What’s the Time, Mahagonny?

This and subsequent section titles reprise the scene titles from Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s Mahagonny-Songspiel (1927).

See Oliver Clemens and Sabine Horlitz, “Immobilienfonds und die Privatisierung gesellschaftlichen Eigentums” (Real Estate Funds and the Privatization of Public Property), in Wohnmodelle – Experiment und Alltag, ed. Oliver Elser, Michael Rieper, and Künstlerhaus Wien (Vienna: Folio Verlag, 2008), published in conjunction with the exhibition at Künstlerhaus Wien. A bilingual (German–English) version of the essay is available at →.

See Ambit ERisk’s July 2002 case study (in German) on the bank at →.

A Debt Clock located in the federal taxpayer organization building in Berlin indicates the city’s debt in real time, including the speed of increase and the personal share of each citizen: →.

The “Not in our Name, Marke Hamburg!” manifesto was posted to the eponymous (German-language) blog in November 2009. See →.

Ibid. The English version of the manifesto—“Not in our name! Jamming the gentrification machine: a manifesto”—cited here in a slightly modified translation, appeared on the sightandsign.com website on November 23, 2009,→.

“An Evening with Jimmie Durham and Mick Taussig” (conversation, House of World Cultures, Berlin, April 29, 2010).

See image of Kubat-Dreieck, Berlin 1988. The story of Kubat-Dreieck, including an image archive, can be found at Umbruch Archiv (in German): →. Images from the eviction: →.

The only information on Botschaft available online is here: →.

More information (in German) and images of Mainzer Strasse and the eviction can be found at Umbruch Archive: →.

Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, “Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar),” Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1930).

Avery Gordon, Keeping Good Time: Reflections on Knowledge, Power, and People (Boulder: Paradigm Press, 2004), viii.

See “Von der Margarinefabrik ins MoMa: Klaus Biesenbach erster deutscher Kurator,” RP Online, last updated November 22, 2004, →.

In a unilateral reorganization of the collectively run art venue Kunst-Werke, Klaus Biesenbach became the director of the institution in 1995. One event that prompted the protests around this peculiar takeover was the awarding of the Hanno Klein Medal to Klaus Biesenbach, Hans Kollhoff, and Gerhard Merz for “a new Gründerzeit with prominence and brutality” on June 24, 1995. Hanno Klein, a Senate member responsible for inner-city investment, was a key figure in large-scale projects such as the Daimler-Benz Building on Potsdamer Platz and the Friedrichstadtpassagen. In an interview with the magazine Der Spiegel he is quoted as saying that Berlin needs a new Gründerzeit “with prominence and brutality.” He was killed by a letter bomb on June 14, 1991. See Stefan Bullerkotte, “Gegen die ästhetische Nobilitierung der Macht: Eklat bei der Verleihung der Hanno-Klein-Gedenkmedaille,” Scheinschlag 14 (1995), →; and “Rosen für das Publikum, eine makabre Drohung für den Redner,” Art 10 (1995).

See →.

Email announcement, April 29, 2010.

William Shakespeare, The Tempest, act 1, scene 2, lines 72–76.

Georges Bataille, Sovereignty, in The Accursed Share, Volumes II & III, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Zone Books, 1992), 198.

The declaration, by Gerrard Winstanley, is available at →.

The Roots feat. Mos Def, “Double Trouble.”