Alabama hall, ultrasound, Puerto Giesing: every generation has its own celebration area. Temporary. Because in Munich the space for subculture was and is limited. Temporary use, a word that is not easy on the tongue, but traditionally stands for explosive and, above all, legendary creative experiments in the city. Ambiguous projects that make Munich shine as a city beyond the city limits, but often fail because of the burden of official requirements, the high rents and sometimes also because of the noise perception and the local residents’ love of order. A new generation is currently forming. She wants to play on a controversial area in the east of the city: the Federal Monopoly Administration for Spirits (BfB) in Berg am Laim.
The corona pandemic has exacerbated the historical problems of the arts and culture professionals, because in addition to the lack of space for subculture, the established clubs have also been closed for more than a year. So how do you bring beats and bass back into city life without driving the pandemic forward? The artists and creatives around the collective “Common Ground” have developed a concept for this. The company premises on Neumarkter Strasse near the Leuchtenbergring underpass play a central role in this.
“A lot is possible on the area – from artistic interventions, be it in the form of performances, concerts, readings, open mic or jam sessions, exhibitions, installations or theater and film presentations,” says Joshua Neumann. The 24-year-old produces electronic music, has been a DJ in Munich clubs for years and drives artistic projects with other creative people. Recently he and thousands of other young people called for the action day “Freiräume -jetzt” and co-organized decentralized demos in the city area for more space for non-commercial art and youth culture.
The old factory site should not only be celebrated, it should also be used as a place for “skill sharing”, that is, for the exchange of knowledge and networking within the creative scene. “A weekly contact point for psychotherapy, children’s programs or flea markets are also conceivable,” says Neumann.
The area at the Leuchtenbergring could become a pilot project for Munich
The concept that the collective has worked out does not contradict what the city is planning on the site. “We want long-term cultural use,” says Neumann. Projects like the “Draussenstadt” in Berlin could serve as a model. There, Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH, a state-owned non-profit company, has created a platform on which information on outdoor cultural events can be bundled and artists, activists and organizers can network with one another. Projects in public space are specifically promoted.
The abandoned area of the distillery moves into the focus of the collective “Common Ground”.
(Photo: Angelika Bardehle)
If the initiators have their way, the area at the Leuchtenbergring could become a pilot project for Munich. The district committee (BA) Berg am Laim has already stood behind the young creative people. At the July meeting, the majority of the committee passed a motion calling for the implementation of the temporary use initiated by Common Ground on the fallow industrial area.
The committee also sees the idea as an opportunity to reconcile the generations in the neighborhood. The BA has regularly received complaints from residents recently because the party is too loud in residential areas, explains Manuel Weiß, spokesman for the Greens in the BA. “What opportunities are there to meet in the district? Here we would have an alternative place where nobody would be disturbed,” he says. The CSU is also behind the concept. However, she wants it to be clarified “whether the property now belongs to the city”, as the party’s deputy chairman, Johann Kott, points out.
The goods loading station is also to be used temporarily for subcultural events.
(Photo: Lea Kramer / oh)
The crux of the matter lies in the history of interim use. The nearly two hectare property in the triangle between the railway system, the industrial area on Neumarkter Straße and Dingolfinger Straße on the other side of the Mittlerer Ring belongs to the federal government. Agricultural alcohol was processed there for industry until 2016, which then did not turn out to be particularly economical for private companies after an EU decision against the federal monopoly. The company premises have been empty since then.
The city would like to build a vocational school for media, printing and design there and on an adjacent plot of land that is currently rented out to businesses. To do this, however, she has to buy the land from the Federal Agency for Real Estate Tasks (Bima). Bima and the municipal department have been negotiating for several years, but cannot agree on the price. Due to the tight budget in Munich, the municipal department is not very confident that the real estate business in the higher double-digit million range will soon come about. A speaker refers to the key data decision of the city council on the savings measures from July. “For example, the funds announced by the municipal department for the acquisition of the Bima property have not yet been recognized by the majority of the city council,” says the spokesman.
The city can only decide on interim use at this point “if it can dispose of the property,” says the cultural department. There is a fundamentally positive view of interim cultural use, but the common ground concept is not available, as a spokeswoman said when asked by SZ. But there is a motion from the city council, which the faction community of The Party / Die Linke had made in May. This will be checked by the cultural department, a result will probably be available after the summer break.
The application demands that the city primarily buy the western part of the area, which is next to the Telekom towers on Dingolfinger Strasse, and use it for artistic purposes. According to this, an old goods loading building, referred to as a “pagoda” in the application, is to be preserved. The property all around should be left to artists and creative professionals in self-administration.
At the moment the site is not as empty as it seems. Bima left it to the Munich fire department. The fire brigade stores disinfectants there for example in the event of a disaster. Due to the connection with the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, the federal government does not charge any rent. The contract runs until the end of the year. The federal government has no plans to develop the site artistically. “The Bima has no plans for artistic or other temporary use,” says a spokesman. If the city allowed artistic use in the buildings that are not used as storage by the fire brigade, it would cost it the money. This is how culture consultant Anton Biebl describes it in a response to a request from the left in winter. Neither under building law nor under the current lease, additional use of the area by artists is possible, it says there. One must reckon with “demands for additional payments from Bima to the city”.
The Department for Schools and Sports (RBS), in whose department the planning for the vocational schools fall, is not keen on dividing the area. The property did not even offer enough building rights for the school plans, even an additional daycare center urgently needed in Berg am Laim could no longer be accommodated due to the narrowness, said the RBS. The idea for a new subculture on the old mountain on the Laimer Branntwein site could fail because of what not only the Munich underground system has to nibble on more often: the lack of affordable building land.