Artists and urban artwashing in 2020s Berlin: co-optation, gentrification, and resistance

Source abstract

In recent years, real estate companies in Berlin (Germany) have often sponsored short-term art events at the sites of their future developments, prior to or during their construction. This phenomenon, herein referred to as urban artwashing, is used in their PR campaigns to help revert their vilified image as a driver of the local housing crisis while also revamping the image of the land to instigate pioneer gentrification. Because this type of artwashing entails the instrumentalization and cooptation of artists to achieve land speculation, tensions have intensified within artists’ networks, who have different attitudes towards the phenomenon. While some collaborate with developers, others form resistance movements to protest gentrification and speculation. By revisiting the concepts of (sub)cultural capital and distinction, this article aims to analyze artists as key heterogenous players in contextualized pioneer gentrification processes. It presents the case study of the developer Pandion and the counteractive artist collective Kunstblock & beyond in Berlin, conducted through ethnography. It illustrates the complexity of the contemporary game of neoliberal urban culture, posing interim artwashing and gentrification as frequent tools in the commercialization of the city, ultimately leading to the further precarization of the arts and the exploitation of labor for profit.