Cohabitation

The exhibition Cohabitation: A Manifesto for the Solidarity of Non-Humans and Humans in Urban Space forms the thematic focus and discursive foundation of the project. The exhibition explores the human-animal relationship in the city on the basis of three perspectives, tracing the developments from the Anthropocity to the Ecocity, and the future Zoopolis. More than 30 artistic positions scrutinize the ambivalent relationship between humans, nature, and animals in the urban context and open up perspectives for the critical examination of prevailing conditions. Three in-depth thematic studies contextualize and expand on the artistic works.

With contributions by

Alicia Agustín; Moritz Ahlert & Alsino Skowronnek with Pollinations in Blatant Space (Thomas Haferlach, Adrien Bitton & Niels Warncke); Fahim Amir; Animalesque; Animali Domestici; Ant Farm; Babi thinkers (Maylis Brenner, Yemi Kacoutie, Aziz Doumbia, Ferrand Acho, Issa Diabaté); Sammy Baloji; Marcel Broodthaers; Carson Chan; Club Real; Theo Deutinger, Shelia Jap, Charlotte Kaulen, Pia Prantl, Nikolas Susanto; Ines Doujak; Finn Rabbitt Dove; Marc Frohn; Cyprien Gaillard; Thomas E. Hauck; Candida Höfer; Ina Hsu; Kolbeinn Hugi; Krõõt Juurak & Alex Bailey; Daniela Kinateder; Ann Sophie Lindström; Maissa Maatouk; Marcus Maeder; Zoë Mc Pherson; Modern Temperament (Oliver Klimpel, Till Sperrle); László Moholy-Nagy; OLA – Office for Living Architecture (Ferdinand Ludwig, Daniel Schönle, Jakob Rauscher) with GTLA / TU München; Daniel Poller; Yan Wang Preston; Professur R+E / KIT (Marc Frohn, Tim Panzer, Federico Perugini & students); Ben Rivers; Hanna Rullmann & Faiza Ahmad Khan; station+ / D-ARCH, ETH Zürich (Marta Fernandez, Iris Hilton, Roberta Jurcic with Jakob Michael Birn & students); Sunaura Taylor; Urban Fauna Lab; WORKac

Cohabitation: A Manifesto for the Solidarity of Non-Humans and Humans in Urban Space

silent green Kulturquartier

Gerichtstrasse 35, 13347 Berlin

Opening: 4 June 2021, 6 pm

Duration: 5 June – 4 July 2021

At the end of the 19th century, the hygiene discourse and housing reforms put an end to the close urban relationship between working people and animals. The modernist spatial separation of functions concealed existing relations of dependency and exploitation between humans and animals, with factory farms and slaughterhouses supplying the exploding urban population relocated to the periphery. The development of the bourgeois family, with its practice of keeping pets, led to a hierarchy that persists to this day: from the cherished pet, to the farm animal as a commodity, to the wild animal as a representative of untamed nature. The urban wild animal, however, fell through the cracks and was even considered “degenerate” by some. Nevertheless, even pets have an agency that goes far beyond their human-assigned role. To reimagine the city therefore means to overcome its anthropocentric assumptions.

The environmental movement developed alternative approaches which renegotiated the opposition between city and nature. The field of urban ecology, which started to emerge in the 1960s/70s, advocated recognizing a new category of urban nature. However, as human insight into the functioning of ecological systems grew, so did the desire to control them. This vision of artificially created environments and controllable ecosystems continues to shape our technical approach to solving the climate crisis. Furthermore, the instrumentalization and capitalization of nature has, since the beginning of colonialism, also served to exercise power over people marked as “other”. One current example is the appropriation of nature conservation by right-wing political actors, who pit the lives of animals against those of racialized people. A truly ecological city must therefore tackle (interspecies) power relations instead of merely greenwashing existing hierarchies.

In recent decades, theorists such as Donna Haraway and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing have fostered a new awareness that humans have only been able to evolve through reciprocal relationships with other species. In order to truly acknowledge this kinship, we need new political models that no longer place humans above all else, but include the needs of other living beings and enable their participation in society. So far, there has been little reflection and even less practical testing of what this might mean for urban space. The recognition of non-human living beings as agents who actively shape the city can reveal new possibilities for designing an environment that transcends mere exploitation, speculation, and utilitarian thinking: an interspecies space that reflects the interdependence of humans, animals, and plants and that could lead to an expanded understanding of society and more livable cities for all.

