FUSE#4

FUSE #4
da:ns LAB
She then shares about the significance of the physicality of a space. How one
response to the way the building is structured, to the “skin” of the rooms,
the definition of the floors, and how that cultivates an organic growth.
Agora has inhabited different spaces. From 2011-2016/17 they were based
in a five-story historic former factory building in Mittelweg, and then from
2017-2019 in the upper and then lower floors of a large industrial warehouse
in Rollberg. Both locations were in Central/South Berlin in Neukölln, a rapidly
gentrifying neighbourhood. She acknowledged that artists too have contributed
to that gentrification. The initial move to the expanded space in Rollberg
prompted the addition of a fifth and missing pillar Play/Move which became
the first dance house for Neukölln. They also planned for an extensive complex
of 26 artist studios. The growth of Agora came in forms of highlighting
sustainability structures which dealt with the binary of a business model and
a non-for-profit structure. With the insistence of trans-disciplinary practices
through their four pillars, the collective produced: a co-working space, an
event series, workshops and programming, community dinners, production
and experimentation, education, a garden. The discursive emphasis was on:
processuality, experimentation, collaboration, interdisciplinary, participation,
community-driven, critical engagement, and artistic solidarity.
On exhaustion and exuberance,
Throughout the years, Agora would review ways of collectively approaching
work through vast curriculums of artists working collaboratively and using art
as a relational tool.
Collaborative arts encourages cultural democracy by contesting notions
of authorship and the idea of the artist-genius working in isolation. Work
that is made collaboratively with different groups often exists outside of the
gallery and traditional theatre spaces. Instead it may take place in a prison or
a hospital. It can also be interdisciplinary.
How can we host smaller economics circulating from space for the artists
themselves?
How can we test modes of assembly?
How can we play with architecture and space?
Where does art intersect with the social?
Top, Bottom: The Curriculum — Challenging the conventions around self-development, productivity,
and high-performance. Workshop by Paz Ponce.
Agora shifted their sustainability model from 2016/17-2019 from a dual
structure of co-working business and non for profit cultural association model.
The organization operated as a cultural association, only, entailing shared rent,
space division, external funding, rentals, and Municipal support. The way of
working has always been based on freelancing, now it was heavily based on
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