Four years ago I attended the rePublica conference on digital culture in Berlin, which was an inspiring but somewhat overwhelming experience: I was about to quit my job in the Netherlands and move to Berlin, without a well-defined plan but full of excitement. One of the talks that I loved most at the event was the story of the Hacker Bus in Brazil, where a group of hackers travelled around Brazil to help people develop technological solutions to their needs, because they believed that bringing people together physically still has the strongest impact.
As I settled in Berlin, learned some German and started a new job as Community Manager with Open Knowledge International, this idea of direct participation and physical community building was still in the back of my mind. So when my artist friend Alfredo Ciannameo suggested to start up a project together, combining his knowledge in fields such as media art, sound art and artscience with my interest in community building, it seemed a logical next step to experiment further with. We decided to open an art & community space called SPEKTRUM, and were lucky to find the perfect location for it: a former bakery in a monumental building, with a 5-metre high ceiling, in the north of Neukölln, Berlin. The only problem was that it had been massively neglected in the last 30 years and had to be completely renovated (of course this was also the reason that it was cheap).
We managed to convince the owner of our concept for the space, and signed a rent contract. Most people thought we were crazy: we did not have experience in running an art space, we did not have much budget, had never done such renovation work and could not speak perfect German either. Even some of the builders we talked with to plan the renovation were shocked when they saw the space and backed out. But once we had taken that first hurdle and got the rent contract, we just kept progressing one step at a time, learning everything along the way simply by doing.
I’m sure it is probably also better that we did not know exactly what we got ourselves into when we started. We had to navigate our way through 10 months of intense renovation, respecting all the latest German building regulations, make the space accessible barrier-free and obtain the necessary licenses and permissions through the various Berlin administrative offices. We did not make a plan and followed it: our plan kept changing along the way, and we asked endless questions to our architect and to the builders we worked with (the ones that were crazy enough to stay). We had to be flexible, we had to work very hard, and we had to keep our final vision in mind in between the dust and chaos.
From the beginning, we started experimenting with how direct physical interaction could shape the future of the space. During the renovation Alfredo ran a light installation: every night for about two months we invited people that passed by to walk through the space, talked to them about our plans, listened to their stories and invited them to sign up for our mailing list. Before we organised any event, we already had some support from people in our neighbourhood, as well as over 300 people on our mailing list. We also started connecting with like-minded people in the city and joined networks such as transmediale reSource, to learn from people who had faced similar problems and find future collaborations.
When we were close to opening our art space, we invited everyone we knew at the time for a series of round tables. We asked people to share what they were working on, what they are interested in, and what they would like to do with the space. From these first nights, a number of topics of shared interest emerged and the first communities Smell Lab and Live Cinema Lab were born. In the spirit of how we did everything while setting up SPEKTRUM, we continued our learning by doing approach with these communities: apart from a basic structure with two community supporters taking on additional organisational work to run the group, the direction that the groups could go into was totally open. We did start one specific community from the beginning called SPEKTRUM ReConnect: a gathering of all community members of SPEKTRUM, where groups can share what they are working on, but also discuss how best to run communities and learn from each other’s experiences, or start up collaborations between different groups.
In June 2015 we finally opened the doors of SPEKTRUM | art science community: a space focused on creating new links between art, science and technology. We started organising regular performance nights, events and exhibitions, but also concentrated on building up our community program with monthly meetups for the different groups, where the focus was on discussing a topic (such as olfactory art or motion technology) from different viewpoints. We wanted SPEKTRUM to be an open space where everyone would feel welcome, and where experimentation and collaborative learning was encouraged.
As we continued building up our program and the communities, our initial vision of becoming a physical meeting point for different realities in the city slowly became a reality. More communities were formed, existing communities found a home in SPEKTRUM, and lots of new connections were made. People from different backgrounds (such as artists, scientists, hackers, designers and activists) came together, and starting discussing about how they could combine their skills to create new artistic outputs. Like the Hacker Bus, we experienced how direct physical participation is a strong driver to connect people. After eight months, several communities showed their work during the first community showcase exhibition.
Based on the success of the community program, we managed to secure funding from the Berlin Senate Chancellery — Cultural Affairs to start up a small makerlab in SPEKTRUM. This enables our communities to not only meet up and discuss, but also experiment with producing artworks by using digital fabrication techniques such as 3D printing and lasercutting. Our MadeByUs community of art-makers started to set up the lab from scratch in the summer of 2016. As the name suggests, this group made the lab themselves by building the machines together from open source kits, which was not easy but also a lot of fun, and helped to strengthen the group.
As we continue developing SPEKTRUM, we started to use the space more and more for workshops as a way to make certain technologies and skills accessible to a wider audience outside of the world of institutional education. We noticed an especially large demand in workshops focused on women & technology, after running series such as Electroacoustic sound art production for women and Wir Brauchen Women Vjs // VJ Women Wanted!. When I asked Verónica Mota, who taught the sound art workshop, about her experiences, she told me the following:
Women have a strong interest in technology but do not always feel comfortable learning in mixed groups. Many of my participants expressed the need of a platform where technology can be taught from a female perspective. They enjoyed having a learning space where there are no power structures or strong knowledge dominance but an atmosphere of inclusiveness.
Once participants got a first sense of „You can do it. Look at me. I did it too“ they became self-confident and very motivated to learn more about a certain technology. After the workshop I received honest thank yous and very kind messages expressing how important it was for them to access a platform only for women. They encouraged me to continue teaching and also informed me that this was just the beginning, with a big happy smile.
Lastly, women like to connect with each other. The responsibility of the mentor, in my opinion, should also be to bring women together so they can remain connected, share new skills, workshops, ideas, questions and tips.
After running the space for nearly two years now, we can look back on an intense program of over 350 events, 150 community meetups, 30 workshops, 10 exhibitions and 2 festivals, where we focused on combining different fields such as audiovisual and media art, sound art, artscience, hacking, bio art, open data, dance & body art, social activism and experimental film. At the moment we have 12 active communities, and we are excited to see what will be produced in the makerlab in the coming years.
Next month the rePublica conference takes place in Berlin again: this time I will participate with a lighting talk on SPEKTRUM: Community building in art, science and technology, together with Michael Ang of the MadeByUs community. We will talk about the creative work that has been happening in our communities, as well as the process of community building itself. It would be awesome to meet some of you there, so do pass by if you are at the event! Also, if you are in Berlin, and would like to organise an event or workshop at SPEKTRUM, feel free to get in touch with me — we are always looking for new input to the space, and especially female input :)
It’s hard to somehow wrap all of this up in a conclusion. But I hope that others can be inspired to start up their own crazy projects, with the confidence that it is possible to learn a lot simply by doing: if you are willing to work hard toward something you strongly believe in, and remain flexible enough to adapt your plans to reality, more is possible than you could imagine. And networks such as Open Heroines, which allow you to connect and learn from others, are an extremely valuable resource in such a process.
