FREIRAUM –
a collaborative conception and work venue for the arts
Owing to the support lent by TANZPAKT-Stadt-Land-Bund, FREIRAUM, a collaborative conception and work venue for the arts, conceived as an “artist-run space”, will become a reality. “FREIRAUM”, initiated as well as conducted by the Ben J. Riepe Kompanie, develops on its site at Engelbertstraße 13 and will provide a free-of-charge space for artists and their co-operating partners from the fields of administration, project management, dramaturgy as well as for technical staff. Placing several office workplaces as well as a studio, which also allows for smaller presentations or showings, at the disposal of local freelance artists, it facilitates collaborative works in the research and conception phases and the start into rehearsals held together. It is our aim to offer a safe co-working space for the arts independently of a concrete production in the works, permitting unencumbered encounters between the genres and the different work areas through a flat hierarchy. In the spirit of artist empowerment, FREIRAUM wants to become a space of opportunity primarily for local artists in order to challenge virulent questions of art and society together: How can we transcend genre boundaries and imagine new interdisciplinary concepts, how can we develop a combined power and voice? How can an effect of the arts towards society be thought and reached? Our collaborators are not only an active part of FREIRAUM for an intense handling and discussion of these questions: Rather, all of the offerings provided at FREIRAUM are designed to mirror all protagonists’ knowledge, ideas and visions. Everyone is invited to share their respective “superpower” so the diverse skills of all involved may cross-pollinate, paving the way for important knowledge to spread throughout the independent scene.
While the organisation and arrangements of procedures, both in everyday as well as in special structures, will be taken care of by a project manager, the Ben J. Riepe team itself will be incorporated into the collaborative processes and discussions happening within FREIRAUM while also participating equally in them. Additionally, the company furnishes its knowledge on contemporary art production to interested outside artists. Together with the FREIRAUM artists and affiliated professionals, the Ben J. Riepe team devises the FREIRAUM event calendar, geared towards demands and requirements and mostly on short notice, scheduling workshops on grant and support application, dramaturgical and artistic production content, project management, PR and contract law as well as discussions and thematic lunches on virulent cultural political issues.
Pressemitteilung 18 mar 2019