Exberliner Issue 171 May 2018

DON’T WORK, MAKE MONEY
There was no ‘spirit’ of
Tacheles at the time. Everyone
is making up their own
reality of ‘What Tacheles Was.’
It became a myth.
When he came to Tacheles in 1993, it was by invitation. At age 27
he was already recognised in Austria for his paintings, sculptures, and
specialty in robotics. He arrived to a slew of internal problems. “All
the Western guys were there for the house and the money, at first,”
he remembers. Later, sub-groups formed. “The groups weren’t so
much divided by house, downstairs, and yard, but rather: the guys
who just wanted to make money, the guys who fucked up because
they drank too much and thought that made them artists, the touristic-art
guys, the pragmatic and open-minded artists, and the crooks.
The worst were the people who said, ‘I am the Tacheles.’ I never said
that, because no one person could say that and it be true.”
He went to the courts to battle for Tacheles several times: first in
the 1990s for the 10-year lease, and again from 2008 to 2012 trying to
get a new contract. “We won that first battle: we kept the building.
But it was only a 10-year contract. In a speech to the others I said
that we cannot take this 10-year contract, because in 2008 they will
definitely throw us out. But the group didn’t follow that idea, so in
the end we signed the contract. I wanted to keep going until we were
the owners of the house.”
Unlike the Lichtenberg fellows, Reiter dismisses the idea of a
“spirit of Tacheles” existing as such. “These are buzzwords, there
was no ‘spirit’ of Tacheles at the time. Everyone is now doing what
people do with religion. They’re making their up own reality of ‘What
Tacheles Was’, because it’s in the past. It became myth. The facts are:
we squatted a house, we painted pictures, and we got famous because
a small group of people fucked with the economy, the bank and the
politicians of Germany. If we hadn’t done that, nobody would give a
shit about Tacheles.”
But he clearly does, despite the edge in his tone. After the dust
settled, he set up and started managing The Tacheles Archives in the
basement of a small building in Potsdam. Its drawers are overflowing
with artefacts, filled with meticulously filed photos, flyers and
catalogues. Paintings hang on every wall and stacks of files cover the
floor, like a messy bedroom where he can remember “exactly where
everything is.” This is what’s left of much of the art of Tacheles itself:
about 250 works the artists left behind. When he’s not maintaining
the archives, organising small exhibitions, or making a living teaching
robotics, he meets and collaborates with artists from the old days.
One of them is Linda Cerna.
Anastasia Chistyakova
The organisational team had to contend with complex internal
politics at the time. This included enforcing the “rent” system: artists
paid about €200 a month for the electricity, gas, water, and a smattering
of tax necessities. There was more than a little pushback. “We
wanted to be as democratic as possible when it came to the art, the
projects we could make happen. But we couldn’t be democratic about
deciding whether we pay for electricity or not. It’s not just about
making art and welcoming people, it’s about cleaning the toilet and
keeping the power on too.”
And then there was the outer, PR layer: “We contacted politicians
and asked for support. We took all the legal steps we could to save
the house, knowing that in the end the only way to save Tacheles was
if the city of Berlin really wanted to save it. In the end, they decided
not to,” says Cerna, telling us of a particularly embarrassing incident
in which artists sent a set of symbolic keys to the mayor when it
became clear they would be evicted in September, along with an open
letter that said: “The house is yours now, we hope you keep it an art
place for the city.” Two days later, Wowereit had given the keys to an
investor, apparently not knowing that it was a symbolic gesture – the
investors’ hired hands went to the building while it was dark and
tried all the doors with the keys.
Post-eviction, Cerna kept working with the artists both in Berlin
and abroad; she helped set up the archives with Reiter, and she was
invited to the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum in Naples to do
a Tacheles-themed exhibition. She now organises communication
for art fairs, including Berliner Liste. She’s disconcerted by the
city’s unwillingness to save the living landmark. “It wasn’t the cost,
because we financed it ourselves. If you look at it objectively, the
project was something the city should have been proud of, it was
special; people don’t come here to visit the shopping malls. It was a
big loss for Berlin.”
Exporting the myth
Of course, the gentrification of the last decade only fanned the
flames of that loss. Some artists left the city after their studio space
idyll was gone. Barbara Fragogna, also a member of the organisation
team, returned to Italy after the eviction. Like Cerna, she too witnessed
the final five years, coming to Berlin in pursuit of an artistic
career and moving into a small flat just down the street from Tacheles.
At the time, no one was doing the tedious work she eventually
After the eviction from the iconic
location on Oranienburger Straße,
Martin & Linda moved art and artefacts
to a Potsdam basement.
Housekeeping in a squat
Cerna came in 2008, as the 10-year lease was running out and the
artists were trying to find a new way to secure the house, buffeted at
every turn by Mayor Wowereit’s unwillingness to help and investors
clamouring to turn Tacheles into a brand for new real estate. A Freie
Universität graduate, she wanted to get into cultural management
and thought an internship would be the best route. “I wanted to go
somewhere that interested me, that I cared about. So, I went straight
to Tacheles. I found Martin and asked for a chance. He just said ‘Well,
you can try!’” When Cerna successfully organised the massive archive
into an in-house retrospective exhibition in a matter of weeks, she
was there to stay.
14
EXBERLINER 171