In October 2008, the TESLA-Berlin association organised a workshop in Berlin called Labs for Art and Media. They invited a number of international media labs to come to Berlin to share three days of discussions around how artistic practice is changing today in relation to media, and how art labs, workspaces, production spaces and art institutions can best support artists in pursuing their work. In the context of The Future of the Lab, BALTAN invited Andreas Broeckmann, member of the TESLA curatorial team, to reflect on the outcomes of this workshop and on the experience of TESLA in Berlin from 2005-2007.

CASE STUDY PRESENTATION BY ANDREAS BROECKMANN (DORTMUNDER U – CENTRE FOR ART AND CREATIVITY, DORTMUND, GERMANY)

The idea of the TESLA Media Art Lab in Berlin was, essentially, to create a space where artists could work. We had some funding and a building, and we opened up for residencies (lasting from a few weeks to a year) to work on specific projects which were proposed by the artists directly. TESLA informally looked at the proposals, and then invited the artists. From the residencies, we created the core of our public programme, running four days a week. We were, in retrospect, surprised how much we could do in three years. One of the big projects was a series of symposia and performances with the artist Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag, who is interested in the history of electricity connected with Nikola Tesla, which made it a perfect key project for the TESLA lab. After two and a half years of operations, TESLA had to close down: the funding was pulled and the building was taken away. (more…)