BL(K)N RES(T)
Cultural residency, Berlin, 2022
An educational, excursion-intensive and peer-to-peer capacity-building residency, resulting in collective forms of knowledge production.
Resting from Balkan, rest in Berlin.
Rest from, by, just rest, regain some energies.
In order to decelerate, gain some calmness and overview of the next steps.
In order to overview, crystallize and archive the knowledge produced so far.
Above all rest from Black screen, redundant, exhausting and distancing in Communication.
In the BL(K)N RES(T) 4-29/10/2021 the partnership came into one place, some of us for the entire month. ZK/U – Zentrum fur Kunst und Urbanistik, as a hosting SCUB partner, created a programme for peer-to-peer capacity building among us. Through research visits/excursions, focused feedback and reflection meetings/tandems the process allowed for collective forms of knowledge production.
Mutual learnings, collective inquiries, complementary knowledge, collective intelligence are ingrained in the work spirit and practice of ZK/U, at this point plenty active for 10 years in what here in Berlin are being more and more among those defined as Urban Practitioners.
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ZK/U is a universe of its own, a model of cultural venue, that brings together local and global practices in a dialogue that sees a community center active for the neighborhood, alongside 13 studio apartments for world artists, communal spaces, semi public spaces for neighborhood and a variety of funky and interesting habitable structures that see different forms of use coming together, from within and outside of its space.
The space is carefully designed and developed along various spots of negotiation: a communal kitchen for all the residents, a small hut self-built in the outside terrace area for the youngsters of the neighborhood, an accordion folding open building for other local crews and even a community garden. ZKU is involved and mapped as a Campus for education within the independent cultural scene of Berlin, as it promotes informal pedagogies.
We met with diverse cooperation formats such as Cetka, Forum Regionum and International Festival for Illustrated Literature, presented by Barbara Bernmeier. All projects dealed with Civil Engagement in Eastern partnerships through means of cultural practices advocating for social claims in highly repressive societies.
We worked on the specific context of the ‘Western Balkans’, imaging new socio-spatial geographies of the region with the Berlin Collective Orangotango, a collective combining education, research, activism and art, leading the workshop Critical Cartography for mapping urban, environmental, women and LGBTQI+ led protests, movements and territorial transformations throughout the ‘Balkan’ region.
Vesna Malesevic from partner organisation Unsa GETO presented on a Monday evening dinner the work and history of UNSA Geto (Banja Luka, BiH), in front of an audience of African Curators and and local staff. Hana Milenkovska and Klementina Ristovska from partner organisation Sociopatch (Skopje, North Macedonia) presented the Participatory Art-Based Research methodology of SCUB and the outputs of their artistic research led on the ground. Miranda Mehmeti presented the community cultural center Termokiss in Prishtina, Kosovo, where the final exhibition of the project (March 2023) will take place. Enrico Tomassini, curator for the leading organization Icse & Co. shared the ethos and origins of the project.
On a journey across the lively cultural scene and work of Berliner best artistic social practices, we visited local cultural and urban initiatives such as the Floating University, Haus der Statistik, UFA Fabrik, The Lobby for urbanepraxis.berlin, the exhibition ‘Overlap’: young Iranian female photographers at erstererster gallery from RAF Projects with Curator Alireza Labeshka, and the Dragoner Areal & Baupalast with Alex Römer from ConstructLab at Dragoner Area in Xberg.
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Dragoner Area, Overlap, erstererster gallery, Floating University, THF Radio, Haus der Statistik, UFAK Fabrik, Some Call Us Balkans, Berlin, 2021, photographs by Milly Reid, CC BY-SA 4.0
In a living and interactive format, we shared some of the outcomes of the project’s research in a small exhibition format within the spaces of ZK/U, curated by Milly Reid, Enrico Tomassini and Miodrag Kuc. The audience could reflect on how and why we speak of the “Balkans” by collecting pages of the Open SCUB Glossary (https://doi.org/10.21428/0eeef24d.8b597f23) and assembling their own unique printed collections for take away. Read more and download the print glossary here.
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How do we speak of the Balkans, Some Call Us Balkans, Berlin, 2021, photographs by Milly Reid, CC BY-SA 4.0
