Discuvry is a project between art, architecture and social experimental research. It goes over building a simple object, but include living the work and making daily actions.
The idea of realize an illegal house in the empty field of Cuvrystrasse came at first to Yuki, he wanted to realize a big project and I followed him, because it was very interesting for me seeing from inside if a anarchic multicultural village works, how it develops spontaneously in the heart of a european capital, how this architecture without architects lives and grows.
Yuki realized a stop-motion video of the building process and the first exhibition of Discuvry was the collective “Open Monement”, at the Kunstraum Bethanien in Kreuzberg. In the summer 2013 Yuki showed the project at the MOCA, Hiroshima City Musuem of Contemporary Art, for the exhibition “Site: Places of Memories, Space with Potential”.
We have continued the project untill now, documenting it day by day, doing pictures and observing how the life is going on FreeCuvry.
I never imagined personally this project would have lasted so long. Today is already one year and four months.
We saw lot of changes to happen on the field, people arriving and going away. We listened lot of stories, funny stories, cruel stories, surreal stories and too real stories.
We learned a lot.
We learned to give the right importance to the things, to appreciate the simplicity. We learned that another way to live is possibly, or better, other 100 ways to live are possible.
Of course we have our vision about life. We work hard everyday and we try to don’t ask, if we can do it by ourselves. Yuki had two other big project, one in Göttingen and one in Berlin, for Hebbel am Ufer, and one exhibition at REH-transformer gallery, in Berlin. I worked in a architect office in Berlin, collaborating with ISSS-Research&Architecture.
Not all the people who live in FreeCuvry have our same life-style, some of them work, some are artists, some musicians, some collect bottles, some ask for money in the street, some simply don’t do anything.
I don’t agree with many of the life-styles in FreeCuvry, but I am nobody to impose my life vision to anybody except to myself.
And you? Are you so sure you can do it?