmund and Duisburg is willing to settle for that. On the contrary. More and more people are discovering opportunities to intervene in everyday urban life. A living room in the middle of the street, the neighbourhood, community gardens. Community houses and citizen initiatives emerge in the niches of the cities – independently, self-determined and together. ‘The Opposite of Gray’ shows different groups that live in practical utopias and open spaces, and fight for a solidary and ecological coexistence in an urban space.

DISCUSSION
Panel discussion with representatives of various community gardens and the director.

Entrance to the film is free as usual. Food from 7.30 p.m., films from 8.30 p.m. 

A meal costs €10. Please reserve your plate until the evening before by sending an email to speisekino(at)zku-berlin.org.

SPEISEKINO // FOOD AND FOOTAGE is part of ‘Shared Cities: Creative Momentum’ and co-funded by the European Union's Creative Europe Programme and the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe.

Julia Gryboś & Barbora Zentková

Kristina Miller

Universum Center

The high-rise Universum Center, located in southern Germany, was considered a showpiece building of the 1960s. The building – so designed by Stuttgart architect A.H. Wein – was intended to be an elite cosmos of itself and followed the city-within-a-city principle. The 22-story, nearly 60-meter-high building contains 121 apartments and 41 stores, an atrium with a fountain, and a terrace.

Similar to the novel High Rise by J. G. Ballad, the building underwent its own transformation over the decades, culminating in anarchy and class struggle. Riots broke out between the residents distributed on the floors according to social hierarchy. The pent- house floor, privatized on the 22nd floor, is accessible via its own elevator, while the remaining 21 floors are characterized by poverty, prostitution and violent crime. The former jewelry stores in front of the gambling casinos have been weakened.

The building and its residents have struggled to recover from a fire at a former bowling center in the basement, and the building's foundation is shaking. These developments can be understood as a parable of a desolidarized society.