What's the Time, Mahagonny?

Right now I feel that I’ve got my feet on the ground as far as my head is concerned. – Baseball pitcher Bo Belinsky 1. The great cities in our day are full of 01/09 people who do not like it there1 [Enter a Letter] My roommates and I received a letter in the mail the other day. It was addressed to “The owners of: [address of our building].” I opened it and it said: Real estate urgently needed! Natascha Sadr Haghighian Dear Owner, Are you considering selling your house? What’s the Please let us know. Together with our partner, PlanetHome, we are urgently Time, looking for houses, apartments, and Mahagonny? properties, private and commercial. Kind regards, UniCredit Bank AG P.S. If you know of somebody and your reference leads to a successful sale through PlanetHome, we will give you 500 Euros! n a I assume that every household in our i h g neighborhood, Berlin’s east Kreuzberg, received i h g a similar letter, written with the assumption that a H it would happen upon some actual owners and r d a not just humble tenants like us. We had recently S a heard about an increasing conversion of h c s communal or tenant-occupied buildings into a t a condominiums, as part of the intensified buying- N Ê 2 up of Berlin by global investment banks. As a 0 1 0 city in financial trouble, Berlin makes for a nice 2 t s buy. We also understand that this is as much part u g ? of a local situation shaped by Berlin’s recent past u y a n - n as it is related to larger global developments. But e o n g u things you are told in a letter feel different a j h a — somehow. M 7 , 1 ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊSitting in the kitchen with my roommates, e # m l i studying this hard evidence of the acquisitions a T n r e battle taking place around us, we are unsure as u h t o j s ’ to whether we should feel worried or simply x t u a l f frame the letter and hang it on our wall as a h - e W piece of PlanetHome satire. I inevitably wonder how people in Greece must feel these days, when German politicians openly propose that they sell the Acropolis and a couple of their islands to pay back their debt. When it comes to debt, we all have to share the responsibility, have-nots and property owners alike. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe absurd suggestion to sell the Acropolis helps to remind us of how grotesque the notion 08.25.10 / 18:14:44 UTC of ownership actually is, especially when it fallen off the market – because we could be comes to places and locations. The temple of our freer there, more autonomous, more most priceless emblem of democracy is up for independent. And we don’t want to increase grabs – Etwas wird Sichtbar (Something their value now. We don’t want to discuss Becomes Apparent), as Harun Farocki beautifully “how we want to live” in urban development titled his 1981 film. The sword of Damocles over workshops. As far as we are concerned, the Acropolis and over our household also everything we do in this city has to do with reminds us that all that is supposedly owned can 02/09 open spaces, alternative ideas, utopias, also be sold, and that we are just the tenants. with undermining the logic of exploitation We, sitting in the kitchen of “our” flat in and location. Kreuzberg, are tenants in a city that was continuously plundered after the fall of the Wall, We say: A city is not a brand. A city is not a first under the auspices of the Treuhandanstalt, corporation. A city is a community. We ask and later by the Berliner Bankgesellschaft.3 the social question which, in cities today, is Berlin is a city that shifted its inevitable crisis also about a battle for territory. This is onto the heads of its inhabitants, and is now about taking over and defending places referred to as “poor but sexy,” a slogan coined by that make life worth living in this city, which mayor Klaus Wowereit in 2003.4 don’t belong to the target group of the ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊSo here we have it: a bunch of tenants in “growing city.” We claim our right to the city Berlin who have retreated to their kitchen and – together with all the residents of online communities because their city has been Hamburg who refuse to be a location hijacked by hordes of tourists desperately factor.6 seeking the poor and sexy “capital of creativity.” Staying mostly in their hideouts, the locals’ The tenants in Berlin are encouraged by the interactions with what is happening on the manifesto. It seems that there are people out ground consist mainly of sneaking out on special there who are once again up for a battle to regain trips to a nearby Lidl supermarket or to territory, and they ask: what and where are the conspiratorial meetings at friends’ homes. These common grounds today? locals are disillusioned by much of what has happened to this city in recent years, and still 2. So get away to Mahagonny, the gold town struggle with the extent to which, as culturally situated on the shores of consolation far n active individuals of various kinds, they have a from the rush of the world [Enter the Land] i h been (made into) part of the problem. From their g Jimmie Durham’s work Building a Nation refers to i h online communities they hear of similar issues in g the privatization and subsequent selling-off of a H other places. A manifesto from a loose alliance of communal land in the US, often so that mining r d music, DJ, art, theater, and film people in a companies can harvest the natural resources S Hamburg announces “Not in our Name – Marke a located under Indian reservations. During a h 5 c Hamburg!” Marke (brand) refers to the attempts s recent conversation between the artist and a t by local municipalities and investors to market a Michael Taussig at the House of World Cultures N Ê 7 Hamburg as a “creative city.” “Cities without gays in Berlin, somebody from the audience 0 1 and rock bands are losing the race for economic 0 commented that she was struck by the fact that 2 t development,” explains the manifesto: s visitors had to walk on Durham’s work. She asked u g ? him about his intention behind engaging the u y a n - There could not be a more unequivocal n ground in the piece. In his answer, Durham e o n g definition of the role that “creativity” is u expressed how ridiculous the very idea of a j h a supposed to play: namely of profit centre — ownership of land is to the Indian. He joked M 7 , for the “growing city.” 1 about people putting up fences and declaring a e # m l i piece of land their own. What a stupid idea, he a T n r And this is where we draw the line. We don’t e laughed. He described how, while ownership u h t o j s want any of the district developers’ ’ seems to matter a great deal, little attention is x t u a l strategically placed “creative real estate” f given to the actual ground. The notion of the h - or “creative yards.” We come from squatted e W ground, the land, seems to remain abstract for houses, stuffy rehearsal rooms, we started most people. People live in cities far away from clubs in damp cellars and in empty the land. Land has no use for them, no purpose department stores. Our studios were in beyond recreation and fun trips to “nature.” You abandoned administrative buildings and we go out to nature to use it for things like preferred un-renovated over renovated whitewater rafting. You wear special gear that buildings because the rent was cheaper. In you buy from special outdoor shops in the city. this city, we have always been on the He went on poking fun at whitewater rafting for lookout for places that had temporarily quite some time before eventually returning to 08.25.10 / 18:14:44 UTC the question from the audience, explaining that and real estate, including around 98 percent of he wanted to reactivate the ground. He wanted to industrial facilities, was Volkseigentum – literally make people pay attention to what they were “public property,” understood more specifically walking on. as a socialist form of public ownership distinct ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe ground, the land – what an not only from private property, but from state anachronistic idea in a time when everybody ownership as well, and mainly accumulated seems busy chatting on Skype, acquiring through dispossession. network friends, and debating over intellectual 03/09 ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAfter the fall of the Wall, it became unclear property. Perhaps this is because people think what would happen to this public property. In that the battles over the actual ground are long February 1990 the activist group Demokratie lost, the territories already portioned and sold Jetzt (Democracy Now) initiated the founding of a off. What difference does it make if the land we fiduciary organization called Treuhandanstalt, dwell on is sold by one owner to another? And, which set out to protect the rights of GDR for that matter, what difference does it make citizens with regard to the Volkseigentum.

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