Berlin’s cultural power was built on cheap space, unfinished buildings and artists willing to live precariously. The city is wealthier now, but can the people who created its value still afford to remain?
For this episode of The Art Bystander Podcast, Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar speaks with Philipp Solf, entrepreneur, collector and one of the people behind Wilhelm Hallen and HALLEN 07, and Dr Anne Vieth, Head of the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection.
Why does Solf resist calling HALLEN an art fair? What happens when contemporary art turns an industrial building into a desirable address? And what does a company such as Mercedes-Benz owe the culture from which it draws prestige?
Vieth takes us inside SEEING FORMS, the collection’s exhibition at HALLEN 07, and speaks about using art to unsettle habits within a corporation. Solf is equally candid about art’s power to position property within a city, bringing the conversation to gentrification, public funding and who gains when culture makes an address valuable. This is a conversation about how Berlin might become wealthier without driving out the artists who made it culturally necessary.
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