BRING SOME CHAIRS
or let’s sit on the ground

Hansaviertel, Berlin, 2019

Kristina Leko and David Smithson
With the participation of residents of the Hansaviertel


With the participation of residents of the Hansaviertel BRING SOME CHAIRS or let's sit on the ground was an artistic intervention in public space on the lawn in front of Niemeyer Haus in the Hansaviertel in Berlin. The intervention itself was meant to function as a temporary meeting place for the neighborhood. At the same time, it was a participatory art project that aimed to create a collective statement, a manifesto on the topic of communal life and living together in the city of tomorrow, written together with residents on site. The process unfolded over three months, but neither a manifesto nor any collectively written text was accomplished. Instead, the project was concluded by a public reading of a dozen of individual statements by residents on September 14, 2019.

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Why is social togetherness and community important, especially today?
The idea of shaping and enhancing community and communal life through architecture was an important idea of post-war modernism. This very idea was central to the reconstruction of the Hansaviertel. Many houses in the Hansaviertel were originally designed with integrated community spaces; today, only a few still exist. On-site surveys, supplemented by cultural anthropological research in the Hansaviertel in 2007, indicate that the idea of community, although failed in parts, is still a very strong point of reference for many residents. Through on-site research, the Niemeyer House offers itself as an ideal example of a well-preserved community space and of a functioning community life. In many other houses, community spaces have been reduced and / or are no longer being used.

Intervention in front of the Niemeyer House
In order to attract the attention of the residents, we first intervened in the public space. It was an alteration of the ground surface in the open space in front of the Niemeyer House, where we transferred the floor plans of an apartment and of a community room of the Niemeyer House. Our intervention site was the lawn, the green surface which was part publicly and part privately owned. It was a complex and interesting process to get permits for both surfaces. Interestingly, we were allowed to intervene much less in the private area than in the public one.

So, on the ground’s surface, we traced the floor plan of an apartment and that of a common area with a 1:1 scale, using marble gravel beds, prefab cement slabs and wooden lath formwork. In the public area we were allowed to make structural interventions into the soil up to 10 cm deep, in the private area we were only allowed to use mesh taping on the surface. The marked outdoor spaces were developed as a neighborhood meeting point: the intervention attracted passers-by and invited visitors.

Community Workshop
In May through August 2019, a get-together program took place on the lawn in front of the Niemeyer House. In conversations as well as in individual interviews, we questioned the social body and commons: we discussed the good neighborhood practices, the old and new dynamics between owners and tenants, the old residents and the newcomers; the architectural tourists, the drinking homeless, and much more.

On about 16 announced weekend gatherings, as well as in spontaneous meetings, we had brief exchanges with more than 100 people on the topic of community. Only a few, one in ten, decided to have a further conversation with us, and to delve into the question of how we can live better together, locally, but also elsewhere in our world of today (Interest in community processes, percentage 10%.) In total, we conducted 14 extensive individual interviews; 11 of them have been authorized and can be read anonymously on the project website. The other 3 interviews cannot be read because they were censored by the interviewees themselves on the one hand and then by me (K.L.) on the other hand, because of their right-wing extremist contents. (Percentage about 21%.)

Based on interviews we wanted to write a manifesto together about the good life in the Hansaviertel and for the community living in the city of tomorrow. In the process of creating the manifesto 11 people participated, 6 of them more intensively, but in the end they could not agree on formulations. Thus, instead of a collectively written text, a text collage of individual statements was put together. A public reading of these individual statements was the closing event to the project.

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Kunst im Stadtraum Berlin

CREDITS 
BRING SOME CHAIRS or let’s sit on the ground was commissioned by Kunst im Stadtraum Berlin in 2018, and was one of the five projects chosen for realization in 2019.
Curatorial team: Elke Falat, artistic director; Judith Laub, head of Urban Culture Department, Bezirksamt Mitte, Berlin
Artists/Project by: Kristina Leko, David Smithson.
Interviews, Workshops: Kristina Leko, Charlotte Campbell.
Intervention: David Smithson.
Assistants: Stefan Dietzel, RedwaneJabal, Terril C. Scott, Miguel Azuaga. Commissioned by: Kunst im Stadtraum Berlin.
Website: Redwane Jabal
Photos: Kristina Leko, David Smithson, Redwane Jabal.
GENRE&FORMATS Project: temporary intervention in public space; public art project; community art project; project with specific social groups. Artwork/s and artifacts: oral history workshop; texts; sculptural intervention in the ground’s surface. Timeframe: process – 1 years; community work – 4 months; workshops – 8 weeks. Number and profile of participants: 100 short intervies, 14 participants, 70% elderly.