AGIT is a public residency and archiving space which engages with the historical materials from left and social movements to address contemporary questions and present day struggles.
Our work operates across three different areas;
- exploring movement histories and contemporary politics in Berlin and beyond;
- developing international collaborations focused on building left history, culture, and theory;
- experimenting with different technologies to develop ways of building and distributing open access archival collections.
Central to AGIT is a series of funded residencies, which will explore different historical materials to make critical interventions in our present. AGIT is a nascent organisation so each residency will leave something behind to help us shape the space going forward, be that a collection of material, or something else. The residences are open to individuals, groups or collectives involved in political organising, theory, cultural, artistic or technological production.
The space is also used on an ongoing basis by a number of social and labour movement groups, and self-organised education initiatives for meetings and other activities.We are open to people running their own events at Nansenstrasse 2, where we can help resource with space, equipment and time. Drop us an email if you have something you want to run.
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We will be holding an informal launch of AGIT as well as the exhibition opening of our first resident, Hussein Mitha.
Wir Weben! by Hussein Mitha
Where: AGIT, Nansenstrasse 2 (near Reuterplatz)
When: Friday 7th April, 19h (NOT Thursday as suggested in our Newsletter. Sorry for the confusion)
Wir Weben! is a site-specific mural created by Hussein Mitha during AGIT’s first residency. The mural celebrates the multiple, contradictory and varied labour and social movement histories of Berlin and takes its name from Heine’s poem about the Silesian Weavers Revolt of 1844. Using vinyl cutting and decal techniques, Mitha combines vibrant colours and abstract forms, with reproductions of texts and images from archival sources.
A single ‘red thread’ at the centre of the piece weaves together historical movements, from the German Revolution to the solidarity campaigns of the DDR, to squatting and political print production in 1970s West Berlin to contemporary housing movements. Through these methods, Wir Weben! pays homage to the possibility of solidarity, but also playfully acknowledges the fractures and junctions between left movements particularly when it comes to building historical movements around anti-imperialism.
Central to Wir Weben! is the role that archival work has in uncovering and revealing political histories. Alongside the mural there will be a small exhibition of all the different historical material that is referenced in the mural.
