Cats from Dubai Illustration © barbara caveng

A true story from Oderstraße in Neukölln, as it happened to me on 3.4.2023

I doubted the world, I doubted myself and above all my hearing. Was I suffering from an acoustic illusion caused by hypacusis, a sensorineural hearing loss?

Was my auditory perception in my Ieft ear no longer sufficient to understand the words in the context intended by the sender? Or in other words, had I gained the freedom to hear stories that had not been told that way?

I searched the other person's face for an interpretation of what had been said as I had heard it: "My cats from Dubai." Tentatively, almost bashfully, I ventured a repetition of the last two words, "...from.... Dubai...."

The day had held a lot of pain for me until these late afternoon hours, and so it seemed possible that my psyche had turned to other realities, obviously ones in which no Cheshire cats, but at least cats from Dubai were strolling across the tin roofs. Their existence was now confirmed to me by my chance acquaintance: "Yes," she added to my muttering, "just last week I picked up four cats from Dubai at the airport"!

In the reflection of her pupils, I saw the four cats flying over the Turkish-Syrian earthquake zone with a glowing eyes and splayed limbs. To land at Tegel - cats and other unusual flying animals have to fly into the airport, which is closed to normal air traffic - they ruffled their hair and lifted their humps by body contraction, initiating the braking process by extending their claws and digging into the ground on landing to come to an abrupt stop.

"Maybe you can ride my cats around town on the clothes horse sometime?"

Wow.... It took me some time to create the image in my mind of ambling through Neuköllln with cats on a rolling clothes horse instead of STREETWARE.
Would the animals cling to the clotheslines or hang like wet rags from two plastic strings or, hooking their tails, swing along to the rhythm of the cobblestones?

I preferred not to commit myself at this point, but to weigh the request carefully, and so I said goodbye - this, however, happily with the realisation that reality and phantasmorgia describe only two different perspectives of perception.

on the occasion of the awarding of the 2nd Innovation Prize to STREETWARE saved item
By Stefanie Duncker on October 20,, 22 at the Kulturzentrum Pumpe, Berlin

LUMPENSAMMLEREI, WASCHSALON, TEXTILE FORENSIK, HAUPTWÄSCHE, FILIALEN, PROGRAMME, STÄRKESTOP

The starting point of the project are discarded clothes on the streets of Berlin. STREETWARE, directed by barbara caveng, understands the found objects as branches for textiles and equally for stories of local and global entanglement. Saved item - the rescued piece of fashion and clothing in this project stands for abundance and deprivation at the same time; but it also stands for quasi unread stories connected to these textiles. Which of the modern rags will be included in a new collection is therefore decided by the collectors: Is there something interesting in it or not? In their own shop, the garments are processed, made into a brand with logo patches, commercial bluff that is given away and sustainable use all in one. But this is only one part of the extremely comprehensive overall project: In the middle of Corona time, a 24-hour performance starts on a huge garment dump behind glass, branches of shops are also created in the district library, the collection is presented highly professionally with many amateurs on Tempelhofer Feld as a cat walk, numerous laundry stands on wheels form a kind of laundry sculpture in the park, homeless people advise the actors as they walk through 'the big flat' of the city, and Ugandan designers* and start-ups join in the discussion at a conference on culture and politics in the context of sustainability.

The makers of STREETWARE seem to follow every thread they find and develop their own action from it within the project. People from all contexts and from very different professions contribute with their knowledge of the cycles of textiles and with their ability to shape the STREETWARE collection as fashion, but also as a way of thinking. It is about resources of knowledge, material and visionary phantasy to think things further and make them visible.

The project is unique in its diversity. It is outstanding in terms of translating social, cultural and economic contexts into an artistic expression. STREETWARE - Saved item proves how branched and how connected society and unknown stories about clothing and textiles are. Artistically translated and with the participation of very different people, it exposes the use of resources using the example of clothing. It does so in a fun and integrative way that is also highly political.

Kunstasyl under the team leadership of barbara caveng has followed the ever-changing questions within the project without regard for its own resources. This is a dilemma in cultural work: one cannot avoid the questions that always arise anew and differently in the project. Kunstasyl does not evade, that is particularly impressive. We hope there is strength again or still for future projects.

We would like to support that a little.

The jury awards the second "Innovation Prize Socioculture" on the theme of sustainability with great fascination to the project "STREETWARE - Saved item" by the

Kunstasyl e.V. - with its Team leadership barbara caveng.

What a hot New Year's Eve it must have been, when the the lovers stripped off their clothes: Botton down! Salute sisterhood! Even in the gutter of Berlin's Leykestraße, a pair of pink panties with the feminist statement above the buttocks: 'Periods are cool' clings to the starched chest of a tuxedo shirt from the Ibbenbüren menswear factory Jassö Atelier. Whether the gallant in the smoking shirt got the cuffs when he read in the light of the street lamp the female avowal to bleeding: 'Periods are cool . And messy. And painful. And great.'

Love is in the gutter - So the year 22 begins politically romantic and if Annett Louison had not already given herself musically to the gutter in 2019, we would reach her at the latest there with the words:

I celebrate the feast before I fall
I celebrate the feast before I fall
We are the dream couple from the gutter
And tonight you take me as your wife
We're somehow unbeatable
and only tomorrow
will be grey oh, oh
Oh oh
will be grey oh, oh
when we are grey oh, oh
listen to the song ....

The Kulturpolitische Gesellschaft e.V. publishes in its magazine volume 175 'Kulturwandel zur Nachhaltigkeit' the essay 'Vom Fallen und vom Aufheben' by barbara caveng which was presented as a speech at the 'congress at the clothes heap'
Buy the journal for 8.5 €.

„Mit STREETWARE saved item macht eine Künstler:innengruppe auf textile Überproduktion, die Wegwerfgesellschaft und Ausbeutung aufmerksam.“, schreibt Eva Apraku in einem Gespräch mit barbara caveng in dre Edition Nachhaltigkeit 2022 des TIP Berlin. Das Portaitfoto von barbara caveng machte Anja Grabert .