The Akademie c/o was an event format dedicated to the reflection on the meta-discourse of theory and practice, recognition and action. It was founded as an subsidiary of 0093 a42.org, the master’s program for Architecture and Urban Studies directed by Arno Brandlhuber at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg. Guided by a political interest in knowledge, the series aimed to offer theoretical models and discuss them as the basis for social action. Spatial production is not understood as the addition of aesthetic, economic, and constructive elements, but rather as the “ordering of social relations through building.” The events often related to architectural phenomena and situations in the Berlin Republic. The term “Berlin Republic” refers not only to the city of Berlin, but—as opposed to the Bonn Republic—to the time since 1989, or starting with the Decision on the Capital (Hauptstadtbeschluss) in 1991. Spatial production of the Berlin Republic therefore includes phenomena in rural areas, other cities, as well as supranational phenomena that affect the relationships between people.
Guests from different fields were invited to discuss spatial manifestations and their influence on public social action, among others the theologian Rolf Schieder reviewing the Bundeswehr Memorial at Bendler Block, Nine Budde, Robert Burghardt, and Kito Nedo discussing townhouses as a model of capitalist urban development, and the art historian Maren Polte showing how the architectural and urban developments of Berlin’s government district and the European Quarter in Brussels have been shaped by the anonymous power of lobbyism. Akademie c/o had registered participants, but was at the same time public—everyone who attended the events automatically became a member.
Venues
c/o Temporäre Kunsthalle, Berlin, 2008–10
c/o Lothringer 13, Munich, 2010
c/o Bibliothekswohnung, Berlin, 2010
c/o Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin, 2010–14
c/o Buchhandlung Walther König, Berlin, 2012
c/o Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik, Berlin, 2012
c/o Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2012