Activism

2024 Type: Archive Matter

The founding of the nGbK in 1968/69 can already be understood as a form of activism—in the sense of an active gesture of self-organization driven by dissatisfaction with the program and internal state of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (DGBK) that was founded in Berlin in 1965 and whose split led to the creation of the nGbK and the n.b.k. (neuer berliner kunstverein). ¹ The nGbK’s structure, based on grassroots democracy, is thus also a political statement, intended to avoid hierarchies. This political self-image was reflected in a program that was open to documenting and exhibiting activist art practices, as well as initiating many actions and adopting political stances. The material taken into consideration ranged “from works with a clear political message in the sense of Agitprop to complex considerations on the representative function of art; from radical individual positions to the denial of authorship in the production of collective works,” ² as Jule Reuter puts it in the catalogue for Goodbye London – Radical Art and Politics in the Seventies.

A few examples: In 1973, an art auction was organized in solidarity with the struggles of the Chilean people. In 1987, the nGbK hosted an exhibition entitled Schlaglichter – Schlagstöcke. Aktionsraum Straße that used “photos, videos, and installations to document happenings by many known and unknown artists” who have used the street as a space for action. ³ What are described here as “happenings” were demonstrations and riots that were met with police violence. In 1991, a day of action on Paragraph 218 (that criminalizes abortion) took place in the form of a training camp co-organized by the nGbK.

In 2013, the exhibition LOVE AIDS RIOT SEX, subtitled Art Aids Activism, focused on “the time from 1987 to 1995, an era of great despair and massive indignation and outrage during the AIDS crisis.” ⁴ Its aim was to showcase the struggle for visibility and the political activism of the movement during this period. In its contribution to the catalogue, U.S. artists group Gran Fury describes the activities of the Aids Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) that was founded in 1987: “In a series of public works in a wide range of media including t-shirts, stickers, banners, billboards, bus and subway signs and television spots, we hoped to inspire collective action to change public perception and governmental policy on AIDS. […] We exclusively used the collective voice. […] We chose to do this work as artists using the language of advertising. […] Our impact was greatly expanded by opportunities given to us by art institutions.” ⁵

According to Astrid Wege, an activist approach is characterized by “a mimetic subversive use of mainstream media—posters, newspaper inserts, billboards, etc.” ⁶ This definition is especially fitting for the nGbK, as there have been many poster campaigns that deliberately chose a mainstream medium to share political demands with the broadest possible public. ⁷ In her text “The Activist as Producer,” Elisa Bertuzzo, a member of the nGbK work group The Driving Factor, expands this definition of activism, writing that activists produce different social spaces “when and insofar as they engage with others in processes whose initial motives might stem from rejection, aspirations, wishes, desires, and whose outcomes are largely unknown. They spread counter-proposals and counter-narratives, new knowledge and other forms of action; mediating between theory and practice, they bring viable ways of doing to light.” ⁸ The participatory artistic-curatorial practices described by Bertuzzo here have been established at the nGbK for years, especially at the station urbaner kulturen/nGbK in Hellersdorf and in the work of the station urbaner kulturen work group.

An expanded understanding of activism was presented to a broader public and established at the nGbK as early as 2005 in the exhibition Art of Change, focusing on artist and activist Loraine Leeson. As in the case of ACT UP, her practice is characterized by a collaborative approach, using strategies of communication, participation, and institutional critique and using various (popular) media such as posters, videos, websites, and databases to “bridge the gap between art and society,” as the artist writes in the catalogue. ⁹ The projects presented included a campaign to save a hospital threatened with closure and a local residents initiative in London’s Docklands. In her essay about Leeson, Carmen Mörsch writes that she belongs to a generation of activist artists who have gone “largely unnamed” in the dominant art history of the 1970s and ‘80s. ¹⁰ The nGbK show aimed to rectify this omission.

In summary, with further reference to Bertuzzo, ¹¹ activism at the nGbK could be described as ongoing work that includes not only a political stance, but also exchanges of controversial opinions and viewpoints. In conceptual terms, this frees activism from its usual link to physical, militant resistance, showing that it can also be identified in research, experimentation, and self-organized advocation of alternative and more equitable ways of living—practices that have been pursued and realized at the nGbK from the outset.

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Anna-Lena Wenzel, 2024

See: “For me, the nGbK and the principle of learning-by-doing were very important. Without this organization, I wouldn’t be where I am today. Interview with Matthias Reichelt,” November 2021, https://ngbk.de/en/diskurs/mitgliederinterviews/matthias-reichelt-und-josefine-geier.↩
Jule Reuter, “The Task of Art,” in: Goodbye London. Radical Art and Politics in the Seventies, nGbK, Berlin 2010, unpaginated.↩
See the invitation: https://archiv.ngbk.de/projekte/schlaglichter-schlagstoecke/.↩
Frank Wagner, “Love Aids Riot Sex,” in Love Aids Riot Sex (Berlin: NGBK, 2014), 8.↩
Gran Fury, “Read My Lips,” in Love Aids Riot Sex, 99f.↩
Astrid Wege, “‘Eines Tages werden die Wünsche die Wohnung verlassen und auf die Straße gehen’. Zu interventionistischer und aktivistischer Kunst,” in Heinz Schütz (ed.), Stadt.Kunst (Regensburg 2001), 24.↩
For example the street exhibition Voll aufs Auge – Ernst Volland stellt aus on billboards near the Gedächtniskirche between Kurfürstendamm and Kantstrasse in 1981, that criticized censorship to which artists had been subjected; or, in 1991, Dein Körper ist ein Schlachtraum (Your body is a battlefield) by Barbara Kruger, with 2000 posters featuring explicitly feminist messages and the wall newspaper AVNET on Kurfürstendamm (both organized by the RealismusStudio work group). In addition, the nGbK supported actions like HOLY DAMN IT – 50,000 posters against the G8 meeting in Heiligendamm in 2007, or geGen-Welten: Widerstände gegen Gentechnologien by Oliver Ressler, for which warning signs were installed in art institutions.↩
Elisa Bertuzzo, “The Activist as Producer,” in Kollektiv Quoditien (ed.), Lefebvre for Activists (Hamburg 2020), 212.↩
Loraine Leeson, “Exploding the Frame – den Rahmen sprengen,” in Art for Change – Loraine Lesson, Arbeiten von 1975-2005 (Berlin: NGBK, 2005), 10.↩
Carmen Mörsch, “Foreword,” in Art for Change – Loraine Lesson, Arbeiten von 1975-2005, 6.↩
See Bertuzzo, “The Activist as Producer,” 211.↩