- Menu
Program
Discourse
- Topics
- Magazine
- Interviews with Members
- Members of the art association talk about their experiences, projects, and working conditions. Why did they join—or leave? What sets the nGbK apart from other art institutions in Berlin? How have perceptions of the institution changed over time?
  Anna-Lena Wenzel, a member herself and part of the Wissensspeicher and Klassenfragen project groups, conducted six interviews with long-standing and newer members who have occupied different positions within the institution (in project groups, in the office team, as managing director, or on the steering committee). The interviews also focus on different themes, including feminism at the nGbK, joint projects with East Germany, and the art society’s image within Berlin’s cultural scene.
- Essays
- Glossary of Urban Praxis
- Who makes a city, and with what cultures and practices? How do we formulate a “right to the city” without being righteous? Berlin has long been characterized by willfully initiated buildings, self-organized spaces, and an abundant social culture. The right to the city is fought for and shaped by multitudes of people by means of the arts, design, planning, and action.
  The aim of this glossary is to sharpen the understanding of “Urban Praxis” through presenting diverse voices of the actors of Urban Praxis and thereby to elaborate key criteria and qualities of Urban Praxis. The authors provide the terms of Urban Praxis that are most important to them or critically engage with commonly employed terms. With a shadow glossary and other additional terms, this will be put online. Taken together, the entries form not only a vocabulary about contemporary urbanity and the need for urban and artistic action, but also provide a discourse on Urban Praxis as such. [more]
- Archive Matter
- The nGbK's knowledge repository Archive Matter emerged from a 2015 project that set itself the task of developing entryways into to the physical archive. This resulted in indexing and linkages that make the dense history of the nGbK accessible. Focus texts on key topics from over four decades trace different approaches to the history of the Kunstverein from 1969 onwards. Each entry also refers to selected, thematically relevant publications and archive documents.
  After the working group was dissolved, the Archive Matter was continued institutionally. Texts by various authors regularly create new thematic paths through the exhibition, event, and publication archive. The selection made by the texts is always just one of many possible excerpts from the association's collective knowledge.
  Find an extensive project description here.
- Curating through Conflict with Care (CCC)
- (CCC) Inhalte (Ungelistet lassen)
Visit
Institution
Archive
Publications
- Publications
- The publications of the nGbK reflect the discourses of the respective time in the art field. Or they refer to the gaps and missing parts in it - with recurring themes such as migration, feminism and gender, city and public space, critique of capitalism, racism, social movements and ecology. The books have emerged from the exhibition and event projects of the nGbK, but also in collaborations with institutional or independent partners; either in the publishing house of the nGbK or in cooperation with other publishers and distribution partners.
  You can purchase the more than 170 publications still available here. In addition, you will find information on out-of-print publications from over 40 years of institutional history.
  
  Publishing preview (German)
  Spring 2024
  
  Reduced prices for nGbK members
  For reduced prices, please log into the member area or send your order directly to: office@ngbk.de
  
  Distribution to book shops
  Runge Verlagsauslieferung GmbH
  Bergstr. 2
  33803 Steinhagen
  Phone: +49 (0)5204 998 124
  E-Mail: Team4@rungeva.de
- Merch
- Cart
Search
De / En

Social Work

2021 Type: Glossary

Those of us who, as a matter of legal form, live in a socially minded welfare state—where the fundamental idea is to provide assistance to all people when needed—can consider ourselves fortunate. If we do not find our way in this system or are excluded from it, there are social service structures intended to help us. You are seen as needy—in social terms, a very passive position.
Urban Practice creates places of identification for active engagement: a physical place that must be designed collectively and where a form of communication must also be found collectively. This builds social connections and transforms people into decision makers. Despite their “need for help,” they become responsible shapers of their city. Social work as Urban Practice inherently means being able to serve as an advocate between, for example, administrative agencies and individuals, but above all to be an advocate for a society that consults and shapes itself from within.

Vera Fritsche is project manager of PILOT STADTWERK mrzn, as well as program coordinator and pedagogical director of S27–Kunst und Bildung. She has been working within the context of participatory project processes in public space for the past 10 years.