I have completed my secondment to Berlin with Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg Plaz (KRLP). The work consisted of two visits – the first to understand the context of the place and the second to engage in a public research action. The primary visit was centred around the concerns of The Department of Embedded Knowledge to understand what types of knowledge were embedded in the context surrounding the gallery – initially, based on the limited time available this focussed on ideas of the linguistic embeddings of the place through place names. An item of particular significance in the context given the changes to place names over recent history and a recent protest about a business – the far right associated clothing brand Thor Steiner – being incompatible with the name of the street it was proposed for – Rosa Luxemburg Straße. The work was interested in the area’s connections with trade-unionism, it’s later gentrification and the existence of platform and precarious labour in this context.
The challenges of doing “embedded” work in such a short space of time and from a distance was somewhat clear early on and so the project changed a little before the second part of the secondment. The latter part of the project focussed more on what are the conditions that allow organisation are. The project engaged with another space, Offline, that is formed as a space for collective action with a particular connection to artistic action and in the context of techno-capitalism. Working with them and with KRLP the research outcome became an event; “It’s easier to talk about [platform capitalism] when having dinner together”. The event was an open event with food and some framing prompts around the history of European Colonisation, the movement of people and resources in response to this, the contemporary conditions of European immigration law and the use of digital labour platforms. The food menu was a series of potato dishes that connected to each of these prompts.
The invitation to the event was circulated amongst various networks by Offline and in various activist networks. As the invitation and respondents included people of various immigration status it was decided that there would be minimal documentation of attendees and outcomes.
