ACB ARTS CLUB Berlin

Das sagt die Location:

ARTS CLUB BERLIN at VEREIN BERLINER KÜNSTLER The increasing mobility of cultural producers opens up new perspectives as much as it challenges the possibility of a shared positioning; a challenge that the VBK meets with the model of the ARTS CLUB BERLIN. Envisioned as a forum for communication, the Arts Club creates an open informal meeting point for international and local cultural producers. Through regular club meetings, lectures and discussions, the club promotes interdisciplinary, intergenerational and cultural exchange. The ARTS CLUB BERLIN is a place of hospitality and understanding between individuals with differing life and work experiences. In addition to establishing solidarity between local cultural producers, another major concern is to provide a point of orientation in the city’s art scene for those who are new to Berlin. Being embedded in the institutional context of the VBK, the ARTS CLUB BERLIN benefits from the professional, social and administrative infrastructure of the association and its members. At the same time it seeks institutional partnerships and project-based cooperation with international exchange and scholarship programmes, the cultural sections of embassies and art institutions based in Berlin. The public discourse programme, launched in autumn 2012, is the starting point for a series of discursive events that investigate contemporary forms of artistic production. With public events and different types of institutional cooperation, the ARTS CLUB BERLIN is an informal platform of artistic exchange that makes a valuable contribution to the understanding and the solidarity amongst artists and cultural producers. public discourse program The public discourse programme is a key element of the ARTS CLUB BERLIN, committed to investigating recent developments, concepts and forms of practice in discourses of contemporary art. At the invitation of the VBK curators, artists and scientists are asked to organize a discursive programme that is internationally oriented yet at the same time retains a focus on the local context of Berlin. The programme has a particular focus on different forms of artistic practices and their conditions of production. What is artistic practice today and what are its contexts? Taking this question as a point of departure, the public discourse programme seeks to contextualise contemporary concepts of artistic practice within political, social and economic settings in open lectures and discussions with international artists, curators and representatives of non-artistic fields. This interdisciplinary encounter hopes to engender an open, non-hierarchical space within which artistic and scientific notions of expertise are given equal attention. Consequently, a discursive programme that aims to map new cultural terrain supports the inquiry into contemporary contexts of artistic practice. The Verein Berliner Künstler (VBK), founded in 1841 is the oldest artists association and one of the most long-standing institutions of its kind in Germany. 2012 the association initiated the ARTS CLUB BERLIN. Taking into account the changed conditions of artistic practice today, the Arts Club seeks active cooperation with cultural producers and institutions from different contexts. Situated in the premises of the historic urban villa at Schöneberger Ufer 57 in Berlin Tiergarten-Mitte, the VBK serves as a discursive platform for local and international artists and cultural producers. The VBK is an association managed by artists dedicated to the presentation of contemporary art, to fostering international and intergenerational exchange and to investigating the social role of art and the conditions of its production. The association has provided an open space for critical discussion, exchange and the presentation of different forms of artistic practice for more than 170 years. The fact that the VBK is artist-run is key to it providing a space in which cultural producers can actively participate and develop own projects. To preserve and further develop this open space for action is a major concern of the association.