by Aoife Donnellan // July 3, 2024
‘Radical Playgrounds: From Competition to Collaboration’ opened this spring at Gropius Bau, showcasing interactive installation works that question the idea of playing by the rules. Curated by Joanna Warsza and Benjamin Foerster-Baldenius, the temporary play space in the carpark of Gropius Bau features works from Florentina Holzinger, Massimo Furlan, Joar Nango and Vitjitua Ndjiharine, among others. The project has changed over the course of the exhibition through visitor interaction, collaborative workshops and various interventions. Encouraging creative modifications by its attendees, ‘Radical Playgrounds’ experiments with collective learning, embodied knowledge and ideas of fairness.
We spoke with curator Joanna Warsza about the place of radical play in museum spaces, the collaborative nature of the exhibition program and the upcoming reenactment of the 1974 East Germany vs. West Germany World Cup Match by Massimo Furlan with Tanja Walther-Ahrens.
Yvan Pesstalozzi: ‘Lozziwurm’ at ‘Radical Playgrounds’ Ein Kunstparcours am Gropius Bau // Photo by Camille Blake
Aoife Donnellan: ‘Radical Playgrounds’ is inspired by architect Lina Bo Bardi’s famous quote that every museum deserves a playground. What role does play have in museum spaces?
Joanna Warsza: Sometimes friends coming to Berlin ask me which contemporary art museum they can go to with kids on the weekend and it is hard to answer; hardly any. It is still hard to find a multidirectional and multigenerational space, where everyone, big and small, can feel connected. ‘Radical Playgrounds’ was created as a conceptual playground, where critical art is at once playable and culturally readable. We use the basic playground vocabulary—be it a swing, a sandbox, or a slide—but all of those objects are also conceptual, complex and often activist-driven artworks.
I believe that play is a political category, which allows us to come together with and despite our differences. When we play we take distance from ourselves, from our egos and sorrows, and then can come back together again. Especially in these political times, where many feel silenced, frozen, unable to move, play can offer hope, resilience and reconsideration of knowledge. I believe that museums can generally learn a lot from the concept of play and playgrounds in order to experience art with all senses, in a less intimidating way, mixing high and low, serious and funny, political and social, breaking the culturally masculine and intimidating codes they were founded on. Museums and playgrounds are both testing-grounds of how societies re-invent and re-imagine themselves. Learning from each other about how to let go can be inspiring, as is shown by ‘The Playground Project,’ Gabriela Burkhalter’s exhibition on the history of playgrounds that sits in the middle of it all. Later, some of it will find a home in the permanent playground inside Gropius Bau. We are its “Vorspiel,” a parasitic playground.
Joar Nango at ‘Radical Playgrounds’ Ein Kunstparcours am Gropius Bau // Photo by Camille Blake
AD: This project lives at the intersection of a sculpture park, a playground, an extension to the museum and a temporary funfair, creating a physical space for audiences to connect with each other through play. Can you talk briefly about some of the program highlights and how the imaginative actions of visitors have altered the program and space?
JW: People often ask me what is radical in these playgrounds? On the one hand, a swing is a just swing, you are welcome to use it. You do not need to read any curatorial description to understand or enjoy it. But it is also a swing that wants to change the world, through the art and activism of Joar Nango, Sámi architect and artist, and his idea of how to re-organize knowledge based on his concept of “indigenuity”—a combination of the words “ingenuity” and “indigeneity.” He is working with what is already there in the most respectful manner, no drop of oil, no centimeter was added. This and other playable objects come back to the latin origin of the term radical: radix, the root, being rooted, standing for something. Kids look for “treasures” in a sandbox-cum-excavation site in an installation of School of Mutants, which opened the ground where the ethnographic museum once stood, creating a decolonial sandpit, mutating meanings, digging for truth, getting your hands dirty in the sand, restituting debris, objects and meanings. And some of these kids will take those fundamental questions, of how the museums need to reinvent themselves in the future, further.
