artroom_sumpfhahn _roomart * rooms * activties * artists * opening times Thursday to Sunday from 14:00 to 20:00h or by appointment * program 2006 * program 2007 * program 2008 * program 2009 Art in the public room is mostly limited to put objects of art in a room and as a consequence there is also the experience of art beholding without pure integration of the beholder. One would almost think that art is something detached from the spectator. The artroom_sumpfhahn ['morass cock'] shall accomplish more. On the one side it is a gallery and a room for performance, on the other side it is an interactive room in every sense. * german * dutch

The history of its origins already reflects this, and through its location [Koloniestrasse 38/Wedding] there is consciously put a statement against conventional, uncoupled from the spectator, experience of art. From the beginning the sumpfhahn was perceived by the inhabitants of the Kiez as a social room. By means of their support a room is just come into being where not only own [artistical] ideas can be realized, but where is also a meeting-place of the Kiez being about to be created.Artists, who had never seen themselves as artists till now, are motivated to show their work in the public. Art should not be confined to passive consumption, but quite on contrary should happen under active participation of the environment, what means that the sumpfhahn is also a product of the residents of the Koloniestrasse respectively the people of the Kiez and of the atmosphere in Wedding.That it is not dominated by harmony, has not to be specially said. After all art should indeed not only happen in the 'protected' room of a studio or of a museum, but exactly there where people live. The social environment is only one determinant of the artroom_sumpfhahn. Areas of tension shall develop through external art and artists, because there will be invited artists all over the EU-area. There is the duty to use available resources, also to try to get to the bottom of it and possibly to reject it, to reflect on new things or to respect them at least.

' Sumpfhahn ' [morass cock] is also a knot, an interface, a link between different artistic spheres, because the condition for processes in art is that different spheres can hit each other. So international art meets local art. In the first instance it is mainly focused to the meeting of Dutch artists with the Kiez*. The Kiez as a social frame of reference shall get to know external extension. If it is true that - according to an idiomatic expression in Berlin - some of the inhabitants of a Kiez never get out of their Kiez [in the sense of being content with their small 'Kiez-world'], then international art come to the Kiez just now. What is growing up, is more than a new level of reflection. It is the constant analysis of local conditions and external influences [creative impacts]. Overlapping, continually condensing fields come into being, and then the artistical output is not only the singular work of individual artists, but is also quasi art developed in a collective. One more reason to invite Dutch artists is that the Netherlands are still the epitome of a liberal, fair social system. And artistical interchange is just as well a social one in the sense of Sumpfhahn, not only the ens artis is demanded but also the ens sociale.

* Kiez (former Kietz) describes - predominately in Berlin and in the Northeast of Germany - a small district of a city or a village. The original meaning says that it is a service settlement which was mostly near of a castle and located at the riverside as a settlement of fishermen. To some extent it is proved that the expression Kiez is of Slavian origin and derived from chyza [hut, house]. At the end of the 20th century the term Kiez is related - as a social frame of reference - to a district with quite a number of old buildings and an urban infrastructure with shops and pubs. Since a few years there is documented - especially in Berlin - a more general usage of the term Kiez, which is not necessarily implying tradition or a wide-ranging infrastructure.

supported by the FONDS VOOR BEELDENDE KUNSTEN VORMGEVING EN BOUWKUNST