Spielclub. Kinder Stadt Geld
#10 / This publication tells the story of artistic-activist educational projects and reflects on the special nature of play cities critical of capitalism – made for and with children
3,99 €
From 1969 to 1971, a working group at the neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK) developed a form of play critical of capitalism for and with working-class children. Over the course of several months, artists and young residents of the Kulmer neighborhood in Berlin-Schöneberg devised alternatives to the promises of the toy industry. In this so-called Spielklub (play club), a play city was created in which the mechanisms of capitalist economic activity could be experienced and thus made transparent.
Reactivated in the winter of 2019/20 at the nGbK, the Spielclub Oranienstraße 25 offered Berlin school classes the opportunity to play in a model of Kreuzberg’s Oranienstraße. The focus remained on pressing issues of urban development, including rental policy and participation in social change. With money always playing a central role.
Some of the children’s questions were:
“So what’s the hotel owner up to with the mayor?”
“Who owns the wasteland?”
“What’s missing here, on our street?”
“Can anyone actually win the game in the play club?”
This publication locates the historical play club within both the trajectory of ideas of self-governed children’s republics and in the context of artistic-activist projects of the 1970s. Spielclub. Kinder Stadt Geld reflects on the relationship between children and artists, play and reality and shows the differences between the projects realised 50 years apart.
The e-book is supplemented by a film excerpt on the Spielstadt in the Märkisches Viertel, a temporary extension of the Schöneberg Spielklub from June 1971, as well as two audio contributions.
Produced on the occasion of Spielclub Oranienstraße 25, nGbK, 2019/20
Katharina von Hagenow
2019–2020 Member of the working group “Spielclub Oranienstraße 25” of the neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (nGbK) with: Valeria Fahrenkrog, Marcos García Pérez, Moritz Gramming and Claudia Hummel
2018 “Architectures of science. The Universities of Berlin in European Perspective” Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, exhibition design in collaboration with: Konrad Angermüller,
Sarah K. Becker and Rosanna Wischhoff
2016–2019 Student assistant at the Tieranatomisches Theater – Raum für forschende Ausstellungspraxis (TAT) of the Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik (HZK) in the field of scenography / exhibition development and design
Claudia Hummel
Claudia Hummel is a university lecturer, art educator and curator. Her work focuses on research and projects at the interface of art and education. In recent years, she has primarily researched the history of artistic-educational practice in West Berlin since the 1970s. Since 2009, she has been working as an academic lecturer in the Art in Context master program at the Institute for Art in Context at Berlin University of the Arts.
Valeria Fahrenkrog
(1980, Asunción, Paraguay) is a German-Chilean visual artist and editor. She lives and works in Cologne and Berlin. The main subject of her work is the exploration of various forms of representation and dialogue between (urban) spaces and artistic language. The development of strategies for translating different topics find their expression in different media, from installation to various event formats. Her artistic work is reflected in publications, installations, sculptural and graphic work on recycled materials, photography, conversations and collaborations with others.
She is co-founder of the Berlin Journals—On the History and Present State of the City and since 2020 she has been working with Erik Göngrich and Nora Wilhelm on the project and workshop space MITKUNSTZENTRALE – Werkstatt für Kunst und Klima at Haus der Statistik. dreipalmen.com | mitkunstzentrale.de | berlinerhefte.de
Eds.: Claudia Hummel, Valeria Fahrenkrog, Katharina von Hagenow
Text: Vivian Chan, Ximena Gutíerrez Toro, Katharina von Hagenow, Christina Harles, Claudia Hummel, Zsófia Puszt, Katja Reichard
Comic: Heather Purcell
Photos, graphics and documents: A Gesture Of, AG Spielumwelt, Klaus Böllhoff, Gernot Bubenik, Marcos García Pérez, Peter Möbius, Benjamin Renter, Georg Scherlin, Göta Tellesch
Editorial support and copy editing: Joerg Franzbecker
Proofreading: Bernadette Schultze-Jena, Florian Wüst
Lithography: Gabi Rada
Design: A Gesture Of (Simon Schindele und Simon Steinberger)
Design e-book: Lena Appenzeller, Camila Coutinho, Janine Sack
German
Pdf: 156 pages, 74 illustrations
E-pub: approx. 250 pages, 61 illustrations, 1 film excerpt (3 min 24), 2 audio pieces (20 min)
January 2024
ISBN 978-3-947295-59-3 epub
ISBN 978-3-947295-60-9 pdf
3,99 Euro
Published as a book by: berlinerhefte.de
ISBN 978-3-946674-09-2
7,00 Euro
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