In FreeCuvry this spring a new important neighbor arrived, his name is Clement.

I say important because he has a special feature: he loves the garbage.

It is not a case that he took the Tommaso’s place in the camp, and the day when he came, cleaning the space from the rest of Tommaso’s stuff, he told us, “There is no garbage, everything can be useful”.

At first his way can seem similar to Tommaso’s way, but he has another style. He doesn’t collect every kind of stuff and he has not messy problem, he just try to save most things possible from throwing away.

Some days ago he had big discussion with some polish guys because he brought the gipsies’ garbage near the library. Clement is a really peaceful person, he is not able to fight neither to defend himself. You must be really stupid and coward to start a fight with a man like him.

There are some stupid and coward people in FreeCuvry.

But I want to thank Clement, because some days ago he brought in the camp a lot of tree branches, taken from the street. At first I asked myself what we should have done with those. But Yuki started to use the leaves to make fertilizer, like he learned in Kenya, and he gave me a branch without bark. It was very beautiful, white, smooth and delicate. So I started to take off all the bark from the branches, before they became dry and it would be not possible anymore.

I still don’t know what I will do with it, if furnitures or sculptures, I think every piece will be something different, because every piece is unique.

Anyway thanks to Clement to have given me this beautiful material.

We would like to thanks all the people who came, helped and enjoyed our work at the Japan Syndrome festival, a special thanks to the HAU staff, Annemie, Jana and Benny, to our friends who have come and help us with the cooking, Kanta, Sasha and Sandy. Thursday was the last evening and we were very happy to have so much people around us, I cooked lentil soup, two big pots and it was everything eaten 🙂 it was very nice having our neighbors from FreeCuvry as well.

Changing topic….

The gipsy street nowadays

I would to like to write today about a component of FreeCuvry a little bit problematic: the gipsies.

I say problematic for one main reason, because they are a really close community and since they have been in Cuvry a real and clear dialog has been almost impossible, also because they speak just bulgarian or romenian and a little part of them spanish. Anyway, the language would be not a insuperable problem if a person wanted really communicate.

They arrived in Cuvry the first time this winter, they were just a little family and they build two little houses. But during the winter they had bid discussion with the Poles, mainly for some thefts inside the camps, so during the winter there was the “gipsy war”, and their houses were destroyed more times.

In spring they came back, this time more numerous and stronger, and more conscientious and prudent, they spoke with the habitants and said they would have not stolen inside the camp and behaved good. So they started to build their house, at first one, then two, then five, then in just two weeks they built 15 houses. They completely destroyed the Pagoda, the construction for common uses near the beach, to steal all the material for building their houses. It’s very difficult to speak with them and explain that FreeCuvry is not a gipsy camp, there must be a balance and they can not build everywhere without speaking with the neighbors. They are very fast to build, and they always use the excuse of the children for their need of more and more space, more and more houses. Now a day in FreeCuvry there are about 50 houses (I say “about” because almost everyday there is a new construction) and 20 of them are gipsies’ houses.

We made a reunion to speak all together about this topic, we invited the gipsies to partecipate…there was nobody of them.

I asked to the Bulgarians to not build a house in the Pagoda place, because we wanted to build it again…the day after there was already a construction.

I don’t know how will be, continuing in this way FreeCuvry will be really a gipsy camp. We can not stop them, they are very cohesive and they live in this way since generations. But maybe we can create a canal to communicate with them and working together.

Maybe.

Little by little.

The Pagoda ruins in March

The Pagoda ruins in March

The gipsies started to build in March

A view of the gipsy street behind the big teepee

It’s long time I have not written news. Lot of things happened and lot are still happening. The camp is changing day by day,  but in a way it is always the same.

During these day there is a lot of attention about the free field in Cuvry Straße, in the last weeks some important Berlin newspaper made big articles about the situation of the camp, and it was not good advertisement, not at all.  The main  topic and argumentation was describing FreeCuvry as the new slum of Kreuzberg, the sign of a dangerous beginning for Berlin, the beginning of a out-of-controll urbanization.

Or maybe it’s just started the marketing process that will bring till the building of these 250 luxury apartments for just hip rich people. And which better way than create such a bad image of Cuvry using medias and newspapers, maybe passing some bag of money just under the desk of some journalists.

“Die Slum von Kreuzberg: Das ist nicht Bombay, das ist Berlin”

So they wrote.

And what can we answer? It is true. FreeCuvry has the aspect of a slum, maybe it is, but of course it’s very easy to write that it’s just a mountain of garbage lived by people who spend their day just  drinking and taking drug. It’s very easy to spend just half an hour to take some pictures and pretend to now how the life in Cuvry is going.

What is not easy is to open the eyes and realize that the world is changing and what happens in city like Bombay, or Nairobi, or other cities in Africa, Asia or South America is regarding not just a limited area around there but all the world, included Europe and Berlin.

I don’t pretend to know how the world is going, and I don’t want to say if urban events like FreeCuvry are more or less right, neither justifying them.

What I want to do is write my point of view, and I’m sure it has much more value than what someone who only spent either one hour or one day in Cuvry may have to say.

This is because my eyes are watching from inside for over a year.

So please just give me the possibility to bring you a little bit closer to the reality in FreeCuvry.

It’s clear to everybody that the main reason of the origin of places like FreeCuvry is that the majority of the people can not anymore pay a rent for a house, and the price of the rent is madly increasing in Berlin for the gentrification.

