Tim Voss, one of my old mates from the Göttingen political scene, now an expert at the Hamburg Art Academy, invited the D.I.V.O. Institute and I to the Subvision Art Festival in Hamburg in September of 2009. The event “Off Spaces” took place in the controversial Hafen-City area, where 30 participants from throughout the world were each given three shipping containers on a dusty promontory to use as exhibition venue. Even before the event, there was criticism that this festival, which was intended to up-value the Hafen City location, was showered with subsidies so that all other free cultural initiatives in Hamburg were left empty-handed. For my part I found it very commendable that the participating artists should, for once, be decently remunerated. Instead of devoting itself to establishing a network of initiatives, the ensuing discussion was hijacked by proponents of worn-out boorish Marxist platitudes. During the debates I vociferously worked myself up about the pointless, envy-fueled gentrification rhetoric I was hearing. My long experience as a squatter has taught me that urban restructuring is usually an opportunity for the creation of new open spaces and that lifelong clutching to one single location is not worthwhile. Moreover, no one had been displaced in the Hafen City except perhaps a few rats. The fact that the well-to-do who squandered fortunes on luxury lofts would concern themselves with this remote ghetto, instead of badgering other neighborhoods, was truly a reason to rejoice.
After hosting a myriad of workshops, exhibitions and concerts at the space,I decided to concentrate my activities in Prague where I opend up „the solution“ in 2014.