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Inauguration of the first part of three workshops and a conversation

The themes Infrastructure and Care Work are central for Jelena Fužinato during her nGbK 2022 Outreach Scholarship. In her three-part workshop series, she develops new outreach formats with various professionals from the fields of infrastructure and care work. TOOLS TO BUILD AND TO CARE#1 - A Fountain in Hellersdorf is the first of three non-public workshops, the result of which will be presented to the public on 30th June and remain in public space until September 21.

To talk about the infrastructure of the city, Jelena Fužinato looks at an "invisible workforce": 50,000 construction workers from the Western Balkans work on construction sites in Germany. Among them are a large number of illegal and undocumented migrants. She invites some of these workers to build temporary structures (or “tools”) with her, asking them to contribute their knowledge on construction and to speak of their experiences of the Berlin’s capital and real estate markets, which could not exist without them.

In the first TOOLS TO BUILD AND TO CARE workshop, they built a fountain as a meeting place near the central square on the Kastanienboulevard pedestrian zone,  diagonally opposite from the station urbaner kulturen/nGbK Hellersdorf. Its construction took place over five days in public space and was carried out by the artist and three construction workers. Visitors are invited to watch the construction work and to participate in an informal conversation on the last day of the workshop.

This fountain in the form of a wooden object serves as a field of experimentation. The idea behind the sculpture is to bring together different professional groups to learn from each other and share experiences within the construction process. The artist’s intention is to facilitate the use and experience of public spaces in new ways. The sculpture will serve as a seating and meeting place, enabling new opportunities for gathering and for unexpected encounters. It will remain on Kastanienboulevard until September 2022.

Jelena Fužinato is a freelance artist and art educator. She works in the media of drawing and installation to investigate authoritarian relationships within institutions such as the family, school, museum and state. She studied painting at the Academy of Arts in Banja Luka (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and completed her master's degree in painting at the University of Arts Belgrade (Serbia); she studied Curating, Managing and Mediating Art at Aalto University Helsinki (Finland) and completed postgraduate studies at  Institute of Art in Context (Universität der Künste, Berlin) in 2015. Her focus is on artistic work with social groups and in cultural institutions. In 2017/18 she undertook a qualification focusing on discrimination-critical education work at KontextSchule. She has worked as an art mediator and guest lecturer in and outside different art, cultural and educational institutions.

The nGbK Outreach scholarship is funded by the LOTTO-Stiftung Berlin and the Senate Department for Culture and Europe.