2023-07-08 15:11:53
Paul Sochacki comes to the editorial office with the trolley case, he was just in Istanbul, where the newspaper Arts of the Working Class is to be presented at the “Contemporary Istanbul” art fair in September. He and Dalia Maini from the editorial team talk about the unusual connection between art and poverty.
Mr. Sochacki, you were five years ago one of the founders of Arts of the Working Class. How did you come up with this idea?
Pauł Sochacki: I had been living in Berlin for a few years by then and had witnessed the changes in the art scene, how inequality and competition were growing there, and also how homelessness had spread. We wanted to experiment with a project that takes a practical approach. On the material, the physical plane, so to speak.
When I was first confronted with the newspaper, I think it was on the subway, I was so surprised that an art newspaper was offered as a homeless newspaper that I bought it immediately. Publications in the field of art tend to be high gloss. Is that contrast something you play with?
Dalia Maini: You address one of the fundamental aspects of Arts of the Working Class. Even when I was an intern there, I felt the magazine to be a connection between two spheres that normally do not touch each other. On the one hand, it’s about survival. It is true that there are also precarious living conditions in the field of art, but culture also excludes people, it segregates. Arts of the Working Class acts as a bridge between both spheres and also changes the environment in which a cultural product can be found. For example, in the subway instead of in a bookstore or in a cultural institution.
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Paul Sochacki and Dalia MainiPaulus Ponizak/Berliner Zeitung
Dalia Maini
hails from Naples, calls herself a resister writer and poet, and is senior editor of Arts of the Working Class. Dalia Maini studied Visual Cultures in Milan, Curatorial Studies and Literature in Naples.
Paul Sochacki
The founder of “Arts of the Working Class” works as a painter and interdisciplinary artist. Born in Poland, he has lived in Berlin since 2010 and studied art in Hamburg. Most recently he taught at the ESAPB – École supérieure d’art Pays Basque and the Merz Academy in Stuttgart. His last major exhibition was “Gurbet” at the Leopold Hoesch Museum (2018).
Last year, the curators of Documenta published the list of participating artists in a homeless magazine. So there are others who are looking for this connection. Did you have role models?
Sochacki: The concept of the homeless newspaper was already established back then. In Berlin there were even several, which also shows how much precariousness there is in society. Culture is something that can be commercialized and used as a means of excluding people, but it can also be shared. With Arts of the Working Class we want to counter the very dominant economy of exclusion. The example of Documenta is good, because there is a great deal of mistrust in the art world towards the attention economy and commercialization.
How did you come up with the title?
Sochacki: The title actually contains all these contradictions, there is class consciousness in it.
The magazine was first published five years ago, when it had a circulation of 10,000. How is it today?
Sochacki: Now we are at 63,000.
Oh, congratulations!
Sochacki: That is a sign of our growing popularity, but also of the increase in problematic social situations.
Does Arts of the Working Class only exist in Berlin?
Sochacki: Mainly. 2000 copies go to Frankfurt.
Who are your writers?
Maini: We ask professional authors and established artists, but also those who want to become one. And then we ask people who are neither one nor the other, even if that means a lot of work for the editors. But it’s important to us that marginalized people and all communities that exist in Berlin have their say. That is why there are different languages in the newspaper. That should be a bridge for the Turkish community, for example. Sometimes five languages are represented in one edition, sometimes eight. Our team is also multilingual. And we also have a fixed number of pages of plain language texts.
Sochacki: It’s great when people don’t understand some articles, then they can empathize with people who don’t understand their language.
Maini: Or they ask someone to translate the text for them.
Sochacki: In a field that is so exclusive, we enable a kind of democratic approach with these different languages. In our latest issue we portrayed a construction worker who also works as an artist. We presented his work.
How did that happen?
Sochacki: In Kreuzberg we have our pick-up spot in a multi-generation house, and after an injury that was followed by a period of unemployment, he did an internship in the social center there. There he started to draw again like in his youth. He came to Germany in the 90s, started working immediately and never had the opportunity to be artistic again.
There is always a clever mind behind it: Here it is the heads of Dalia Maini and Pauł Sochacki.Paulus Ponizak/Berliner Zeitung
What’s in the next issue?
Maini: The next issue, which will be out on July 12th, will be about kinship, the cultural basis for social relationships and the legacies of traditional relationships with the environment and their rituals, which have a long history. These practices are repeatedly attacked and threatened by populist and nationalist policies. Kinship Issue 27 is part of a broader reflection on forms of organization that counteract the destructive Western system. The editorial line for 2023 is titled “Burts of Solidarity” and includes a look at identities and movements investing time and effort in restructuring social cohesion. Issue 26, which celebrated AWC’s 5th anniversary, explored the organizational form of grassroots organizations that seek to achieve social justice through institutional transformation from below. Each issue is complemented by artistic practices that broaden the theme and often challenge the institutional circumstances that validate and make artworks. Each issue is also intended to shed light on the fractures in coexistence caused by capitalist pressures to which we are constantly exposed.
Do you pay your writers?
Sochacki: We pay everyone who works for us, but it’s not that easy to secure long-term financing. The project was initially made possible through the support of art institutions, which see great added value in our solidarity sales model for art and culture. There are also donations from readers and supporters. And last year the city of Berlin supported us financially. But we have to find new sources all the time, and we’ve already had a few crises. You get used to that.
Who is actually allowed to come to your pick-up spots and say they want to sell the newspaper?
Sochacki: Everyone who needs money. For the homeless or drug addicts, there are hardly any legal earning opportunities with a fair hourly wage. In recent years, more and more pensioners have had to earn extra money. Or single mothers. Many who sell our newspaper have an addiction problem, many were or are homeless. And there are many migrant workers who have been cheated out of their wages and ended up in homeless shelters.
What do you know about your readers?
Sochacki: For many it is the first time they read an art newspaper. After all, you don’t have to look for our magazine, it will come to you. When you’re 15 or 16, that might be inspiring, especially for people who don’t usually have access to that realm because of their class.
The creators of Arts of the Working Class are grateful for every donation, e.g. by bank transfer to Reflector Monde, IBAN: DE 64 100 100 100 931 503 107, via Paypal: [email protected] or via
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