Another important aspect of ‘Radical Playgrounds’ is that it was only 80% ready at the opening. It was somewhat inspired by the idea of an “Abenteuerspielplatz” (Adventure playground), where you can construct and extend play landscapes. ‘Radical Playgrounds’ has been growing through a series of open workshops and walk-throughs in these 11 weeks, with many contributors from the circle of raumlabor, who did the architecture of the exhibition. People like to contribute, extend and add their two cents. We all know that participation often looks better in pictures than in real life. But when it happens in a good way, it is, for all of us humans, a small triumph of collaboration over competition.
The School of Mutants at ‘Radical Playgrounds’ Ein Kunstparcours am Gropius Bau // Photo by Camille Blake
AD: ‘Radical Playgrounds’ also interrogates the limits of free play, asking who gets to play and what is fair. How has the project facilitated this engagement with the ethics of play?
JW: We tend and want to think of play as a form of inclusion, fun and fair exchange. And yet most of us probably remember the moments when we were not part of the game, when we felt left out. Céline Condorelli’s piece ‘Play for Today’ is all about that. She has a long-term engagement with the topics of play, work and leisure, but also with that of exclusion. She merged several fields: football with badminton, a running track, a pétanque and a volleyball court. Somewhere along the way one notices dates: 1920, 1921, 1926, 1952, 1956 and 1977. Those mark the years in which women were allowed to compete in international tournaments. Some decisions, such as the one regarding female football, were later revoked, only to be re-allowed again in 1971. The current European Football Championship in Germany, with all the hype around it, is in fact a male (and heterosexual) championship, while there is an on-going discussion about the competition of trans athletes and the visibility of women’s football. Condorelli’s installation shows us that the history of those who find reasons why others can’t play is as long as the history of the games themselves. We also have some works in the exhibition that differentiate between games, which have defined winners and losers, and free play, which is about the act of playing more than about its results, it is about engaging with each other.
Céline Condorelli at ‘Radical Playgrounds’ Ein Kunstparcours am Gropius Bau // Photo by Camille Blake
AD: Next weekend ‘Radical Playgrounds’ will host a re-enactment of the 1974 East Germany vs. West Germany World Cup Match by Massimo Furlan with Tanja Walther-Ahrens. How does this performance interact with the overall themes of the project?
JW: It is a two-person reenactment of the historic 1974 World Cup game between East Germany and West Germany that took place in Hamburg and unexpectedly ended with the score 1-0. It is a poetic and beautiful piece on how, through art, dreams can come true. It will be re-enacted by the queer female football player and activist Tanja Walther-Ahrens (as Jürgen Sparwasser) and artist Massimo Furlan (as Sepp Maier). They will run and act for 90 minutes as those players, but also as themselves. Furlan says about himself that he is a failed football player who made it through art, mimicking, for years, the movements of Platini, Boniek or Maradona. The audience can choose to listen to one or the other of the original radio commentaries of those parallel realities, Eastern and Western. The stage for the game will not be a stadium, but a street, Niederkirchnerstraße, just in front of Gropius Bau, where the Berlin Wall once stood. The game represented a confrontation between force and weakness, arrogance and underestimation. Jürgen Sparwasser scored the winning goal at the end of the match. It was the only direct duel between both German teams to ever take place, a pure Cold War stand-off. Since the qualifications of both teams were already decided, what was at stake was a political encounter between two countries that had only recently officially recognized each other. On this occasion, we shift the focus to gender bias and the concepts of inclusion, both in sport and in life. The core stays the same. You already know the story? Come and listen to it again. It’s open and free to all.
Massimo Furlan: ‘A reenactment of the 1974 East Germany-West Germany World cup match’ // Photo by Sandra Singh
Exhibition Info
Gropius Bau
Group Show: ‘Radical Playgrounds’
Exhibition: Apr. 27–July 14, 2024
Performance: July 7 & 8; 8pm
berlinerfestspiele.de
Niederkirchnerstraße 7, 10963 Berlin, click here for map
