NO ONE CAN WAKE UP
- Make us aware how we are all depended on systems
By Lasse Lau and Kenneth A. Balfelt

Part of the Exhibition "Berlin North" at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 31.01.2004 - 12.04.2004

We have been interested in two specific self-organized projects that take on a social responsibility in the Berliner society.

One is the association Fusion that deals with youth work, and daily act in spaces where the social system of the troubled Neukölln gave up. It is an intercultural youth activity club based on carnival and visual art. In order to create jobs for their youngsters they want to create their own markets. One idea is to run a youth hotel. It can offer education an jobs for youngsters that make an extra effort.

For Hamburger Bahnhof we made a presentation of this visionary idea in order to lay pressure on the local and national politician to support the project. The presentation concisted of a poster and a video.

The other is Gesamtkunstwerk Wagendorf Lohmühle that have created a self-organized small community trailer park where they live together on squatted public land. From here they have created a neighborhood-based public space in a city where there are few such spaces left. As part of their public openness and interest to interact, they want to publish a book about their 13 years existence.

For Hamburger Bahnhof we made a campaign to find a publisher for the book. We presented the book and a prototype of it. A video with information about Lohmühle and their motivation for making the book accompanied the poster.

The building Fusion wants to rent to run a youth hostel	Street of Gesamtkunstwerk Wagendorf Lohmühle

The two self-organized projects have in common that they use art for pragmatic solutions of sociality. It is a tool for them, and for us, to communicate and solve problems in society.

In French, there is a phrase, comportement induit, which means your behavior is related to the structure you're in. In German social-politics there is a term called "socialraumsorientierung" which means to direct your social efforts towards the social space you work in as social worker or politician. These two terms are parallel to our pratice as artists. The two self-organised projects we work together with at Hamburger Bahnhof, Fusion e.V. and Gesamtkunstwerk Wagendorf Lohmühle, also work with art as a way of forming social space.

What we have done is to approach these two self-organising groups with the question "what can we use Hamburger Bahnhof for?". How can we as a project group utilise an art institution with 30,000 visitors in the exhibition period? Together we saw opportunities in this situation.

In order to both communicate these alternative ways of using art as a facilitator for social change and making the art institution gain a place in society for social change, we decided to make "campaigns" for these two needs. For each need we made a poster and a short video that presents the ideas and expresses directly what is wanted!

The role of the art institution is then to act as a window towards what I would call "implemented artistic and alternative ideas" and offer, by our wish, to be a platform for dialogue. In this case dialogue between a between a visionary and transgressive youth project and the politicians that needs to allow it to rent one of its buildings to create focused jobs in a neighborhood that lacks future and between a community with a book idea and a publisher interested in alternative ways of living and using art!

For further information about the artist Lasse Lau: E-mail: info@lasselau.dk or www.lasselau.dk