2021-2023. Parasitic Intervention in the public space. Berlin & Chicago.
In the context of RAISIN Exhibition of 6018 North and the Chicago Architecture Biennial and the exhibition “REclaim the unknown at Kunstraum Bethanien. Collaboration with Alexander Sacharow.
CONTEXT: Public space is an important prerequisite for social coexistence in the city.A large part of this urban public space is made up of parking areas. Indeed, they are now a battleground of the future city. They are the border: between private and public, between staying and leaving, between the mobility of yesterday and the more climate-friendly alternatives of tomorrow. Parking spaces are increasingly subject to gentrification and rent-seeking, just like every other available space in the city. But they are also niches for emancipatory practices in the city. Parasite Parking occupies these niches and explores their subversive potential.
After a first phase in Chicago in 2021, Parasite Parking moved to Berlin in 2023. The Parasite is an intervention in the public space that uses a multifunctional platform camouflaged as a parking space. The platform can adapt to its paved environment or easily transform to create space for various uses: as a living space, a stage, a café or simply into a conventional parking space. Parasite Parking is an uninvited guest on the spaces that should be available to all of us, and yet are currently occupied only by the steel bodies of modernity.
Parasite Parking reclaims public space by inhabiting and activating it, 24/7. It invited the passers-by to lay the foundations for a post-car city imaginary by hosting different artistic, political and daily-life events around this issue. The Parasite also sought to nestle in places where the struggle for urban space is raging, and to meet the actors engaged in these battles. For example, he took up residence in the huge Karstadt parking lot at Hermannplatz (Berlin, Neukölln), a department store threatened with being turned into a luxury real estate complex by its new buyer. In Chicago, he met with the Chicago Tenant Movement or was invited to stay a night at the squat “Camp Ponderosa” in the parking lot of an organic supermarket. The Parasite sniffs, observes and then invites itself into the interstices of these spaces. It offers a platform for raising awareness of the discourses, practices and players proposing a different kind of urbanism, one that is more solidar, more humane and more ecological.
Further Information : Parasite-Parking.net
Press:
The Parliament: Parasite Parking: A guerrilla art project in Berlin reclaims parking space. 10/2023. UK
DBZ: Potenziale auf 11m2, Parasite Parking. 10/2023. GER.
New Internationalist: Parasite Parking, 09/2023. UK.
99% Urban: A Public Intervention, 06/2023. GER.
die taz: Appropriation of Berlin from below: Still parking or already occupying? 05/2023. GER.
tagesspiegel: Guerrilla action on wheels: Berlin artists temporarily occupy parking lots. 05/2023. GER.
New City Art: „A Public Disturbance: A Review of Parasite Parking“. 10/2021.
The Urban Activist: „Parking spaces, the battleground of the future city“. 10/2021. USA.
