Not too long ago, I was asked to por­trait the “Places Where We Dream” in Ber­lin for the VW x Elec­tron­ica exhib­i­tion. As a little fol­low up I was again sent to cover the broad sub­ject of all those Ber­lin gentri­fic­a­tion issues from the per­spect­ive of the local art scene.

There’s been a cer­tain trend show­ing. Estab­lished gal­lery own­ers and artists alike are slowly mov­ing from the former hot spot Berlin-Mitte to rel­at­ively close, but seem­ingly far away neigh­bor­hoods. We’re not talk­ing about young cre­at­ives head­ing to the pop­u­lar Friedrich­shain–Kreuzberg-Neukölln tri­angle (though, of course, there’s a lot of that too). Instead, the insti­tu­tions are stay­ing cent­ral, but south of where they used to be, espe­cially form­ing clusters at Koch­straße (Check­point Charlie) and on Pots­damer Straße.

If you’ve passed the Tagesspiegel build­ing, this one’s now occu­pied by many tem­por­ary and per­man­ent exhib­i­tions, fancy gal­ler­ies and stores. Out­side of the build­ing, though, you’ll find Turk­ish Mar­kets, shady night time activ­it­ies and no more of that Mitte glam­our that once spoke for the set­tling of art in a cer­tain area.

Of course this has some­thing to do with the high rising prices of rents in Mitte and other posh areas, and yet, it seems as if the new clusters have not been chosen remotely but for good reas­ons: to avoid com­pet­i­tion and to revert to a cer­tain degree of indi­vidu­al­ity. Those new cre­at­ive spaces are usu­ally found in stark con­trast to their sur­round­ing, which I find inter­est­ing and excit­ing. It makes us take a step into the future and won­der: when will gentri­fic­a­tion (which is both a good and bad thing) arrive in those newly chosen dis­tricts? Has the art scene found an unspoken new ter­rit­ory that will sub­sti­tute the usual areas, or will it simply com­ple­ment already exist­ing entities?

Gentri­fic­a­tion in Kreuzberg — Eis, Yoga, Fam­il­ies. It didn’t always look like this.

Aes­thet­ics of Ber­lin Mitte, the former art hot spot.

From Mitte to Schöne­berg — an aban­doned gal­lery in Auguststraße

Esther Schip­pers new loc­a­tion is an wonde­ful albeit not very remark­able build­ing on Schöne­ber­ger Ufer.

Galer­ies are hid­den on Pots­damer Straße, their signs hid­den in the door­way entrances

If it weren’t for the neon sign, you wouldn’t know this place was Sassa Trülsch’s new gallery

The former Tagesspiegel build­ing, now used as cre­at­ive outlet

Pots­damer Straße, bet­ter known for shady nights and casino royal.

The new clusters stay close the the big insti­tu­tions such as the Neue Nationalgalerie.

Con­trasts on Koch­straße: galer­ies next to supermarkets.