Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

ART

In Berlin, a street art gallery designed to be destroyed

It may seem an unlikely venue for an art gallery - an old bank building in the centre of a busy shopping district and about to be torn down. But in Berlin, some 165 like-minded street artists have filled the space with their work.

Published: 7 April 2017 09:12 CEST
In Berlin, a street art gallery designed to be destroyed
Artist Kimo von Rekowski in 'The Haus'. Photo: DPA.

And the result is a burst of colour and myriad of styles, with murals and installations covering 10,000 square metres (108,000 feet), all on public view at no charge – but only until the demolition crew moves in.

“We're open here for two months, then everything will disappear for all eternity,” said Joern Reiners of Die Dixons (The Dixons), the group behind the project called The Haus (The House) in Berlin, arguably Europe's urban art capital.

It approached property developers Pandion for temporary use of the block before it makes way for luxury condominiums, and got the keys last October.

“There was so little time, we didn't have any big plans, we just got our telephones out and rang everyone we know,” said Kimo von Rekowski, another Dixons member.

Artists from 17 countries joined the project, with Berlin-based ones making up the majority.

Each was assigned a space in the five-storey building – be it an office, the corridor, stairwell or even the toilet.

'Make it an experience'

The gallery that sprung up includes a room covered from floor to ceiling with personal ads usually seen pasted on Berlin lampposts or walls, another room with a huge pair of clay legs like a giant just landed through the ceiling, and a darkened room with wall murals that are only revealed with the help of a torch.

Some artists may not be household names, but others are well-established in Berlin's urban art scene, like El Bocho, whose cartoon-like “Little Lucy” series and “Citizens” portraits are part of the German capital's landscape, or Emess, whose works often involve political figures.

“What we have here is the space to realize their vision… while not having to think about the business of it all like entrance fees, but really just concentrating on the art – to experiencing it and to making it an afpexperience,” said Reiners.

“And that's the essence of what makes us different from other projects.”

If there is one regret, it is “that we will not be able to show to visitors the energy that was generated here while the house was being set up,” von Rekowski said.

To ensure that visitors etch the images in their heads, no photography is allowed.

The group also keeps a tight leash on the images circulating of the works, with media outlets only allowed to photograph details and not wide shots.

'Now or never'

The transient nature of the show helped attract a crowd on its opening weekend of April 1st to 2nd, with a queue snaking down the street.

One visitor, Juliana Lang, who queued for more than half an hour with her partner, said: “It was well worth it, there was more variety than I expected.

And it'll all be gone soon, so it's now or never.”

Artist Anne Bengard, who painted a tortured-looking man with a contraption stretching over his teeth as fake banknotes spewed from his mouth, said she appreciated the photography ban.

Too many people today just view art on the internet, without really experiencing it in person, she said.

“I think it's great that this is done in this manner so everyone who wants to see it has to come personally to view it,” she added.

Despite the effort that went into getting her work right, Bengard is not bothered that her art will soon be reduced to rubble.

“This is my first wall painting in a bank and I find it rather cool also that this first work will soon no longer exist, that no one can buy it and it's really something for this moment in time.”

By Hui Min Neo and Larissa Rausch

For members

WORKING IN NORWAY

‘There was noone doing it’: The story behind Oslo’s only English bookstore

Six months after launching Oslo's only English language bookstore, Seattle native Indigo Trigg-Hauger doesn't regret a thing.

Published: 30 April 2024 15:05 CEST
'There was noone doing it': The story behind Oslo's only English bookstore

“I really love it. I love that I can finally use my communication skills for something that is purely my own and I just love being in the store, meeting new people, and getting to recommend books,” she tells The Local. 

Prismatic Pages, in the happening Oslo district of Grünerløkka, is already building up a steady following both among English speakers and readers and among Norwegians, with its packed schedule of events like book swaps, book clubs, and silent reading evenings.  

“The English speaking and reading community in Oslo in general is becoming more and more aware of it, and I have some repeat customers who are really spreading the word, which is amazing,” Trigg-Hauger says.

“But it’s sort of a slow burn. Even though all of our events have been standing room only, there are still people coming in every day who say ‘I didn’t know the store was here’, or, like, ‘someone just told me about this’, so I can see that we still have a lot of potential people to reach.” 

Trigg-Hauger inherited her fascination with Norway from her mother, who studied in Oslo as an exchange student and still speaks rusty Norwegian. 

“I always had the impression that we were Norwegian when I was a very young kid, and then I grew up and realised ‘oh, actually, no, she just loves Norway’.” 

