Our Dates

A school class commissioned Reut Shemesh to create a work that would offer them and others a sense of security in the face of war, terror and racism around the world, while also helping them grow closer as a group. The choreographer is creating "Wild Kids" (working title), a dance film in which the young people are closely involved as patrons, dancers and dialogue partners.

What happens when children assert their right to leisure, play, and freedom of expression? And what happens when they use artistic and performative means and strategies to seek out spaces of their own in their city, claim them, and make them their own? Taking these questions as a starting point, choreographer and performer Antje Velsinger has developed a choreographic audio walk for the New Patrons of Schwelm.

In the Amberg neighborhood of Am Bergsteig, New Patrons are working towards a positive image of their neighborhood and new forms of community and solidarity for the future. For them, Julian Warner is developing “Kampf am Berg”, a spectacle featuring two wrestling shows in cooperation with local clubs and initiatives. Warner uses wrestling as a stage to make the contradictions and forces at work in the neighborhood visible and bring them into sharper focus. The event will take place in a specially constructed circus tent.

The Bergsteig quarter in Amberg loves sport—from football, mixed martial arts, boxing, and Greco-Roman wrestling to rhythmic gymnastics, people here are actively involved in local clubs and initiatives. “Kampf am Berg” brings this passion together with that of local athletes, musicians, and professional wrestlers. The people of Bergsteig themselves become hosts and authors of their own stories.

In the Amberg neighborhood of Am Bergsteig, New Patrons are working towards a positive image of their neighborhood and new forms of community and solidarity for the future. For them, Julian Warner is developing “Kampf am Berg”, a spectacle featuring two wrestling shows in cooperation with local clubs and initiatives. Warner uses wrestling as a stage to make the contradictions and forces at work in the neighborhood visible and bring them into sharper focus. The event will take place in a specially constructed circus tent.

“Why does the integration of art into society, which is otherwise so difficult and almost always doomed to failure, seem to work here, of all places? And how has the New Patrons bridged the gap between the elitist and navel-gazing art world on the one hand and the everyday life of so-called normal people, on the other?” 

This issue #59 of Spike Art Magazine looks at the non-heroic ways of doing things differently that can open our minds and make the world better. With an excellent text by Dominikus Müller about Neue Auftraggeber. Thanks to Spike for allowing us to publish this text online. Read.

Paneldiscussion in German with

Prof. Dr. Dr. Hans-Joachim Gießmann, Executive Director of the Berghof Foundation
Dr. Nicole Rieber, Project Manager in the field of Digital Peace Education at the Berghof Foundation
Prof. Dr. Angela Mickley emer., Conflict Management, Peace Education and Ecology in the Department of Social and Educational Sciences at the FH Potsdam, Head of Continuing Education Mediation at the FHP in cooperation with Konflikthaus e.V., Research/Development on Crisis Intervention with Social Focus, Dealing with the Past, Reconciliation. Co-Speaker of the Platform Civil Conflict Management
Mechthild von Schwerin, mediator, landscape planner, artist
Moderation: Alexander Koch, Director of Neue Auftraggeber

07.05.19, 7 pm, doors open from 6 pm, Ticket: 5 Euro / 3 Euro reduced fee

Paneldiscussion in German 

with Dr. Mark Terkessidis (freelance author and migration researcher), Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Merkel (Director of the Department of Democracy and Democratisation at the Social Science Research Center, Berlin), Dr. Juliane Stückrad (Büro für Angewandte Kulturforschung, Eisenach/ Lehrstuhl für Volkskundeat Friedrich Schiller University, Jena) and Alexander Koch (Director Gesellschaft der Neuen Auftraggeber, Berlin).

Moderation: Simone Miller (cultural editor at Deutschlandfunk Kultur).

12.03.19, 7 p.m., admission from 6 p.m., ticket: 5 euros / 3 euros concessions

Further information and tickets

3rd date: 07.05.19

With the kind support of the Senate Department for Culture and Europe and the Federal Agency for Civic Education.

Berlin's youngest street newspaper has published its 6th issue. Our mediator Gerrit Gohlke talked to author Dominikus Müller and explained who The new Patrons are. A very nice interview! By buying an issue you are also doing good! The complete proceeds stay with the sellers.

More info

Discourse
In German 

With Susanne Burmester, Denis Bury, Holger Friese, Gerrit Gohlke, Kathrin Jentjens, Alexander Koch and Lena Ziese
Presented by Antje Stahl

1st event: 19.02.19, 19:00 , Ticket: 5 Euro

Around 500 projects have already been commissioned in Europe. For this opening evening, we will discuss the motivations behind them, the topics that top people's lists, and how artists come up with answers to the challenges on-site. How do the projects work? How does one become a patron? Who pays for it? And how might art be able to assert itself in the midst of life as a contribution to democratic cohesion? On this first of six evenings in the “Whatever You Want!” event series in the Grüner Salon, mediators for the New Patrons report on civic projects with international artists.

2nd…

Berlin's Best is an award by KREATIV KULTUR BERLIN, the advisory centre for cultural funding and creative industries in Berlin. Awards are given to actors who offer solutions, networks that move things forward or companies that create added value for others - and the Gesellschaft der Neuen Auftraggeber is there as a best practice example. In an interview with Berlin's Best, Alexander Koch, Gerrit Gohlke and Karola Matschke reveal more about the New Patrons and the idea behind them.

Read here

On 18.11.2018, Alexander Koch will give a lecture at the Athens Biennale as co-founder of the New Clients Movement in Germany. He will present particularly exciting projects from all over Europe and put them up for debate.

More info (in English)

From 26 to 27 October 2018, the artistic management team of the Berlin Bärenzwinger is organising a symposium in Neukölln. This event aims to bring together artistic, academic and urban policy positions to discuss the past, present and future use, function and significance of this place together. Alexander Koch is invited as a guest and will present Die Neuen Auftraggeber as a structural model for a contemporary culture on behalf of the citizens.

Further info and participation

"Tobias Asmuth retells a recent episode from the history of the small village of Blessey in the French province, how the collaboration with the world-renowned Swiss artist Rémy Zaugg changed the village and the self-confidence of its inhabitants. It is an outstanding example of the lasting effects that the NEUE AUFTRAGGEBER, which have also been funded in Germany by the Federal Cultural Foundation since spring 2017, can have." from the editorial of the magazine #31 of the Federal Cultural Foundation.

Read the article here