The event series Cohabitation Discourse: Zoopolis Berlin brings Berlin-based protagonists from the fields of art, architecture, design, urban planning, and ecology into conversation with international experts and artists. Starting in June 2021, various event formats – lectures, discussions, interviews, performances, workshops, and film screenings – will open up multilayered approaches to the project’s main questions: How do we overcome the anthropocentric view of the city? How can architectures and cities be designed beyond mere exploitation, speculation, and utilitarian thinking for a multitude of human and non-human urban dwellers? How can new policy models account for the agency and interests of non-human actors? How can we counter new forms of the capitalization of nature and the instrumentalization of nature conservation, especially by right-wing political figures who play human and non-human life off against each other? The events will take place in collaboration with various institutions at different locations in Berlin, including independent sites of cultural production, but also at special sites that break down the traditional separation of nature and city. The first events are listed below; details and further dates will be updated regularly. You need to pre-book a ticket to attend. Please find the tickets embedded in each section below.

Exhibition visitors require a time slot ticket, which may also be used for contact tracing. The time slot ticket can be booked here. According to the current regulations laid out by the Berlin Senate, a visit to the exhibition is possible without any further requirements concerning testing and vaccination. In the exhibition rooms it is compulsory to wear an FFP2 face mask and to maintain social distancing.

by: Thomas Hauck, Marc Frohn, Zoë Mc Pherson, Vincent Vidal, Simulacro

The Cupula at silent green cultural quarter, located in the former crematorium in Berlin-Wedding, once served as a mourning hall and a columbarium. The term columbarium was originally used to describe a pigeon house or dovecote (lat. columba = dove), due to the visual similarity it was applied to Roman structures storing funeral urns. This typological ambiguity, referring to humans and animals alike, is addressed by the sound installation with the voices of extinct bird species. Conceived by Thomas Hauck, the cofounder of the Animal-Aided Design method, and by architect Marc Frohn of the office FAR frohn&rojas, and realized in collaboration with sound artist Zoë Mc Pherson, the composition is part of a design that brings birds to life, as it were, in this place of death. The installation can be visited during the opening of the exhibition Cohabitation and the following two days.

With: Thomas E. Hauck (Studio Animal-Aided Design), Marc Frohn (FAR frohn&rojas) and Zoë Mc Pherson, moderation: Peter Spillmann

The Animal-Aided Design method developed by landscape architect Thomas Hauck in collaboration with biologist Wolfgang Weisser is intended to enable the design of urban spaces for humans and animals alike. For this purpose, the demands of different animal species on their environment are recorded in species portraits and translated into concrete design tools for planners. Together with architect Marc Frohn of the office FAR frohn&rojas, Hauck applied the method to the silent green site in Berlin-Wedding and designed a possible intervention for the chimney of its former crematorium, which is intended to create habitats for various bird species. In conjunction with a live performance of a sound installation realized in collaboration with sound artist Zoë Mc Pherson, the participants will discuss what an architecture of cohabitation might look like.

With: Krõõt Juurak & Alex Bailey, Maissa Maatouk, Ina Hsu & Gina Disobey, Ivana Marjanović & Karl-Heinz Machat, moderation: Peter Spillmann

Parallel to the Cohabitation exhibition in Berlin, Kunstraum Innsbruck will host the exhibition Cohabitation – Space for All Species. Envisioning the future of alpine cities and the coexistence of people and animals, curated by Ivana Marjanović, until 13 June. In both exhibitions it is no coincidence that artistic works play a central role. While design disciplines such as architecture and urban planning have so far paid little attention to non-human species or even regarded them as obstacles, art can already draw on a longer tradition of addressing the relationship between humans and animals. Current artistic projects are investigating and testing new forms of living together, drafting visions of an interspecies society, and even developing concrete design proposals for a new kind of city. In conversation with participating artists from both exhibitions, various working strategies will be presented and the potential of art in social transformation will be explored.

The event will take place via Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/94251698784. Exhibition visitors can also follow the discussion on site; to do so, please book an exhibition ticket from 6–8 pm.

With Dunya Bouchi, Christian Hiller, Jorge Godoy Roman, Ana Zatezalo Schenk, Florentin Steininger & Sjoerd Krijnen

‘Animalesque’ is a collaboration between architects Jorge Godoy Roman, Florentin Steininger, Ana Zatezalo Schenk and Sjoerd Krijnen, dedicated to knowledge production about the potential of architectural design as a stimulus for biodiversity.

This evening crosses two projects with very different expressions and approaches to explore and capture this subject: the Animalesque City film-competition has generated visions on human-animal coexistence all around the world. Together, the submitted films express visionary animalesque realities, constructed from different global perspectives and seen through a multiplicity of lenses. The six winning entries will be screened and discussed with the film makers and jurors Dunya Bouchi (ANCB) and Christian Hiller (ARCH+).

