● Ruins built, rather then buildings ruined

Billboard Project and Artist Talk

part of Going out of Circles, Station Urbanen Kulturen, NgBK
Berlin, Germany
11 July - 30 September 2020

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, our two months residency at Hellersdorf microdistrict on the outskirts of Berlin was transformed into a community engagement project via a distance. Advertising stands seemed like an appropriate and accessible form of communication, and hence we created 3 billboards for Hellersdorf. The works were inspired by the intangible heritage of the area placed within an international setting. The billboards revoked inhabitants’ knowledge and experiences on local ‘ruins’ that are worth discussing and offered playful, meditative and creative tasks to engage in.

The first billboard presented ideas from our book “BRUT Boredom” and encouraged people to keep an eye on their local ruins, like a rusty slide overgrown by a bush. The second billboard asked the audience to join the dots to reveal a structure of what was once a popular community gathering spot at Lithuanian housing estates. The third billboard featured illustrations connected to residents’ texts about the local ruins of Hellersdorf, collected through a commissioning process. An artist talk by Anna Tudos framed the collective’s investigations into local ruins and presented examples from an international context.

In the billboard project, ruins, emptiness, and boredom come to have multiple meanings that are interconnected with one another. We use these terms to see emptiness both as something with present potential as well as in terms of its future possibilities. We presented ideas touching upon abandoned play structures and old-fashioned architectural solutions for recreational spaces and objects in the cricket field of Station Urbaner Kulturen - a space that is neither urban nor natural. Through commissioning residents to write texts about Hellersdorf, we asked them to reflect if there are valuable ruins in the area, and if there are, how could artists deal with them?

Concept by BRUT Collective (Marija Nemcenko & Anna Tudos)

Design by Zuzanna Loch

PHOTOS by Benjamin Renter, Aya Schamoni, AG station urbaner kulturen / nGbK Hellersdorf, 2020