Since 2009, Eva Hertzsch and Adam Page have been part of the long-running nGbK work groups “Art in the Underground” (2009–2018) and “station urbaner kulturen” (since 2019). Since 2014, these work groups have been active in Hellersdorf, leading to a second nGbK location there. The station urbaner kulturen/nGbK Hellersdorf consists of an exhibition and event space in a shop unit: first at Cecilienplatz (2014–2016) and then on Boulevard Kastanienallee (since 2017). From 2016, a nearby green area, known as Place Internationale, was used for outdoor activities, exhibitions, and workshops with local residents, artists, schoolchildren, and students. This space was provided free of charge by the district council until September 2024.

This interview was conducted by Anna-Lena Wenzel on September 15, 2024, in the “Classroom of the Future,” a pavilion installed by the work group at Place Internationale in June that year. At the time of the interview, the project’s days were already numbered: the contract was due to expire at the end of September and the green space had to be cleared for the construction of a new school.

From Cottbusser Platz subway station, Place Internationale is just a few minutes’ walk. Right outside the station, steps lead up to a large green space with shrubs and trees. Well-worn paths lead to an expanse of grass with several billboards and a brown and green pavilion. Through a door with a ramp one enters a surprisingly light and spacious room where the exhibition Laborschule Berlin is on show, featuring projects realized by the workgroup with local schools in the period 2022–24 with visions for the school soon to be built on the site. It’s Sunday, the last day of Berlin Art Week; the day before, an exhibition of work by East German photographers opened at the station urbaner kulturen/nGbK Hellersdorf. When I arrive, Eva is in the middle of telling several visitors about the pavilion. Since new visitors keep arriving—including old acquaintances and children from the nearby refugee shelter—Eva tirelessly keeps talking. I switch on my microphone.

Visitor: What is this building?

Eva Hertzsch: It’s a pavilion that belonged to Dresdner Bank. It was designed in the early 1970s by ABB Architects in connection with the bank’s headquarters in Frankfurt, the Silver Tower. It was installed at the Frankfurt Trade Fair as a place to meet and do business with customers. The space was carpeted and there were open counters with lots of glass and no barriers, very customer friendly. The color is Saxony green, developed by Otl Aicher, who also designed the Lufthansa logo and the pictograms for the Olympic Games. The pavilion was dismantled in 1983, I don’t know why. You can tell it’s a modular prototype because the units aren’t totally identical. Later it stood for many years at a sports club, and then at a riding stable in Waldsolms, between Gießen and Frankfurt. The clubs used it, but they made changes, for example they removed and remade the revolving door. On the initiative of the workgroup, the pavilion was brought here, reconstructed and partially restored. It’s now been in use since the beginning of June 2024.

Visitor: How did you find the pavilion?

EH: At the end of 2021, like every year, we were looking for a lockable container for our summer projects here in the park, and that was when former workgroup member Ralf Wedekind found this pavilion on eBay.

Visitor: You had to pick it up yourself?

EH: Yes, really, we had to take it apart, too [laughs]. It was quite an adventure, because it’s unbelievably heavy. There are ten fiberglass wall units that can be assembled in different ways. Then there’s a simple steel framework, plus the nine-part coffered ceiling. Everything has to be moved with a crane and transported by truck.

Visitor: What was this green space before?

EH: There used to be a school here, but in 2008 there were so few pupils that it was demolished. Since then the area has grown wild. It’s a beautiful place. A huge hare lives here, as well as many other animals and plants.

Visitor: And now a new school’s being built, with a sports field and all the rest?

EH: Yes, quite a big one actually, a modular wooden structure as part of Berlin’s “school-building offensive.” Over a period of several years, the Senate Office for Education researched new teaching concepts and used the results to develop an architectural concept. It’s an interesting project, involving key experts, including educationalists. And now the concept is being applied across Berlin, as an “offensive,” but unfortunately without taking local factors and peculiarities into account. We’re not against a school, we just don’t agree with the process being run in such an ad hoc manner. Instead, local residents should be involved, there should be discussions about the site. Does it have to be a standard school, or could one think about a pilot project for Berlin-Hellersdorf—an environmental school, for example, or a school that opens itself up to the neighborhood. In our view, another problem is that it’s a uniform structure that’s being built here, a large box. None of the trees will be left standing, the surface will be completely sealed. Our suggestion is to build pavilions scattered around the green space, separate buildings that are connected to one another, leaving plenty of green and access to outdoor spaces, and with a green space left in the center at the heart of the school.

Visitor: But that’s not the plan?

