This week we visited the eastern part of Leipzig and some spaces of it’s vibrate underground art scene. We started our trip with the “Pögehaus e.V.” – a positive example of how the creative scene is protecting buildings in the time of gentrification. Jan Keilhauer introduced the project and the house and we learned more about collaborative concepts. On the way to the next space, we stoppend at an empty building. “Why are we stopping?” asked Jacqueline van de Geer. “This is a negative example of how things can turn – this was the building were a second PILOTENKUECHE, a Café and alternative concepts were planned to settle. This never happend, we needed to leave the building, after we remodeled some parts of it.”
All photos by PILOTENKUECHE
The next station was the “Japanisches Haus e.V.” – a people-connecting project founded by Yu Ohtani (Architect) & Noriko Minkus (Architect, MINKUS Architects). Yu was talking about the project, how it works & what they are doing. This is a lot and brings people from all over the world together to think & to be creative with each other. From the view of the architect we continued discussing with Yu about city development, how to use properties & free spaces.
All photos by PILOTENKUECHE
We had a break and the best syrian food in the city. At the “Kulturcafé” we got wonderful drinks to be refreshed for our studio visit. We listened to Tony Franz, an interesting artist with a diversity of mediums and topics. It’s approach leads to an intense workout, which combines facts with free stories, imaginations and inventions. To our surprise his colleagues, who are working in the same space opened their doors and we had the chance to have a look onto the current projects of the team of “whateverworks“. Oliver Seiler and Elisabeth Müller working with an contextuel and conceptual approach and their interests leads them to jails, this hidden part of our society.
That’s all? No, the day was not over and the evening came. So we did, what is usual in this district – going to one of these experimental off-spaces. So we went to the “Bistro 21” (on facebook), which opened an exhibition of Norbert Reissig. His confusing oil paintings were very impressive by the bright light of the space, which was remodeled so lovely. It was a wonderful afternoon, with a lot of insights, history, thoughts and nice talks. We thank everyone for their time! We will be back at some point!, for sure!
Photo by Bistro21
Links
Pögehaus e.V.
Japanisches Haus e.V.
Yu Ohtani
MINKUS Architects
Tony Franz
whateverworks
Bistro 21
Norbert Reissig