Samstag, 17.01.2009 18 Uhr
Citymine(d) presents:
MICRONOMICS and general ideas behind City Mine(d) and the
participation in the /unvermittelt-campaign
Galerie in der Neuen Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst
Oranienstrasse 25
Berlin
Germany
www.ngbk.de
3 months after the last skirmishes, the MICRONOMICS contributions to /unvermittelt are ready and public. City Mine(d)'s investigation into Berlin's providers of public good has lead to new networks, interesting insights and warm waffles.
From Saturday 13 December until the 1st of February
you can see:
-the 5minute-movie and
-an A1-poster
as part of the /unvermittelt exhibition
in
NGBK,
Oranienstrasse 25,
Berlin-Kreuzberg.
Here also some footage that didn't make it to the final cut:
Over the last days we have been traveling through Berlin with our mobile studio. We interviewed Mascha from Balestra Berlin, who travel Europe and beyond with their project Kubik. Kubik is a space making project combining clubbing with putting the spotlight on forgotten urban spaces.
We spoke to Ines and Gabor who are the driving forces behind a public park on the former Wriezener railway station land called Wriezener Freiraum Labor.
Ines and Gabor are architects, but of the kind that believes that architects should not only build infrastructure, but can also manage a process in which different actors are able to take shared ownership of a space. They show this very clearly in the garden which is at the same time the green class for the local primary school, sports ground for different local groups, a place for Japanese gardening experiments, a Wifi-hotspot and more, in which each actor is made responsible for part of the budget.
In our quest for work we also interviewed Sacha Göttling, employment consultant but with a creative side, who also has a project in /Unvermittelt.
Our attempt to get into the corporate world was almost successful, when Metro considered for 2 days wether they would grant us an interview about Corporate Social Responsibility in their headquarters in Düsseldorf. Finally they decided not to, because
We have interviews planned with Mediaspree Versenken and with the job office of Kreuzberg-Friederichshain. And stil try to get a hold of a company prepared to see us.
Nelly is online!
And we interviewed Daniel Dahm today.
Saturday we had our very first interview, with Dr Gerlinde Pachmann from Laskerwiese citizen Garden.
In less then 2 years Laskerwiese transformed a piece of waste land in the industrial area of Friederichshain into a green oasis. The gardeners are people who live nearby and want to add to their daily diet or want to show their children that strawberries don't grow on trees, and international students linking to the local community. With a bit of money from the local mayor and the EU, and a lot of time from volunteers, the place was made into a garden with pond, recreation ground and allotments with fruit, vegetables and herbs. And potatoes.
Saturday night was the annual Hoffest in Kinsig9. At midnight City Mine(d) opened its waffle bank
in a crowed courtyard. In less than 2 hours 25 waffles were exchanged for skills ranging from mental support over yoga classes to reading and babysitting for children. Most importantly it made a lot of people think about the skills they have, what these are worth, and how they can be made useful in other ways than in exchange for money.
The ladies from bildwechsel had a guerilla girls campaign on Sunday.
Calling themselves http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbrella_organization fur frauen / medien / kultur, they combine a passion for images with campaigning against sexism and racism. Today they rallied against the monument for persecution of homosexuals during the fascist era, because it focusses too narrowly on gay men, not having enough attention for the suffering of lesbian women. Because the monument was “deliberately damaged”, they moved their action to the nearby Brandenburger Tor. After the action we interviewed Chris and Karin from bildwechsel in our portable studio.
The Berlin edition of the Tageszeitung was lying on the breakfast table this morning, with a full page article about the /Unvermittelt campaign. Taz online had a reduced version of the article.
Other news relating to our quest on the relation between jobs and public good came from a court case in the US, where a judge considered open source licensing as valuable as copyright. This means that people who make free software, can now sue companies who use that free work to make a profit. Very import in the discussion between sharing and money-making.
The /Unvermittelt campaign started today with a Kundgebung
which is a typically German form of expressing your views on the street in a parade-like demonstration. Festive despite the awful weather.
Today was also when we picked up the phone and started calling large corporations about their policy towards labour and jobs. We first contacted Volkswagen, who on their website promote an innovative employment policy as one of their core values. Much to our surprise the whole human resources management is outsourced to another company. To be continued on Monday. The call to Lufthansa was almost the opposite, where the number on the website lead us to the person who does job interviews for cabin crew and check in staff. Also some leads to be continued next week. Tomorrow: first interview!
We contacted 13 people and organisations today. Researchers -sociologists, urban planners- and Berliners with public projects like Gerlinde from Laskerwiese, Daniel and Carsten from Mediaspree versenken or Ines from Freiraumlabor. Two of them already responded, booking our first actual interviews for Saturday and Monday. To be prepared, Barbara, from the /Unvermittelt campaign give us some golden tips on shooting interviews, lend us her fancy camera and advised us to buy more storage space then the 12 Gigabyte we now boast. Nelly was our guinee pig interviewee today. We tested camera setting and backdrop on her, but also interview techniques and other do's and don'ts. Nelly spoke about her project of creating encounters in public space in London, about the difficulty of having it recognised, let alone paid, and the different skills she calls upon and which would be “marketable” in a human resources context. First of all she is trained as an artist, she works as a facilitator of encounters in public space, occasionally involving also other artists, and she has experience as a communication expert bringing together groups that aren't used to interact. Until now Nelly put her skills at the disposal of companies in London, but now she is determined to set up her own business. Our Nelly is now also an unternehmer. Tomorrow the /Unvermittelt campaign starts at 11:30 with speeches in the NGBK courtyard followed by a demo.
All technicalities out of the way -we now have 2 cameras, a tripod and a microphone- and a full team -with City Mine(d)'s Nelly and Fred arriving tonight- we seem set to face the big challenge of finding a job as public good providers in this city. We approached the metropolis from two sides. On the one hand from the urban regeneration side, where googling proved as successful as walking through the city because both brought us to the neighbourhood management team.
In it, critics mainly see European funding support gentrification, supporters highlight the way its independent role allows to network different stakeholders. We don't know what to think yet, so will add them to our list of interviewees.
On the other hand we started to make a list of companies we would like to contact, both from a Human Resources
as from a Corporate Social Responsibility perspective. We will have to learn to say HR and CSR to get our foot in the door, but more than that, our story needs to be translated to business lingo. Our list of people we want to contact include people at Daimler, Deutsche Bahn, Deutsche Bank, Lufthansa and others.
In our drop-in office, we spoke to Uli, also an /Unvermittelt contributor, not to say driver. She taught us the word “standortaufwertung” -basically the revalorisation and beautification of urban areas to make them attractive to business- in a discussion about the relation artists can have with large corporations. Her point was that until now corporations only commission artists to make public or community art as contribution to standortaufwertung. She thinks the Berlin artists community lacks the openness to come up with a different approach to businesses, and so she is very curious to see the feedback we might get from our venture into the high chambers of capitalism. But so are we. So are we.
