For two years, KARTELL had its own space — a garage that became an open door for self-taught performing artists, mostly from Düsseldorf's dance and hip-hop community, who had no access to university or dance-school infrastructure. People approached us directly when they needed a place to hold a workshop or show a piece, and they got it for free or for a small fee whenever a show was involved. We invited each other in: sometimes the community organized battles themselves, sometimes I did, sometimes we hosted concerts.
When the garage closed in 2024, KARTELL didn't stop — it moved. I started approaching art institutions directly, asking them to host the community: at Ebertplatz, for instance, Gemeinde Köln has hosted battles ever since. KARTELL became a bridge between hip-hop and dance crews and institutional art spaces that wouldn't otherwise have met.
Today the work takes different shapes depending on what's needed: sometimes it's a research collaboration with a larger institution like tanzhausnrw or Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; sometimes it's an intimate training session, just for us, because affordable space to move in Düsseldorf is genuinely rare.
