Katharina Rohde

´89 Pupils View reflects on the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago. In a three days workshop more than 100 learners from the Linden High School in Johannesburg designed various bricks for „the Wall“, re- interpreted the Brandenburger Gate with African fabrics, questioned what was typical for East, and typical for West Germany, and demonstrated the re- united country. In collaboration with the South African Filmmaker Maciek Kwiecinski, some of the learners produced a Video Love Story between a woman in East Berlin, and a man in West Berlin, their despaired longing for one another, and the final unification after the Fall of the Wall.

´89 Pupils View is realized as part of the Project Cracking Walls by the Goethe Institute Johannesburg. Opening 28th Nov. 2009 at the Goethe Institute Johannesburg. Exhibition 29th Nov.- 4th Dec.

A boxing ring is installed on Polly Street, corner Bree Street in the Inner City of Johannesburg. Two street traders are play fighting with each other, equipped with Super Sized Boxing gloves, a whole boxers outfit, a ringmaster, the hot chick that announces the next round etc. The ring is made of elastic ribbons, its size gets smaller and smaller with each round. The winner of this play fight, gets the chance to box against the ultimate box champion— the BOX MAN!

With Lindy Scott & Joanna Voysey for the Art & Activism Workshop, as part  of the Pavement Economies/ THE HAPPY HAWKER project. Friendly supported by the Goethe Institute Johannesburg.

Street traders from various african nations play broken telephone in Johannesburg. The game starts with the sentence I want to buy metric paper (a product that street traders generally do not sell!). The sentence is passed on from one trader to the next, on its way the languages spoken change. The words that travel, and transform constantly are written down on the pavement in front of each trader´s stall. The game ends with the phrase street trading is a very hard business.

With Buhle Siwani for the Art & Activism Workshop, as part  of the Pavement Economies/ THE HAPPY HAWKER project. Friendly supported by the Goethe Institute Johannesburg.

You must be aware of, and comply with, signs markings or other devices indicating restricted and prohibited trading areas (no. 17, Street trading by- laws, City of Johannesburg)

a Case of Space
Indications: use this marvelous limited offer of FREE SPACE for any occasion:
need space to sell, but have been restricted? Use this PORTABLE SPACE to sell from! You won´t be occupying any restricted space, because you brought along your own!

With Ansie Greyling, Lucia Duncan, Camilla Pontiggia for the Art & Activism Workshop, as part  of the Pavement Economies/ THE HAPPY HAWKER project. Friendly supported by the Goethe Institute Johannesburg.

In a one month interdisciplinary workshop 9 art students work in the streets of Downtown Johannesburg. In corporation with street traders different forms of action & intervention are developed that culminate in various performative moments. The various interventions comment on spatial regulations, developing marketing strategies for street trading, mapping their potentials, and constructing innovative objects for street trading.

the workshop on Art & Activism is part of the project Pavement Economies/ THE HAPPY HAWKER. With the friendly support of the Goethe Institute Johannesburg & the School of Arts of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

working & walking in the streets of Johannesburg´s inner city for some time now, i have quite often experienced people asking me  “how i feel”. my observations on my feelings while walking the streets of the inner city of johannesburg reflect a somewhat different perception of the streets than to what people would expect…

a sensory experiment
how do you feel walking in the streets of johannesburg´ s inner city? do you feel scared, happy, curious, anxious, relaxed…? do you feel different at every passing street corner? how do you feel about the smells that you encounter? how do you react to the various sounds, & their different levels of intensity? do you feel like running away? do you feel like wanting to stay?

9 art students are asked to do emotional mapping, while walking the streets of the inner city. what they observe, discover, experience is orchestrated in a 9 min performance reflecting upon their feelings.

9 students, 9 experiences, 9 minutes. PERFORMANCE: 3rd october 2009 at 15:00, Troye/ Pritchard Street.

is part of the project Pavement Economies/ THE HAPPY HAWKER. With the friendly support of the goethe institute johannesburg.

“Polish women want light dresses, because they dance a lot at polish weddings”

Along Karl- Marx Street in Berlin Neukölln one can find many shops for bridal wear. The customers are from all over the world: Germans, Arabic’s, Russians, Egypt’s, Chinese, Turks… The shop owners know exactly about their clients ideas for wedding dresses, and adapt their assortment regarding to their desires. Women from the Balkan Countries want to feel „Like a Sissy“, and therefore buy sumptuously dresses with a lot of embroidery. Customers from the arabic countries want to „glitter and shine“, and wear high- closed dresses. While russian clients like to wear short and sexy, and turkish women like feminine and elegant, german women favor simple and moving wedding outfits.

Wedding International shows in a Fashion Performance of bridal wear, and their country- specific characteristics, how different weddings can be, and what role the origin respectively plays.

Wedding International is part of the Project LOCAL HEROES. Funded by LSK Neukölln.

“The only important thing about design is how it relates to people.” (Victor Papanek 1975 in „Design for the real world.“)
In Johannesburg an approximate number of 10.000 informal traders work within the boundaries of the Inner City, showing very creative skills in using materials and in construction. Learning from their spontaneous ideas, smallsmartshops collaborates with street vendors translating informal design strategies into innovative approaches that relate to the traders needs.

smallsmartshops aims to respond to the necessity of creating flexible spaces for street trading.