The second project is the prototypical and experimental observatory ‘Soil Pipers/Bodenorgel’ which was designed and built by Animalesque as part of the Cohabitation exhibition in the garden of Silent Green. The installation is co-run by the 7th graders of nearby Theodor - Heuss-Gemeinschaftsschule in an educational program to learn about local history, urban biology and the concept of cohabitation.  

These movies are selected as winners of the Animalesque City competition and will be screened:
Vendor Beast – Finn Rabbitt Dove
Dirt – Blanka Dominika Major
Elysia - Natalya Dikhanov, Sadie Imae, Zak Forrest
I’m not mad, I’m Nomad - Tomiris Batalova
The Golden Age - Valeria Meiller, Agustin Schang
A Dove Tale – Will Fu

With: Arno Brandlhuber, Dorothee Brantz, Christoph Rauhut, Cord Riechelmann, moderation: Anh-Linh Ngo and Alex Nehmer

With: Theo Deutinger & Charlotte Kaulen, Animali Domestici, moderation: Christian Hiller and Alex Nehmer

Architect Theo Deutinger and urban planner Charlotte Kaulen present their artistic research on Berlin's pet industry. Berlin has over 100,000 dog owners and around 300,000 cat owners, plus countless owners of guinea pigs, turtles, rabbits, mice, fish, snakes, spiders and birds. If you could cut through an average Berlin home, you would find at least one pet in every second household. A separate economy has formed around the keeping of pets, which shapes urban space, but also takes up huge areas of land, primarily through the consumption of food by pets.

Resource consumption and urban growth are destroying the habitats of many wild species, forcing them to adapt to human habitats. The artist group Animali Domestici is exploring how animals appropriate and utilize the human built environment, its infrastructures of production and disposal. Their mapping Bangkok Opportunistic Ecologies, presented in the exhibition, shows the city from the perspective of python snakes inhabiting the vast canalization of the megacity - and thus questions the purely anthropocentric view of the city.

With: Amanda Machin, Özgür Özvatan, Hanna Rullmann, moderation: Alex Nehmer

Commitment to the environment and other species is not automatically emancipatory; it can be instrumentalised for anti-human political purposes. In this conversation, participants will discuss how notions of supposedly pure, unadulterated nature provide an excuse for right wing groups that turn nature and animal protection against racialized people. As Hanna Rullmann and Faiza Ahmad Khan show in their documentary Habitat 2190, on the rewilding of a former refugee camp in Calais, nature conservation has become a weapon used to justify inhumane border regimes. Does the rise of a right wing green populism also point to failings of mainstream environmental politics?

The event will be held in Englisch as part of the Climate Care Festival 2021 curated by Gilly Karjevsky and Rosario Talevi

Registration at the entrance, no entrance fee.

With: Sandra Jasper, Böhler & Orendt, Tina Heger, moderation: Alex Nehmer

The Spreepark challenges old demarcations between nature and culture or the city. After the Spreepark was left to urban nature for years, flora and fauna have conquered the dilapidated rides and remnant architecture, including new immigrant plants and animal species. The effects of man-made climate heating are also already visible in Spreepark. Today, Spreepark is marked to become a public space shared by humans and nature. But if we can no longer fall back on familiar categories, we can also no longer talk about wanting to preserve "nature", but must consciously decide how we shape our coexistence with which forms of nature. What nature is thus becomes a political question that requires constant negotiation. How, for example, must our understanding of nature change if we acknowledge its own agency? How can we overcome ideas of supposedly pure, native nature and instead create an awareness of the fact that nature is constantly changing? These questions will be discussed by artists Böhler & Orendt, the geographer and urbanist Sandra Jasper and the biologist Tina Heger, moderated by Alex Nehmer (ARCH+).

The discussion will be held in German.

6 pm to 8 pm: Sound performance by Thomash & Luter.

The discourse event and the sound performance are a cooperation between ARCH+ and Spreepark Art Space

With: Moritz Ahlert, Tahani Nadim, Alsino Skowronnek, Feifei Zhou, moderation: Alex Nehmer

In an exhibition, urban explorations, and discourse events, the project Cohabitation negotiates a new understanding of the city that recognizes humans and animals as equal members of urban society.

