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While the large, light-flooded kitchen room shows relatively little damage in addition to its room qualities, its adjoining rooms, such as the cold room, are contaminated with extremely high levels of pollutants.
We call it FREIGANG
What is feasible?
There is a disused prison in Bremen that has been lying fallow for more than 20 years and is slowly becoming moldy. The buildings on the site are not only - for the most part - in a desolate condition, but unfortunately also partly contaminated. The outside areas, and therefore most of the site, have long since been reclaimed by nature. The site is now unused, but rather idyllic, between the outskirts of the city and a popular local recreation area. And this is how the demand and the political mandate came about to check whether this site would be suitable in principle for holding festivals, as there is an obvious need for such areas in Bremen. Because it is not our way of working to examine things one-dimensionally and for a single function, we agreed with our client right from the start that we would not “only” examine the use of the site for festivals, but also for extended forms of subsequent cultural use.
We did this extensively and with great commitment and also invited Bremen’s cultural professionals and institutions to not only express their needs, but also to think about the potential future of the site in a participatory process, which was also requested by the administration.
We have poured the results of our work into a 362-page publication that shows numerous ways of dealing with the site and the difficulties it presents. We came to the clear conclusion that a cultural reuse of the site would not only be POSSIBLE, but also MEANINGFUL. If only for the reason that the site is one of the few areas still in municipal ownership and it is of course much more sustainable to make investments in the future under these circumstances than to sink taxpayers’ money into questionable public-private partnerships, as is already the case in Bremen in one place or another.
Because we do not work for the drawer, we decided right at the beginning […] to make the results of the study […] available to the interested public.
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Book cover of the study
Because we do not work for the drawer, we decided right at the beginning of the process - also in consultation and together with the administration - to publish the results of the study in an edited book that is easy to read and to make it available to all participants in the participatory process as well as the interested public. Unfortunately, the administration has broken its word in this respect, to an extent that we have never seen before and which could at least give rise to the idea of arbitrariness on the part of the authorities. The planned publication was first unnecessarily dragged out by the administration and was then to be completely blocked in the end. For a long time, the reason given for this was the cost of printing the publication, whereupon we offered (several times!) to bear the costs ourselves - because, unlike the Bremen administration, we always stand by what we announce, even if it costs us something. At the request of the press, the study - which had been ready for over a year - was then suddenly not to be published at all, with a completely new justification…
Two or three press articles later, it finally appeared secretly in the far corner of the administration website without any further announcement. Just embarrassing, but oh well. However, we won’t allow ourselves and our work to be administered away, which is why you can now find the entire study here - at least as a PDF,
Sorry Bremen, we’re really sorry for you!
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In the relaxed prison, much more emphasis was placed on communal spaces and activities. Elements such as carpeted floors, wood-paneled ceilings and views of nature framed by pink curtains stand in stark contrast to the concrete corridors of the closed prison. The single cells here are individualized in a wide variety of wallpaper variations and in a tour report at the end of the 1970s, it was noted that a handicraft room was set up in the East House on the initiative of the inmates.
We will not allow our work to be administered away!