Voicing Bethanien

“Voicing Bethanien” is a collectively voiced and individually experienced narrative of a venue of international and local significance in a city that has constantly been marked by rapid urban development and social upheaval.

Schönberger’s focus on individual life stories and personal connections to the city of Berlin provides a framework for this collection of interviews. It is continuation of her video archive Berliner Zimmer, and takes Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien as the project’s thematic foundation.

In its 50-year history, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien has witnessed the convergence of numerous people and narratives that have had a lasting influence on Berlin’s cultural scene and continue to shape it. At the same time, Kunstraum Kreuzberg was and is a meeting place for people who have worked at Bethanien and share a common history.

The exhibition is showing the extent to which these are interwoven, informed by each other, and continuously changing and benefiting from a plurality and ambivalence of biographical positions, points of view, opinions, and artistic approaches. The exhibition space of Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien will be filled with forty interviews conducted for the exhibition. Organized into five chapters, the videos enter into an exchange with each other, and a collectively voiced account of living and working together in the district of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg and the city of Berlin emerges from the individual biographies. Even when negotiating social ruptures, problems, and grievances, moments of neighborliness and structures of solidarity are celebrated, as is the will to effect change.

Sonya Schönberger is a Berlin-based artist whose practice deals with biographical disruptions occurring at times of political or social upheaval. Her artistic exploration begins with people themselves, who talk about their lives in a conversational setting. She has applied this approach to establish her own archives and additionally worked with existing and found archives.

Five years ago, she launched “Berliner Zimmer”, an active and constantly growing archive of video interviews with Berliners whose backgrounds are as diverse and heterogeneous as the city’s urban population. The subjects of these interviews are people of different origins and generations, who tell their life stories and discuss their current inspirations, motivations, and concerns. Furthermore, “Berliner Zimmer” is framed by the city itself. As a common place of residence and shared environment, it is a point of reference in the interviews as the subjects talk about their life stories and how they have been interwoven with the city of Berlin. The archive is designed to record a hundred years of history and is housed in the Berlin Stadtmuseum.