This hand on heart project is based on cooperation with Paula Kaniewska, a Polish artist based in Berlin. With our title „Polenmarkt is back“ we refer specifically to the Polenmarkt not far from Potsdamer Platz, in the Wende years 1989/1990. At its peak, the market was visited by up to 40,000 Poles daily. As a provisional location in the former no-man’s land, it is an example of the refiguration of the once divided city, but also of the German-Polish border region.

Nowadays, Polish markets still exist, but have been removed from the center of the metropolis to the periphery. German customers, who want to buy cheaper cigarettes or food usually have to go to the Polish side of the border. In a playful way, we want to bring the Polish market back to Berlin as a pop art store. It will offer goods from the border market, reinterpreted and reworked through the material we collect during our research. In doing so, we pursue three goals: (a) by researching Polish markets, we assume that the concept of multiple spatialities can be applied to investigate spatial differences, variations and divergences in the reconfiguration of German-Polish border spaces (b) through the interplay of socio-spatial ethnographic investigation and artistic installation, we want to further reflect on how sociological methodology and arts-based research can mutually inspire each other to investigate spatial materialism (c) through the artistic interventions in Berlin and a selected Polish market , we want to expand science communication for a translocal audience on both sides of the border

In the first part of the project we had our own pop-up store at the Polenmarkt in Hohenwutzen in Summer 2023. (Ad Fotos here from Hohenwutzen).

We gathered the material for the exhibition during an art-research project conducted at the Polenmarkt in Hohenwutzen. At a pop-up residency at the bazaar in summer 2023, we interviewed the sellers and the buyers, and took photos of objects that customers bought at the market. The stories we heard touched on the issues of cultural closeness and distance, costs of living, global production chain, racism, counterfeit goods and shopping tourism. Together with the documentation of the objects we will analyse and retell the story of the place through these data collections.

In November 2023 we had a Workshop about How to think About Borders through Art at the CRC. The aim of the workshop was to reflect on the relationship between sociological methodology and artistic practice through the concept of multiple spatialities. The theory addresses spatial differences and variations that result from different societal problems and lead to various forms of refiguration.

We’ll include the outcome of the workshop in the third part of the project in November 2024. We envisage the final effect as an installation, referring to the space of the market and the goods available there. We would like to locate it in the area of Potsdamer Platz to connect the historical Polenmarkt from the 90s to the contemporary ones, and ask how these two spaces relate to each other. The installation will work as a standalone, but individual objects will be activated through a link to the aforementioned audiovisual collages.