›Recreational Successions‹ conceives of the pioneer forest that covers the Zollverein slag heap as a borrower of space and material. Appearing at various locations on the slag heap, the installation also refers to traditional nomadic forms of construction, which on the one hand obtain the required materials from so-called undemanding, fast-growing plants and on the other hand return the areas they use to the environment little or unaltered.

Daybed is a functional sculpture that brings the intimacy of the private sphere into the outdoor space. It invites us to examine the limits and possibilities of urban infrastructures and encourages us to think about forms of being together and communal regeneration.

With Shania Anand, we imagined our archive not as a dusty folder, but with the idea “to actually use and consume things, to keep them in, or bring them into, circulation, and to literally throw them forth (Latin: proicere), into a shared and distributed process that operates based on diffusion, not consolidation, through imagination, not memory, and towards creation, not preservation.“

„If commoning has a meaning, it must be the production of ourselves as a common subject” — Federici, 2019

Software-ing Spaces is a spatial experiment inside Bergamo’s former prison and monastery Sant’Agata (ExSA), through which students and young professionals from diverse backgrounds are invited to collectively experience what it means to take care of an urban common in an act of cohabitation and collective auto-construction.

‘No medicinal herbs can grow in the dirt of capitalist society which can help cure capitalist anarchy.’ — Rosa Luxemburg

“There is no such thing as a structureless group” states Jo Freeman in her article ‘The Tyranny of Structurelessness’, “the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others”.

In the economy of letters anything is possible. Better still, one who is endowed with sufficient letters can do anything. Long words, love letters, songs, poetry, a deep conversation or simply calling the insurance company to demand a refund for a faulty debit.

The physical conditions under which architectures are produced (the material making of architecture) are to my knowledge little considered in terms of their spatial potential, political relevance and timely duration within architectural conception.

Combustion in Question was a format structured around formulating different questions towards and putting up a range of hot and cold experiments with materials from the former Tullara Brick Factory, Pristina, Kosovo

AUS DER SPEISEKAMMER (out of the food chamber) come topics such as producing and preserving – food and community, hosting, confronting abundance and scarcity. What are the basic needs and requirements to start a conversation?

Heating a wood-fired oven takes time, as does preparing the bread dough. In contrast to the quick sandwich on the hand, such a procedure seems backworldly. It is only revealed on second glance that even in the present city, care and time are important ingredients that shape our cityscape.

No common is possible unless we refuse to base our life and our reproduction on the suffering of others, unless we refuse to see ourselves as separate from them. 

Schönhauser Allee 135 – building brick, empire-format: In the attic of 135, a relatively well-isolated sound studio in which back in the day, even productions for important state radio programmes were recorded (if only they knew!).

Deepening the practice of and research conducted within our Who Are We initiative, over the course of two weeks we had the possibility to stretch our tentacles in many directions; confronting the neo-liberal system based on scarcity with an activism of abundance (Valeria Graziano and Giulia Palladini); staging a Common Wallet – imagining how to unlearn negative associations between money, precarity and taboos, and replace them with practices of radical trust…

In autumn 2021 Who Are We participated in a series of events convened by the Research Training Group Minor Cosmopolitanisms at the University of Potsdam entitled ‘Approaches to Decolonial Work During a Pandemic’ that deals with a postcolonial approach to ecologies, inequalities, bodies, indigeneities and alternative genealogies.

To trigger a discussion on sustainable, healthy and fair working conditions Who Are We spoke to Magdalena Ziomek, managing director of the cooperative for freelancers – SMartDE eG, and Anna Mareike Holtz from Kulturbüro ehrliche Arbeit. We would like to pragmatically shed light on cooperative and solidary working principles and legal forms, but also on how to organise and discuss collaborative work more politically.

Cultivating the small seed that we planted, a seed of a different working culture, based on non-violent communication and solidarity, on joyful self-criticism, on care for (our) bodies and minds…

With a nod to artist Mierle Ukeles Laederman’s 1969 Maintenance Manifesto with the much quoted question of “After the revolution, who’s going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?”, the following questions can be asked: Who writes e-mails over the weekend? Who is active on twitter? Who keeps the facebook account alive? Who cleans the space for the next meeting? Who organizes timelines and resources? Who writes the grant applications?

Crossing Steintorplatz or Altmannbrücke, past tall buildings, across railroad tracks and countless lanes – anyone who finds themselves in the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MK&G) is part of what this section of the Social Design exhibition deals with: the immediate surroundings of the building.

Departing from the ingredients of local specialities like the Thüringer Wurst and the geo-cultural history of its ingredients, in an applied research, the Kollektionsküche (collecting kitchen) systematically investigated all forms of food production in the rural-urban area around Apolda.

Different types of clay pots can be found in all cultures around the world, well distinguished in their construction, function and use following local appearances of materials and ingredients. This contextual sensibility results in sophisticated shapes. In the uniform canon of industrially shaped product culture, we often lose this diversity as a reasonable connection to meaning and origins of dishes and utilities.

A Rocket Mass Heater is a very efficient kind of heater which uses very little fuel (wood) for a maximum output. With the rise of open source knowledge and the online DIY scene, rocket mass heaters became an internet phenomenon.

The oven is strolling around, sitting down here and there,

attentively observing its surroundings.

It is made from clay, water and aluminate cement.

In its time, where a day is a second, it‘s flexible like a frog.