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In a world wide research, various names for the well known “polypropylene bags” have been discovered. According to those , affiliations and interpretations become clear that get even more obvious through the stories behind the bags. The names´ collection is an ongoing project. The KULTUR / BEUTEL is an implement by and for travelers, and provides space for ”collecting cultures”.

The KULTUR / BEUTEL is for sale in the Musenstube, Tellstr. 2 and in the Gallery R31, Reuterstr.31 in Berlin Neukölln.

Design: Miriam Engel & Katharina Rohde

With the advent of the global economic recession at least a third of the billboards in Johannesburg are unused. Due to shrinking advertising budgets, the supply of billboards has outstripped demand. Some billboards have been left blank while others promote films that have been off circuit for months.

In a two days Billboard Art Workshop the idea was to interpret the empty space provided in opposition to its initial meaning. Taking the opportunity Lost Footage feat. Pavement Economies played with the idea of promoting urban issues of the City of Johannesburg that are not usually acknowledged and often not accessed by the public. 

In cooperation with machfeld, Marie Snauwaert & urbanworks

Pavement Economies/ THE HAPPY HAWKER investigates spatial, social, and economical strategies of street vendors in Johannesburg, and aims to uncover their potentials. How do traders use and appropriate (public) space? How do they set up social networks in order to support each other? How do they arrange trading areas? How do they access materials and goods? How long does it take them to wrap up their businesses and run away from the police? Observing street traders creative skills, learning from them, and taking them further the project develops various artistically interventions that make existing potentials obvious.

The aim of the Pavement Economies/ THE HAPPY HAWKER Project is to challenge the question of whether consciously or subconsciously informal strategies contain an Act of Resistance e.g. against spatial regulations, predominant neoliberal economic concepts or existing social divide, and could therefore in this context challenge the Activist side of Art.

funded by Goethe Institute Johannesburg

Walk the Walls comments life behind walls in the city of Johannesburg. The wall as a metaphor for the border, for an architectural construction that equally creates exclusivity and exclusion depending on what side of the wall one is living. In Johannesburg it is a very clear border between Black & White; mainly white people live behind the wall, included and hidden, while the black people mainly act in front of the walls and therefore gets excluded. The wall as a symbol of security creates a space of paranoia. Behind the walls one will not know what is happening in front of the wall and therefore looses control. The public realm gets an empty space that only for some hours is used by black workers, and otherwise stays unclear and unprotected.

Walk the walls is a performance piece where walls are being walked on, and therefore borders are being crossed from a bird´s view.

Walk the Walls is part of (city) fragments.

In a three days workshop with Fashion and Arts Students from Johannesburg, the idea was to design an Urban Warrior outfit that reflects the living and working situation of women in Downtown Johannesburg. For the Warrior outfit aprons have been deconstructed and reconnected, referring to the traders downtown, that use aprons in order to protect their bodies from getting dirty. But also looking back to the history of aprons, that are quite influential on symbolism of femininity.

with busiwe, carly, elias, eunis, funeka, jabulile, mokotgo, nokuthula, sameera, tinyiko

Urban Warrior is part of the Outreach Workshop of the Artist in Residency Programme of the Bag Factory.

Thanx 2  Sew Africa, The University of Johannesburg, The University of the Witwatersrand

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(city) fragments shows fragments, different perceptions and various impressions of the city of Johannesburg. What does it mean as a woman to live and work in the male dominated area of Downtown Johannesburg? How does it feel to live behind walls in the suburbs of the city and how does the wall function as a border between “black & white”? Which creative strategies do hawkers develop in the streets of Downtown in order to make a living? How much money does the average Johannesburger invest to secure their houses and how many Townshiphouses could one build if all walls would be deconstructed? How does the transnational space in Johannesburg look like and what does Home & Belonging mean in this regard?

(city) fragments develops as part of a three month residency stay at the Fordsburg Artist Studio THE BAG FACTORY in Johannesburg. The exhibition Fragments shows the results of the visiting artists. (city) fragments by Katharina Rohde reflects observations, comments on- spot- notations, questions conditions and intervenes with minimal changes. (city) fragments is an installation as temporal as the city. Ready to be added onto and to be taken down again tomorrow.

Exhibtion in the Bag Factory in Johannesburg from 03.-11.12.2008

TEK-STIL Project researches existing potentials of Berlin based young and innovative Fashion Designers and Berlin based women with migrant background that are experienced in Fashion Design, and have knowledge in the Fashion Industry generally. The Project develops ideas on how to connect those potentials, and to activate them for the upgrading of the local economical environment, which in this case is Berlin Kreuzberg and Neukölln. In Workshops and cooperations FashionEXPERTS are working together on topics like “Veiling“, “African Winter“, “Origami“, “Urban Safari“ etc. On the development of TEK-STIL products. The objects combine cultural peculiarities, and make the attempt to approximate a common identity through fashion.

funded by the German Cultural Foundation in the Fonds “Work in Future”

Exhibition from 11.01.- 03.03.2008 in the Saalbau Gallery, Berlin- Neukölln