I aspire a future, where I know my neighbors, where I have always enough people to call and where I know whom to ask for support. I want a society, where we are skilled in asking for help and support, as well as being able to rely on the networks around us. These networks should thrive through care and understanding, thereby fostering thinking in kind ways about others and sharing this kindness.
This network based approach gives me the freedom to share my knowledge and friends, as well as being open to get to know more people – which I could then help with my skills. This active care for the unknown is essential in places where I co-exist, it needs some energy, but then it also creates a common understanding. I don’t have to befriend every one, but I have to have a deep respect for each other, starting from behavior and time, including communication and tasks of care.
You’ll get your space to live, as long as you’re mindful of the space of your co-living beings.
garage complex
more garages -> digital production tools -> try-outs again
immersive diorama
aesthetics
audiostories
around 250 words -> max 2 min long
4 stories
in German
topics to explore:
mindful nudging
“overproduction” of food just because they have the space to do so
one man’s trash is another man’s treasure
afternoon conversation
helping, out of frustration with quality and inner perfectionism
unsolicited advice
It was only when I paused for a moment—the sawdust scent mixing with the crisp, late-summer air—that the realization hit me: For the past few days, I’d been working exclusively outside. Without consciously intending to, I had carved out a small, sun-drenched workspace right in front of the garage doors. Building these raised garden beds is very much easier out here, breathing the fresh air and feeling the gentle warmth of the afternoon sun.
The shift, however, wasn’t born of a sudden desire for nature. It started with Max’s slightly annoyed explanation. He pointed out, with a noticeable edge to his voice, how incredibly loud my hammer blows and sawing echoed and reverberated throughout all the neighboring units. “Every single strike rips us out of concentration,” he’d complained. “It’s driving everyone mad.”
I hadn’t heard it. Completely oblivious to the sonic disturbance I was creating, I felt a wave of mild embarrassment, quickly followed by gratitude for his bluntness. Moving my operation outside was a simple fix.
Now, in the peaceful glow of the lingering late-summer sun, I wouldn’t trade this setup for the echoing concrete cave inside and the others have definitely noticed the change.
This morning, I found a small, striped sun umbrella propped up next to my saw horses. I think it was an older model from Katja’s unit, providing a welcome patch of shade over my plans. It’s a silent, simple affirmation that my move outside was appreciated.
Zukunfts Zentrum für deutsche Einheit und europäische Transformation Halle
They aim to showcase appreciation of lifetime achievements and awareness of the disruptions and upheavals experienced by people in East Germany and Eastern Europe.
my goal
I want to do a speculative project about the solidarity-based East, which takes this idea to its logical conclusion.
-> What means Solidarity to me?
For me, the basis for building solidarity is interaction between people, and therefore spaces and conversations are needed.
The tension between the need for open spaces and safe spaces in an open society is really interesting to me. Since both types of space should be used for community purposes, I asked myself what brings people of different ages together, outside of family activities.
In my view, passive activities that bring people together, such as eating, watching and listening, have low barriers to entry.
The most interesting aspect of living through times of transformation is the handling of necessary compromises.
I also got a lot nudges to firstly write those stories down, before thinking about dioramas or ways of displaying them.
story about living in a solidarity-based East:
The air in Garage Court 12-3 still carried the ghosts of two-stroke oil and material abundance. For decades, this concrete honeycomb on the outskirts of Leipzig had been a cathedral to the Trabi and the Wartburg. Here, under the flickering fluorescent tubes, men and women had spent their Sundays not just repairing cars, but making the scarce abundant, the broken functional. It was a republic of improvisation, where not only skills and resources were shared.
Now, the cars were mostly gone. But the spirit remained.
Thomas (51) slid up the rattling door of Garage 42. The smell that greeted him was different now: a mix of damp clay, warm electronics, and the sweet, yeasty scent of sourdough. His father’s workbench, once a place of utter chaos, filled with timing belts and left over plastics, now held a different kind of engine: a sleek, open-source 3D printer, humming as it extruded a custom part for a broken washing machine.
“Morning, Kommandant,” Jasmin chirped. Jasmin (29), a web developer who’d fled Berlin’s rent crisis, was carefully placing sprouts in the vertical hydroponic unit they’d built from old PVC pipes, mounted where the spare tires once hung.
Thomas grunted, a habit from the old days. He wasn’t a kommandant, but the name had stuck. He was the inheritor of this space, the keeper of its original, hands-on faith. His real inheritance wasn’t the garage itself, but the social circuitry it represented—the unspoken trust, the shared tools, the collective intelligence.
Over time the working rhythm changed, but the sharing ambition still stayed and so many new things arrived at these old garages.
Each garage was no longer a solitary kingdom. A large touchscreen by the entrance displayed the “Hof-Ökonomie.” It was a real-time map of the courtyard’s shared resources. Garage 18 had a professional sewing machine free for booking. Garage 7, still owned by a retired mechanic, offered “Diagnostic Hours.” Garage 42, Thomas’s, had the 3D printer and the hydroponic starter kits.
The true currency wasn’t the Euro, but the working hour credit. But it was more nuanced than simple time. The ledger valued skill. An hour of expert welding by old Herr Schmidt from Garage 5 was worth more credits than an hour of basic labour. The system recognized the value of historical, hard-won competence.
The social glue stayed the same as in the past: passive, low-stakes co-presence. People didn’t come for a “community meeting”. They came to fix a bike, to pick up lettuce, to wait for a print job. And while they were there, leaning against the doorframes, they talked. They solved problems. A young programmer explained blockchain to the retired mechanic, who then suggested a simpler, more elegant physical solution for securing a server rack.
When Jonas joined the garage block, he spends an hour doing heavy, unskilled work—moving compost bins for the communal garden, for that he earns 1 credit. Meanwhile, Herr Schmidt, the retired mechanic, spends an hour fine tuning the delicate calibration of the 3D printer, a skill born of 50 years of mechanical intuition. He earns 3 credits.
Jonas begins to grumble. “His hands are clean. I’m the one sweating. This isn’t fair. An hour is an hour!” He gathers a small group of members whose work is more physical than intellectual. They demand a flat rate. Herr Schmidt and others, like Jasmin whose coding is also highly valued, feel their skills — the hard-won competence —are being devalued.
Thursday, 5:15 PM. Anne-Kathrin (44) no longer enters the yellow-and-blue megastore that dominates the village center. Instead she walks into the “Elbtalkonsum,” the converted, former state-run store, where the old neon sign still glows, beneath it a new placard greats its customers: “Co-op Members: Your crate is waiting. So is your puzzle.”
She scans her code, and her weekly vegetable and staple-food crate slides automatically into her locker and like that the shopping is done. What she came for, is actually something else.
In the lounge area, where people once queues for the meat counter, Mark (29) and Hedi (71) are already hunched over the massive puzzle. It doesn’t show an idyllic landscape, but a live satellite map of the region’s agricultural land. Each piece represents a field, a forest, a solar cooperative. “You’re late,” Hedi grins, “Mark was about to sneak you the piece with the new community wind turbine.” “It’s on Farmer Neumann’s land,” Mark adds, “he finally let himself be convinced.”
They talk, fit pieces, drink water from the old “Sinalco” glasses everyone uses here. This isn’t protest; it’s lived sovereignty. When Anne-Kathrin leaves, the puzzle is almost complete. Next week, there will be a new one. This is her weekly act of quietly constructing a different world.
next up
story creating methods??
writing stories + starting with small pieces from the dioramas
