Art: Jenny Schlenzka: “People are only free when they play”

How do you feel after a year in these venerable walls?

I feel really, really good! I have to say that I have taken over a really great house and a great team. The prevailing feeling is that I can achieve a lot here in the future.

What has inspired you in the last year?

I really liked all the exhibitions I took on. “Radical Playgrounds” at the Berlin Festival in particular was fascinating and brought us encounters with a different audience.

What will be new from September?

In one sentence: opening the house to a broader, larger audience.

That seems to be the job of all large houses.

For me the topic of play is central. We are currently living in a time in which the fronts are very binary and rigid. Nobody wants to approach others from a contrary position. But playing has to do with movement in the mental sense and with flexibility. In particular, free play, in which the rules are invented and changed again and again, could be a mode that is good for all of us. It is interesting for children and adults.

Here you have rooms of different sizes and moods, where does something take place?

The artist Kerstin Brätsch is installing a permanent venue in the west wing of the ground floor. The second floor will be completely cleared for artists’ studios. Making art is also speculative work without the strict rules of reality. The process is self-propelling, much like a game. So the whole house will be changed by this idea.

Where is the boundary between art and educational offerings?

I don’t make any difference. The separation comes from the classic museum idea from the 19th century. An exhibition that doesn’t communicate itself is uninteresting to me. Incidentally, curators and mediators work in the same team here.

Does the constant expansion of the concept of art serve to create a culture of attention right into museums, even though a large part of the public still longs for readable art on the classic tour?

Artists today work differently because the world has changed. Rirkrit Tiravanija, for example, is a great artist from Thailand who lives in Berlin and New York. His art is based on interaction. It arises with the audience. We’re starting a big exhibition of his work here in September. BAUBAU, our play space for children, is also art!

What do you see as different from other art galleries, such as the Neue Nationalgalerie?

First of all, it is obvious that we do not have our own collection. That’s what really makes the difference. It is a huge responsibility to work with a collection. I experienced that at the MoMA in New York. We are an exhibition house here and can experiment more.

You were a visitor to the Gropius Building from time to time – did you already have the idea that you wanted to work here?

Never! For a long time I didn’t want to leave NY. My interest began with the work of Stephanie Rosenthal, my predecessor. She pushed down doors with a lot of strength and pushed through a new concept that I can now build on.

Was Corona the reason for coming to Berlin?

It was a mix. Corona, your own getting older, the children of primary school age, the getting older of your parents who live in Berlin – and then the professional opportunity. Everything fit.

Daring to change after 20 years sounds brave.

I grew up in Berlin. The mentality here is not foreign to me, neither is German and neither is Berlin. But I have never worked in a German cultural institution and have only spent my adult life in New York City. I find it exciting to have an outside perspective on my own culture.

Did your parents give you a kind of “cultural dowry”?

My parents often went to exhibitions with me, including the Martin Gropius Building, as it was called back then. But more inspiration came from my aunt. She is an art historian and has made freelance films. She often took me to the Venice Biennale.

As a child from Wedding you experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall, how did that feel?

I was a teenager in the early 90s. Suddenly everything was bigger. At first I drove to East Berlin mainly at night. I knew it because we applied for a visa once a year and traveled to the East to visit my family. My parents are very open and interested – “sixty-eights”! They sold us the GDR as the “better Germany”.

What’s worrying you the most here?

The finances! In order to implement an ambitious program in the long term, the question of financial resources always arises.

Feminist positions, gender debate, racism in everyday life – the social process seems to be overheated, and not just at the linguistic level. What are they based on?

“Staying with the Trouble” by Donna Haraway had a big influence on me. If you want to change institutions or include population groups that were previously excluded, then friction arises. These breaks are part of the work – unless you carry on as usual.

What experiences did you have in New York? 20 years in three bullet points, please!

I was involved with change at all three cultural institutions where I worked. At MoMA, I brought performances to the museum together with Klaus Biesenbach, now director of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. It is no longer understood today that there was both ignorance and a complete lack of understanding about collecting this art form. There was already a contemporary program at MoMA PS1, and I installed music performances there with a live program and worked in a very interdisciplinary manner. As director of the Performance Space, I was able to work much more freely. The institution reflects what defines the diverse population of New York City. Very exciting!

Was there any contradiction?

More than enough! During my time at the Performance Space, the Black Lives Matter movement formed and very quickly made it clear that new ways of working were also necessary. Natural aspects of the culture of power first had to be recognized and then changed. This applied, for example, when dealing with trans artists and even more so when working with children, some of whom lived on the streets. They came to rehearsal and you didn’t even know whether they had eaten anything that day.

What motivated you?

I didn’t just want to put together a good program, I wanted to go where the most exciting things were happening.

What did you take from your studies for your new project?

Many approaches from game theory and Schiller’s classic sentence: “People are only free when they play!”