Can cheap cigarettes and garden gnomes reveal the complexities of border

relations? In the collaborative project The Polenmarkt is back, artist Paula

Kaniewska and sociologist Vivien Sommer explore border bazaars situated on the

Polish side of the Oder River, just an hour or two away from Berlin. The exhibition

builds upon their art research residency at the Polenmarkt Hohenwutzen in summer

2023. Among cigarette stands, fake branded clothes and stacks of soda cans, they

examined shopping practices, economic asymmetries, and cultural encounters. By

bringing the objects and stories from the market back to Berlin, they also reconnect

to the history of improvised street trading – a widespread phenomenon in the 90s.

The largest Polenmarkt, located in the former no-man’s land at Potsdamer Platz,

exemplified the reconfiguration of Berlin’s divided landscape and the German-Polish

border region.

Paula and Vivien will discuss their research process during an open data session.

They invite participants to reflect together on the kinds of knowledge that art-based

research can offer. Where do the potentials and limits of such methods lie? If you’d

like to participate, please register by 08.04.2025 at vivien.sommer@leibniz-irs.de.

Programme:

Opening: 10.04 17.00–21:30

Data session: 11.04 11:00–13:00

Visiting hours:

11.04 15:00–20:00

12.04 11:00–18:00

The project is developed within the Collaborative Research Centre 1265

“Refiguration of Spaces” at the Technische Universtität Berlin and funded by the

German Research Foundation (DFG)