NEWS

Sunday, 16 March 2025,
2-4 pm

with Belia Zanna Geetha Brückner

Free entry

Registration is not required.

On Sunday, 16 March from 2 to 4 pm, we warmly invite you to write postcards to prisoners with us. The workshop is part of our current exhibition “If my neighbour is okay, I’m okay”. The artist Belia Zanna Geetha Brückner, who also designed the postcards, will explain her artistic practice in a discussion with the curatorial team.

Part of her series Recipes for Freedom is currently on display in the Bärenzwinger. These are recipes for dishes that prisoners would like to cook together with others after their release. For the exhibition, she has selected the letter and recipe of an incarcerated British climate activist. The soup will be prepared and eaten together during the workshop.

Writing to someone you don’t even know can be a bit overwhelming at first. During the workshop, various letters from Brückner’s research and the respective detention backgrounds are read aloud, which makes it easier to relate to the reality of the imprisoned people.

In this way, the workshop also deals with very fundamental questions: Why is prison an important place of class struggle? What roles do recipes play in the context of communication with prisoners? Particular attention will be paid to the increasing criminalisation of climate activists and the close connection between poverty and penalisation in our society.

The workshop offers space for critical reflection on the justice system and enables new perspectives on social problems that are redefined as criminal offences through direct communication with prisoners.

The International Day of Political Prisoners is on 18 March.

Since September 2017 the former bear pit of the heraldic animals of the city of Berlin has re-opened as a cultural venue for site-specific contemporary art in Berlin-Mitte.

A refurbishment is soon to expand its potential uses.