Artistic residency at TATWERK and in Volkspark Hasenheide
NEIGHBORHOOD COMMITEE OF CARE is a cooperation project between TATWERK in Berlin, Milano Mediterranea in Milan and Szendvicsbár in Budapest. In 2025, Neighbourhood Committees will be formed in all three cities, which will meet regularly to discuss their neighbourhood and decide together what kind of artistic project should be implemented there.
In Berlin, the Neighbourhood Committee of Care (NCC) will focus on Volkspark Hasenheide. This means that the NCC is made up of people who are connected to Hasenheide in one way or another and that the NCC will choose an artistic project that deals with the park.
The artist selected is Oozing Gloop, with the research HEIDE.
HEIDE is the title of the research-project — a term that translates as “heath” in English, while also evoking pagan imaginaries.
Pagan belief systems often centre nature as the highest form of power. Thus this research focuses on a Drag Persona: Oozing Gloop will be the Hasenn-Heide of Hasenheide for three weeks in August. As the Rabbit/Hare-Pagan of the park Oozing Gloop will research as much about the nature in the park as possible, especially Edible (but also toxic!) Herbs & Berries, which trees and animals live there. Human interventions into the park, such as toilets, will be considered in continuity with the nature that surrounds it.
Symbols and rituals will be created to translate this knowledge into a mystic record. This will be done with a process called signalisation. In any language, if we remove the vokale, ünlüler, samogłoski, voyelles, vocali or حروف العلة , the remaining letters overlap in one symbol, referred to as a sigil. These sigils will be transferred back to the park via chalk on walkways. People passing who express any kind of curiosity will be invited to their share their knowledge and create their own sigils to scribble on the floor. Paths of the park will turn into a type of text that changes day to day and will be washed away with the rain, only to be written anew just like so many human dramas that happen step by step in the park.
In Queer spaces drag queens act as monuments. They reorganise the space around them. They become figures around which people can shape or express their stories. Oozing Gloop wants to see what drag can do in such a space, as a solitary figure; will it be one that stays lonely or one surrounded by action? Further, nature and parks are inseparable — just as sexuality and humanity are. Yet queer people are consistently accused of being ‘unnatural’, while parks — spaces that are designed, curated, and maintained by humans — are rarely questioned in terms of their ‘naturalness’. That is precisely why they offer a fitting site from which to launch such inquiries. Oozing Gloop feels totally natural as a queer, and she feels totally natural in drag. What will other people feel about it when they see this Drag Persona wandering in the park? Will they understand it immediately or will they have to justify themselves further? How will the body in drag elucidate the park as both a queer & queerphobic space? What kind of results comes from these problematics? Will they be safe?
Can one drag queen with a bag of chalks start a nature cult in the park this summer?
This project was made possible thanks to the financial support of the Culture of Solidarity Fund powered by the European Cultural Foundation.