August 15–September 30, 2021
Artists: Sasha Amaya, Clara Brinkmann, Philine Puffer, Florine Schüschke, Juli Sikorska
As part of the Germany-wide open competition “Art in the Underground 2020/21,” five works dealing with social biotopes and the transformation of urban spaces will be realised for the exhibition as above, so below. Along Berlin’s underground network, the artistic interventions address new housing spaces, real estate speculation, the migration and homemaking of plants, and urban heat waves.
This year’s edition focuses on the U8 underground line, which forms an axis that runs through the city. In the north, at Franz-Neumann-Platz underground station, land prices, the real estate market, the privatisation of housing, and the consequences of relocation for both humans and plants will be investigated. At Leinestraße underground station in the south, these themes are expanded to address speculative possibilities for new housing, and the influence of global warming on urban space. Meanwhile, on the “Berliner Fenster”—the channel screened on televisions throughout the entire underground network—the role of the underground stations as a whole, including their evaluation by city dwellers, is interrogated in a humorous and critical way. In the interplay between the works, threads emerge that connect the underground both mentally and spatially with above-ground parts of the city, while debates occurring on a global level are reflected in local structures.
Sasha Amaya is a writer and artist working with dance, choreography, installation and spatial design. Her work, entitled Neophytes, addresses the various strategies that plants apply when they arrive in a new place. Clara Brinkmann’s project, the fictional real estate company “Sub Urban,” ironically highlights questions relating to space and the right to affordable housing. Throughout the entire underground network, Philine Puffer’s work will be shown in the form of short video clips via the “Berliner Fenster.” The display will show Google reviews, ratings and internet comments on Berlin underground stations, collected and organised according to specific criteria. With a 60-90 minute audio tour of Reinickendorf and Wedding, artist and architect Florine Schüschke invites visitors to a city walk on the traces of privatisation. Here, themes the artist has investigated since 2018 are addressed, including the selling-off of state-owned land and housing to real estate funds, corruption, and lend-lease rights. “Urban Heat Island Living” is a speculative investigation by the Polish-German designer Juli Sikorska. Drawing on science fiction, she addresses future prototyping and modelling processes to analyse the relationship between humans and nature in urban centres, exploring traces of accelerated climate change in the city, and imagining a sustainable future for Berlin-Neukölln.
The history of the art competition “Art in the Underground”
The art competition, which was originally entitled “Kunst statt Werbung” (“Art instead of Advertising”), first took place in East Berlin in 1958; participating artists were called to design posters for peace. Submitted works were exhibited at the back tracks of Alexanderplatz underground station. While the majority of institutions of the German Democratic Republic were dissolved or renamed after 1989, this competition managed to hold its ground. Since the early 1990s and under the project title “Art in the Underground,” the nGbK has exhibited new artistic works in or in the immediate vicinity of Berlin underground stations in cooperation with the Berlin Senate administrative bodies. In line with measures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, the current edition of the competition “Art in the Underground 2020/21,” as above, so below, involves a Germany-wide rather than international call for artists, as was the case in previous years.
nGbK Project Group: Barbara Green, Lorena Juan, Marenka Krasomil, Isabelle Meiffert, Mirko Winkel. In collaboration with: Savannah Thümler.
Press contact:
neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst
Wayra Schübel
Oranienstraße 25, 10999 Berlin
T 030-616 513 13 / presse [at] ngbk.de
Financed by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe – Art in Urban Space. Supported by LOTTO-Stiftung Berlin.
Media partner: taz, Berliner Fenster