EH: Local residents and some politicians advocate dialog about how to use the green space and whether the pavilion might be able to stay, but Berlin’s Secretary of Education and Councilor for Schools are not in favor of participation. The district of Marzahn-Hellersdorf must clear the site for construction, everything has to go, even though it’s not yet clear whether funding for the new school has been fully secured. We always knew we would have to leave, because we have a limited usage contract. The contract was extended, year after year, because we “do such great projects,” because we create social connections, because we address ecological issues, because we use the means of art to generate social cohesion. Many people are quite shocked that the educations authorities are not prioritizing these social and cultural assets. In its promotional campaigns, the administration says “get involved,” but here they’re putting the brakes on such engagement.

Anna-Lena Wenzel: What kind of projects do you mean?

EH: For example, for two years now we’ve been working on the theme of “School of the Future”, we created a working group, did research, organized workshops and meetings. In part, this was about using our outdoor classroom to make up for a lack of classrooms in nearby schools. We invited the schools to come here. They are very glad of such an option, not least because the children like the chance to go outside. It’s like playing when they’re allowed to move around freely here.

ALW: And what comes next?

EH: The “School of the Future” working group certainly has a few ideas for the new school [laughs]. This is a place where something special could be created, a pilot project, something that takes notice of this location and its surroundings, something that involves local residents and the green space. We hope to be able to be an integral part of the future school. As a classroom of the future, this was intended as a space for communication, for processes of negotiation, for the neighborhood, for the school, and for the nGbK. Having a place like that creates a different understanding of the surroundings than if you come and build something without any process of communication.

Visitor: Are you in contact with the authorities?

EH: Yes, with various offices. The district’s office for urban development has supported our project for many years. And we have a good network of art institutions, schools, universities, green initiatives, neighborhood projects, representatives of the borough and political parties, etc.

Visitor [points at a model on display]: Are these models for the building development?

EH: These models are Masters projects by two architecture students from Berlin’s Technical University. Late last year, they contacted us and said they’d like to work on the theme of the school of the future. They developed a project for the adjacent site of the former Max-Reinhardt-Oberschule, which is currently being used as a refugee shelter. At some point in the future, if the shelter is empty, the two students suggest building a secondary school with all of the necessary facilities on that site, which is already a sealed surface, and to the leave this green space completely undeveloped as a green schoolyard.

ALW: Do you have to deal with vandalism here?

EH: What sometimes happens is arson. It comes in phases. Just recently there were three fires, including the wooden puppet theater over there in the bushes, run by a local association. And on Boulevard Kastanienallee there was an artwork by Jelena Fuzinato, a fountain realized as a community project, that also burned down. And you often see cars or delivery vans in flames. I don’t think it’s politically motivated, more out of frustration and a sense of “everything’s shitty and boring in Hellersdorf and there’s nothing going on.” That’s the perception in this neighborhood, the young people feel they aren’t really taken seriously. They don’t receive much respect or recognition from outside. Which is one of the things that made us want to work closely with the neighborhood.

Visitor: Good luck!

EH: Thank you.

The flow of visitors ebbs slightly and I take the opportunity to ask Eva a few more personal questions.

ALW: How long have Adam [Page] and you been members of the nGbK?

EH: We moved to Berlin in 2007, but then we had our second child, so we probably didn’t become members immediately [laughs], it was more like 2008.

ALW: But you had already exhibited as artists at the nGbK.

EH: That’s right, in 2003 we were part of the World Watchers exhibition, one of the curators was Christiane Mennicke who we knew from Dresden. We mounted a fake plastic door to an underground parking garage on the façade of the nGbK, including a video camera and a traffic light, as a reference to ever-increasing privatization. At that point, the gentrification of Oranienstraße was already well underway.

ALW: Did you apply to join with a specific project?

EH: We joined the “Art in the Underground” workgroup and helped to develop the new concept for the competition in 2009. That resulted in the call for entries under the title U10 – from here to the imaginary and back again, followed by the three-year implementation phase. We though it was interesting to turn this competition into a study of social space. In 2013, we came to Hellersdorf as part of the working group tasked with redesigning the competition, and from 2014 through 2017 we then curated What is Outside? and The Middle in Nowhere.

ALW: Were you invited to join this group?

EH: Well, we came to Berlin and we didn’t really know anyone. We joined the nGbK to gain access to the scene and to get in touch with people. We were looking to work on joint projects, with passionate thinking and group activism. That was part of our practice—we opened our first project space in Dresden in 1995. At the time, we both had studios in a pretty rundown house and we curated the project Zwischenstation Dresden in a shop unit on the ground floor. We invited artists and architects to use the rooms and to respond to current discourses in the city. As soon as you say this isn’t just your work, but a reciprocal exchange, then the way you understand what you’re doing changes. Taking part in documenta X also contributed to this. After Catherine David visited Zwischenstation, Adam was invited to documenta X in 1997. It was then that we decided only to appear as a duo from then on. We got plenty of exhibitions as a duo, but we noticed that surviving in the art world was only possible with lots of ego and pushiness. That felt pretty neoliberal and we preferred to work in groups and not concentrate solely on our artworks.