It’s also true that the majority of the people who live in FreeCuvry have  no job and live just collecting bottles, playing or asking for money in the street. But when I watch them and I go to work every morning, doing my fucking internship for 3€ a hour, I ask myself where this idea of happiness, beside an image of a nice apartment, a fix shitty job that give you an illusion of economic stability, comes from. I mean, are you sure this is the way to be happy? And are you sure this is your way to be happy or the society put it inside your brain to convince you it’s the best one?

There is a lot of ways to live, I just think people need to take a look around before give hasty judgments.

Another topic.

The garbage in Cuvry…

The first time when Yuki and me came to FreeCuvry there was a mountain of garbage near the entrance of Schlesisches Straße, it was so much that we couldn’t explain how the habitants managed to create such a big mess. When the spring arrived and the snow was definitely gone ( last winter was really long, snowing until half april!) the habitants of Cuvry started to cleaning the camp and around their houses, putting all the garbage over the mountain, that grew and grew till get huge. I saw also lot of people from outside throwing stuff on the mountain. I remember, I had an argument with one polish guy for that, I couldn’t understand how they made so much garbage, and every kind of different stuff, from furnitures to clothes.

Now, after one year, I know it.

The garbage in FreeCuvry is not just the garbage of its habitants because you can be sure the people in Cuvry make much less garbage in their house than all the other people who live in normal apartments. This garbage comes mainly from the summer camping, cause in summer people come in Cuvry, put their tents and stay for the beautiful season, and after they go away, leaving all their shitty stuff there, and every summer it’s the same story.

Let’s take Tommaso as an example: he collected a huge quantity of stuff for all the summer, around our house and in the place where he should have built his house (thing that he’s never done), then when the winter arrived he just moved, without saying or bringing with him anything. So Lukas and other people from Cuvry had to clean Tommaso mess. It needed more than two weeks of work and two trucks to bring aways all that stuff.

So people come, make shit and go away. And the shit stays in FreeCuvry.

This why the garbage.

And this is just a little gaze on the real FreeCuvry.

I continue to say, if you want and if you can just come to take a closer look.

I saw so many journalists coming, moving in the camp like it was a war camp and in a moment somebody could attempt on their life…funny image of wimp and stupid people who have no idea what FreeCuvry is. There is nothing to be afraid.

The only thing you need to be safe here is respect, if you respect the people, the place and yourself you are always welcome in FreeCuvry.

I will talk today about our house in the beginning of this autumn.

Last summer we were not in Berlin for a while, so we had to find somebody to leave the house to, because in FreeCuvry you can not leave your home empty otherwise it’s very probable that in a very short time it will be squatted/destroyed/burned/ransacked/all-you-can-imagine-it-is-possible/etc…

So we thought long who could be the right person to guard our home, and of course live there.

That spring one man came to FreeCuvry, he walked barefoot, drinking wine from crystal glass and courting beautiful girls. This man was Tommaso.

Tommaso is the most elegant man in FreeCuvry, his bohemian italian charm makes him a real latin lover. He visited us since he arrived in the camp and when he knew we had to move during the summer, he told us, “I will care about your house while you are not here”.

We were little bit in doubt, not because he is not a good person, he is honest and kind, but he has a special feature – like every character in FreeCuvry – that makes him totally unique: he collects every kind of stuff from the street.

You will think it’s not so special, just you should have seen his space in FreeCuvry. Every cm is full of stuff, and when I say “every-kind-of-stuff” I mean you can find a tomato over a toothbrush in a woman slip.

This was the only reason because we were not sure to leave him the house all the summer, but in the end he seemed the less-worst person, better finding your home full of stuff than not finding it at all.

And the summer went away.

When we came back to Cuvry Straße the house was still there…….just you needed time to find it under the mountain of things.

We needed more than one week to put all that stuff in Tommaso’s place and make the house free again, and you really can not image what we saw, the most weird combinations of things I have ever seen in my life, stuff everywhere, even under the soil!

But our home is still there with just some little war wound.

Tommaso grazie.

Tommaso ありがとう.

Today I want to speak about my favorite neighbor in FreeCuvry.

He is Adam.

In the beginning, just arrived in Cuvry, we started to build near the entrance of the river side, beside the long concrete wall and floor, rest of the basement of a previous building, but after three weeks of working some guys who make graffiti came and “very kindly” told us to build our house somewhere else because, if we had built there, they would have destroyed…so, without try to discuss with them (anyway it’s always useless talk with this kind of people), we have destroyed the structure we had built until then and we moved all our materials under the big chestnut tree, there we started to build our home, it’s there that it is still today, and it was there that we started our friendship with Adam.

He lived in one the houses in the center of the area, in the big Polish community. He has visited us since the beginning, watching us working everyday, seeing our house growing day by day. Every day, before going to work (collecting bottles around Berlin), he stopped by us just to say “good job” and asking for a cigaret. The majority of the time he was totally drunk…like the majority of the people who were living in FreeCuvry that time…
Little by little we noted a changing in him, he was drinking less and we were able to make with him more normal conversations. And when the winter was gone, in a day of April, he came to us with a tent and he told us he would have lived beside our house.

From that day he is our best neighbor. He built his wood house this autumn and, although sometime he is too drunk, he is one of the most honest men I’ve ever met. He asks us almost everyday for cigarettes and tobacco, but then he brings us something to eat, he cares and controls always our house, because FreeCuvry is a open area and everybody has to care about the safety.

For this Adam is the best neighbor you can have.