Beginning with a drawing session, this site-specific interactive sculpture is the result of a long process. “30153.846153846153846” takes its title from the precise calculation of the future price per square metre of housing at Sebastianstrße 87, the residential building where the work was executed. Fuzinato’s project included a series of exercises, described as “interrogative drawing”, where conversations with inhabitants of the pre-war Italian palazzo style apartment block at the perimeter of the old Berlin Wall were transformed into images. These were then engraved into a marble plate—a material used as part of the building, as well as a symbol of luxury—where a chaotic and interconnected map of the “larger picture”, so to speak, illustrated the shared concerns of gentrification affecting Berlin and the rest of the world. The stone slab’s dimensions matched the predicted figure of rent inflation.
The project began with an open question to participants leading to three key points of inquiry: How can a familiar subject be altered, how can a series of seemingly distinct stories be reimagined, and how can a familiar narrative be told differently? A common anxiety that emerged was a feeling of inevitable displacement. A scene of girls who like dolphins and horses, an impression of a woman growing tomatoes on her balcony, the story of a soldier without uniform—gatherings, violence, rage, and disconnection—illustrated this sense of precarity and impermanence.
Together these records reflect the complex, yet connected stories of the lives lived at Sebastianstrße 87, with its own historical value that is being converted into capital by private investors buying up property in the area and displacing its community. This approach aimed to divert focus away from spoken accounts and well-defined meanings to reinforce relationships and interaction between visitors. These depictions of fading memory and life’s fragility—cut into this enduring material—were then made available for visitors to make their own art print through a frottage technique. “30153.846153846153846” demands action in order to be seen.
Video documentation here > https://vimeo.com/331018478
Created by artist Jelena Fuzinato together with the group of people living in and around Sebastianstrße 87
Curated by Siglinde Lang
Commissioned by HaMa Berlin Realitäten GmbH & Co Sebastianstr. 87
Project assistants: Mila Panic, Rosanna Lovell
Foto credits: Philipp Külke
Video credits: Nicolas Buenaventura