Exhibition - “Radical Playgrounds: from Competition to Collaboration” at Gropius Bau

The School of Mutants installation, “Radical Playgrounds: from Competition to Collaboration”, 27.04-14.07.2024, Gropius Bau, Berlin, April 2024. Credit: Ibra Wane.

Public space is also a relation between strangers. A place that not only unites, but also reveals what divides us. City playgrounds are particularly significant public realms because it is here that the tension between rules and freedom, the familiar and the unknown, borders and transgression, the present and the future, risk and security are constantly negotiated.

For “Radical Playgrounds: from Competition to Collaboration”, The School of Mutants (Hamedine Kane, Stephane Verlet-Bottero and Boris Raux) thought an interactive playground build around the action of digging. The installation was made in collaboration with the scientist and artist Stella Flatten and curated by Joanna Warsza.

“A mutation between a sandpit and an excavation site, the installation relates to the primary vocabulary of play and the fundamental human need to uncover what has been hidden. The starting point of the installation is the ingenuous digging of a hole, revealing literal and symbolic layers of dust, grit and gravel. It thus refers to local colonial history and to what once was, but has been silenced and repressed. The installation reaches deep into the ground and at the same time looks into the crowns of the plane trees – such as the ones that were part of the colonial migration from Paris to Dakar.”

- Joanna Warsza