ALW: While preparing to talk to you, I was wondering how you describe your way of working, and what would be your self-designation.

EH: We used to call our works “situation-specific.” Today we talk about “production, networking, and communication as site-specific artistic practice.” After thirty years of practice in neighborhoods, in schools, and in urban space, we realized that central locations often have a superabundance of art, including neoliberal rivalry between the artists, and that the more peripheral locations often have less art and few artists. In Dresden-Prohlis and in Hellersdorf, it took several years to generate a public, but thanks to our long-term presence this public became a very loyal community. Then you can start doing genuine “participation” with people, or rather: working with them on equal terms. Our artistic contribution is to produce strong aesthetic visualizations that highlight and empower a community’s narratives and concerns, communicating them locally and creating broader networks.

ALW: You say it’s about strong visualizations, but at the same time you advocate community work. What is the difference between your approach and art education or social work?

EH: It’s not a standard educational approach, that would be about transmitting your knowledge. Instead it’s more about exchange and working on specific themes. In this exhibition, for example, the theme of school came up because the location exists as a school location and the local residents are concerned about what’s going to be built here. We address this theme in visual terms. The artistic work consists in putting people’s ideas, wishes, and needs into circulation in order to strengthen them. We communicate via an artistic visual idiom and the inspiration often comes from local people. The work of addressing themes includes the program of exhibitions in the green space, participating in Berlin Art Week, or visiting a district council meeting. The difference between our practice and social work is something we experience every day in our jobs at the Alice Salomon University of Applied Sciences (ASH), where we’ve been running an outreach project since 2023. At the start of the project Zwischenräume, we covered an advertising column right outside the university with a written message and had it dangling from a crane for two days. The message announced our founding of a local residents committee at ASH. The staff and the students at the university were surprised that we addressed the founding of this committee so precisely in the form of an artwork in public space.

ALW: How did you end up coming to Hellersdorf?

EH: In 2013, Jochen Becker from metroZones, Center for Urban Affairs, was also part of the “Art in the Underground” work group at nGbK. He brought the two groups together and we all cycled from Alexanderplatz to Hellersdorf, along the route of the U5 subway line. This day spent together shaped the future themes of the work group: the relationship between center and periphery, and between east and west, as well as issues around solidarity and hospitality. That day, when we were visiting the refugee shelter over the road, we discovered this green space. Not long before, there had been a neo-Nazi demonstration outside the shelter. So we decided it was urgent and necessary for us to stay here, to create art and culture, events and spaces for dialog. In 2014, this led to the concept for the Art in the Underground competition What is Outside? between Tierpark and Hönow. Today, almost all of our work takes place here. Which is a deliberate choice.

ALW: Besides “Art in the Underground,” which you passed on to others in 2019, you’re the only long-running work group of nGbK, running the station urbaner kulturen as the second nGbK location in Hellersdorf since 2014. This gives you a special status.

EH: Yes, it’s a concession on the part of the nGbK management to say it’s important to be here, even though at the start it wasn’t clear where it would lead; for us as an artist duo it was an important step to be given the opportunity to work in the name of the nGbK at this location in the long term. But we all realize it’s a crazy job—especially as we now have not just a shop unit but a huge pavilion, maybe that’s a bit brazen [laughs]. I think its remarkable and not to be taken for granted, because ultimately the liability lies with the nGbK management. Of course there are discussions about what should happen to the station urbaner kulturen, because it feels slightly like a fifth wheel that gets dragged along. People always say: “You’re just a work group like all the others.” All I can say is: we’re not a normal work group. We’ve now hosted more than 150 exhibitions and events with more than fifty local partners. That makes us unusual.

It’s always important to let people know what we’re doing here when they say: “You’re crazy. You spent a year building this pavilion although you knew it might all be over soon.” Yes, but the months since the inauguration have been all the more intense as a result. When engaging in this kind of artistic work, you have to be tough, you have to open up new spaces and keep going, even if the pavilion has to be dismantled. And of course we hope we’ll soon be able to install it again somewhere else in the neighborhood.

Editor’s note: in 2025 and 2026, the pavilion is used by the Alice Salomon University of Applied Sciences. For details, please see here.

Translated by Nicholas Grindell