In collaboration with the Museum für Naturkunde, Moritz Ahlert and Alsino Skowronnek developed the video installation Mapping the Post-Human City, which maps the partly symbiotic but also conflictual coexistence of humans and animals in Berlin. A foundational example of an artistic-research mapping is Feral Atlas by Anna L. Tsing, Jennifer Deger, Alder Keleman Saxena, and Feifei Zhou. Architect and artist Feifei Zhou's mappings take unconventional approaches to reveal non-intended consequences of man-made infrastructure on other living things. In doing so, the works deliberately do not see themselves as neutral repositories of facts. There are always underlying socio-political contexts, as the sociologist of science Tahani Nadim addresses in the project Data Natures that examines data paractices in natural history. The project presentations as well as a panel discussion moderated by Alexandra Nehmer (ARCH+) are intended to critically discuss the conditions of mapping and inventorying, asking about possibilities of linking data sets to new narratives of cohabitation.

The event will be held in English.

With:  Fahim Amir, Xenia Chiaramonte, Alex Nehmer, Marianne Ramsay-Sonneck & Georg Reinhardt (Club Real), Aurelie Richards and others

Urban explorations with artists, experts, and activists from the fields of environmental protection, architecture, biology, biodiversity research, and urban planning will lead to five different sites of species interaction in Berlin.

With over 20,000 documented animal and plant species, Berlin is one of the most species-rich cities in Europe. This is not least due to its history: wartime destruction and the city’s east-west division resulted in numerous open spaces and wastelands. Starting in the 1960s, the city became the focus of a new ecological movement that recognized the urban space as a habitat for different species. This was partly out of necessity, since West Berlin’s biologists were only able to conduct research inside the walled-in city. Civil society played a major role: with the support of numerous volunteers, the habitats of animals and plants in the entire urban area – including all built areas for humans – were registered between 1979 and 1984. Today, numerous civil society, scientific, and artistic initiatives remain committed to urban ecology and animal urban dwellers.

Guided tours to five special locations in Berlin present initiatives and projects to a broad public beyond the scope of specialist discourse, while fostering the exchange of knowledge and experience. Building on everyday perspectives, including observations of animals in their immediate urban environment, the excursions will illuminate complex interrelationships behind processes such as environmental destruction, resource exploitation, the decline of biodiversity, and globalized food production. Natural urban spaces are to be experienced as public spaces, and new forms of living together in solidarity are to be explored for the city of the future.

With: Katja Aßmann, Marcus Maeder, Tim Peschel, Peter Spillmann

The Spreepark, formerly Kulturpark Plänterwald, was once the only amusement park in all of East Germany. The venue was later privatized, then declared bankrupt, and closed its doors in 2001. Until it was purchased by the state of Berlin in 2014, the site was left to its own devices, with flora and fauna settling in the rides, artificial ponds, and residual architecture. Now Spreepark will become a new public space that enables co-use by humans, animals, and plants, involving an elaborate negotiation process between actors from the fields of environmental protection, urban planning, and art. For this urban exploration, Katja Aßmann will provide insight into the development of the project, which she is jointly overseeing as the artistic director of Spreepark for Grün Berlin. Biologist Tim Peschel, whose ecological research serves as a basis for Spreepark’s open-space concept, will introduce the creatures that have conquered this habitat. Marcus Maeder presents the first results developed during his artist residency in the context of Cohabitation in cooperation with Spreepark/Grün Berlin, for which he artistically and scientifically documented the current state of the ecosystem with the help of sound recordings.

Meeting point: Spreepark entrance gate, Kiehnwerderallee 1–3, 12437 Berlin

With: Marcus Maeder

In conjunction with an artist residency at Spreepark in Berlin-Treptow, sound artist Marcus Maeder has been observing the soundscape of this former East German amusement park for the past year. After years of neglect, the park will soon reopen as a recreational space at the intersection of nature, culture/art, and education. In a sound performance lasting several hours, Marcus Maeder will develop and unfold a musical ecosystem of Spreepark. Field recordings from the site will interact with electronic sounds that are triggered and controlled by the recorded environmental sounds. Maeder sees his sound work as an immersive, sonic multispecies structure.

The artist residency by Marcus Maeder takes place in the context of Cohabitation in cooperation with Spreepark / Grün Berlin under the artistic direction of Katja Aßmann.

Admission with exhibition ticket

With: Club Real

On June 19, the 4th Parliament of Living Beings will meet at the Organisms Democracy on Osloer Strasse; all living beings who live at the building site in Berlin’s Wedding district have the same political rights. Standing for the community of over 300 different species, 15 organisms will be represented in the parliament by 15 people. In the name of diverse species, including squirrels, chestnuts, and root-knot bacteria, the representatives will address current conflicts at the site and ideas for the future of the community, taking decisions that aim to be as fair as possible to all its citizens.