She studied Scandinavian Studies at The University of Washington, came away from her year-long exchange year at the University of Oslo with a Bachelor’s degree in History, and then returned to Oslo a year later to do a Master’s degree in Peace and Conflict Studies. 

“I learned Norwegian pretty quickly after I arrived, just because I had a little bit of a basis and I did an intensive course as well, so I am fluent and I have dual citizenship now,” she says. 

These language skills, together with the journalism she’d been doing on the side throughout her studies meant she fell on her feet on graduation, getting a job in communications at the prestigious Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) almost immediately, and then moving on three years later to a similar job at Norfund, Norway’s state development finance institution. 

“After only a year, I realised, this just isn’t for me anymore,” she says of the Norfund job. “I’m really good at communications, but I was tired of only doing it for other people’s projects and not my own. I think I’m very creative and independent. So I needed to do something a bit more flexible and something that was more driven by me.” 

Around this time, during coffee with a friend, she mentioned that she had worked in a bookshop in her home town, Leavenworth, for a year between studies. 

“I said, ‘that’s the only job I’ve ever really enjoyed’, and she said ‘well, you should just open a bookstore’. To which obviously I said ‘that’s crazy’, but then I actually did start to think about it.” 

Indigo Trigg-Hauger ran a book stall in May 2023 as part of her market research. Photo: Prismatic Pages

What helped push her to actually do it was a new scheme run by the local Grünerløkka city area called Lokalstart, where those accepted receive three months of free training followed by continued mentoring to start a business. 

“That really just, like, pushed me to do it,” she remembers. “Part of the course that for me was very helpful was that my course leader and my mentor encouraged me to do some market research. So I actually started in, just about a year ago, in May, I started doing just a table at a local market and I was seeing, like, quite a bit of enthusiasm.”

She realised that while Oslo had several independent bookstores, such as a queer bookstore, and an anarchist bookstore, there wasn’t an English-only one, and certainly not one which did what independent bookstores do in the US. 

“There was no one doing what I wanted to do, which was used and new mixed together and buying used books from customers, which in the US is pretty common for independent bookstores,” she said. 

So last August she handed in her notice, although she worked until the end of the year, and in December she finally opened Prismatic Pages, raising more than 60,000 kroner through the Norwegian crowdfunding site Spleis.

“I ran a crowdfunding campaign, which was also very helpful because I could both market the business and kind of get people’s buy-in, literally.”

She wanted Prismatic Pages to feel more open as a space than more traditional bookshops that she feels can be claustrophobic and worked with an interior designer friend to select the right colour scheme, furnishings and layout. 

“A lot of my inspiration just comes from the bookstores I grew up going to in Seattle, where I’m from, and also the store that I worked at, which was in a small town called Leavenworth, where we would also have small events. It really was like a community space where, of course, we had a lot of tourists and visitors, but also a lot of repeat customers. I was a repeat customer before I was an employee.” 

As for the books, she likes it to be an eclectic mix: something for everyone but still curated. 

“When it comes to books, I think humans are the best algorithm. Of course, some of it is personal taste, but I try not to let that get too much in the way of my selection. It’s a complicated mix of new releases, classics, maybe overlooked releases from the past. And then things that customers tell me about, and I just try to read up a lot on what other people are reading, you know, articles that recommend different lists of books.”

“Of course, sometimes there are themes, like, for example, Pride Month is coming up. I already have a queer literature section, but I’ll be beefing that up a little bit for June, and with the Easter crime season, we had a lot more crime in.” 

Prismatic Pages is already, she feels, a social space of a sort that is unusual in Oslo, particularly when the store holds events when people bring their own books and swap with one another.

“I love that people really start talking to each other,” she said of those events. “It’s kind of rare in Norway for strangers just to talk to each other. But they’ll start picking up each other’s books and discussing them, and that’s really nice.” 

The constant stream of customers also suits her sociable nature in a way her largely desk-bound communication jobs did not. 

“I’ve always been really social anyway. So I’m really active in many different activities. So it’s very nice that a lot of people come by from different areas of my life, all the way back from, like, 10 years ago, when I was an exchange student, up to my most recent jobs. I guess it’s good for my socially extroverted self to get to see new and old faces.”

What remains to be seen, she admits, is whether her new profession of bookseller will be work in the long run. 

“Time will tell if it is financially sustainable,” she says. “I do pay myself something, but it’s not really quite enough yet. So, you know, I don’t want people to think, ‘oh, it’s all just been rainbows and butterflies’. Because, you know, opening a small business is a huge challenge.” 

SHOW COMMENTS