Zu Verschenken

Zu Verschenken (to give) is an ongoing project that explores the phenomena of a specific informal economy in the streets of Berlin operating slightly outside the margins of the law and beyond capitalistc exchange.

What Berliners don’t need anymore, they don’t throw it away, but leave it in the streets. Whatever one finds in the streets, can be taken home. It is a strange unspoken agreement, everybody knows it, most accept it and many take part in this social practice.

There is no exchange transaction between giver and taker. It is a transfer that works in two independent actions: the giver wants to get rid of an object but still recognizes some value in it, places the object on the street, often with a “zu verschenken” sign, on a relatively visible place. The taker could be anyone walking past by the object. Not actively looking for it, when the taker sees the object recognizes it as a finding and chooses to pick it up and carry it home.

The status of these objects is some kind of limbo: between ownerships, potentially useful but rotting outdoors, displayed for an unconditional appropriation, but illegal.

As if they were price tags they have little notes attached to them, instead, this is not what they are. They say “to give”, “to take away”, “disinfected on…”, “Dear neighbor, it looks like noone is interested in your things, it would be nice if you could take care of them yourself. Thank you!” In contrast to price tags, they are not the names for the abstract phenomena of economic value, but they evaluate the use value in a communicative exchange between giver and taker.

The city becomes a depot / storage of free objects that appear, disappear, and eventually reappear in a constantly changing constellation. The impossible collection of these temporary free elements constitutes an infinite inventory and a new mapping of the city, that can only be grasped by fragments and never completed.

Watercolor on paper, 2014-2016