Meeting point: Osloer Str. 107/108, 13359 Berlin-Wedding

With: Animalesque, Simon, Melanie von Orlow

Silent green Kulturquartier with the adjacent cemetery and various surrounding green spaces in the neighborhood is exemplary for many places in Berlin where urban and natural spaces intermingle, creating ideal conditions for a species-rich urban nature. In a project with young people from the neighborhood, Animalesque, the Visiting School of the London Architectural Association School of Architecture in Berlin, built a prototype for the coexistence of humans and animals on the grounds of silent green. Together with Simon, who takes care of the garden and green spaces of the silent green, and the expert for swarm insects Melanie von Orlow, members of Animalesque guide around the site.

With: Club Real

On the Day of the Garden Executive, visitors to the Organisms Democracy can participate in the implementation of the decisions that were made by the Parliament of Living Beings on June 19, 2021. These will have real consequences for the ecological community of all organisms at the site. Which species will be given asylum and how will they be helped to settle on the site? What will happen to the land near the border, which was cleared by the Public Parks Department without the parliament’s approval?         

Meeting point: Osloer Str. 107/108, 13359 Berlin-Wedding

With: Carsten Kallasch, Cord Riechelmann, Peter Spillmann, Beate Witzel und einer*m Vertreter*in des Haus der Statistik

On a guided tour around Alexanderplatz, urban ecologist Beate Witzel, crow expert Cord Riechelmann and bat researcher Carsten Kallasch give insights into wildlife life in Berlin's Mitte. Starlings have learned to use the S-Bahn to get around protected from hawks. Some overwinter in the station concourse – due to increasing warming, especially of cities, many birds now no longer migrate south. Foxes spend the night on the numerous construction sites and raccoons even climb skyscrapers. Every evening, crows from the surrounding countryside return to their roosts in the city center. Great gulls breed on the roof of the Alexa shopping center, because today they often find more food in the city than on the overfished Baltic Sea. The city space has also become a habitat for many different species due to its spatial diversity through a wide variety of building types and historical architectural phases. For example, the prefabricated façade of the Haus der Statistik houses 200 pairs of swifts, and many bats also live in the building complex. Many other species use the same urban infrastructure as we do and have adapted their behaviors to city life. Cohabitation is already taking place here, largely unnoticed and without any major conflicts, and will also be taken into account in the utilization concept of the future cultural center in the Haus der Statistik.

Meeting point: WERKSTATT Haus der Statistik, Karl-Marx-Allee 1, 10178 Berlin, Deutschland

With: Marta Fernandez, Roberta Jurčić, Kathrin Scheurich

With the construction of the Institute for Hygiene and Microbiology and the Central Animal Laboratories of Freie Universität Berlin, next to the Schlosspark Lichterfelde nature reserve, a dense juxtaposition of natural and artificial biotopes was created. The facilities, some of which have since been shut down, were high-security architectures that provided the framework for controllable experimental setups. However, the idea of nature as a closed system is not limited to the laboratory, but shapes the concept of biotopes via the nature conservation zone to the idea of a controllable biosphere.

From today's perspective, these ideas seem long outdated: animals, plants and viruses cross zones, penetrate closed spaces and migrate around the globe. What might dynamic concepts of nature look like? The urban exploration around the Mäusebunker will be accompanied by nature and environmental educator Kathrin Scheurich, together with Marta Fernandez and Roberta Jurčić, who, together with students from ETH Zurich, have been exploring ways to make the Mäusebunker permeable to animals and wildlife, transforming it into an architecture for multispecies cohabitation.

The event will be held in English.

With: Marianne Ramsay-Sonneck & Georg Reinhardt (Club Real), Maike Weißpflug, Thomas Hauck

On a guided tour around the grounds of Berlin’s first Organisms Democracy on Osloer Strasse, in the immediate vicinity of the Panke River, participants will be able to observe many animal and plant species that have moved in from all over the world. Who is allowed to live or spread out where, however, is subject to very different and sometimes contradictory systems of order on this small-scale perimeter – depending on whether a species is located on public land, in the green spaces, in the street space, or in the private courtyard. The aim of this urban exploration is to learn about some of the regimes currently in place, while discussing the political representation of non-human living beings. Members of the artists group Club Real will present Organisms Democracy, a participatory experiment in the involvement of diverse groups of organisms in political decision-making processes.

The event will be held in German.

Treffpunkt (geändert): Eingang vom Bibliothek am Luisenbad, Badstraße 39, 13357 Berlin