BOILING ROOM is an international art collective that explores relational forms of mutual support for and with people escaping oppressive and violent contexts and living in forced migration. We organise gatherings where people who are new in a country can meet locals, build connections, exchange knowledge and resources while cooking and having a meal together in an informal atmosphere. During the cooking we invite guest speakers to share their personal stories related to being from regions of war and conflict, being on the move and arriving and living in a new country. Next to that the evening is accompanied by soft music and an Open Mic before the meal where everyone is invited to share their stories, opinions or information about related projects. We are an open collective body that is being formed anew with each gathering.
BOILING ROOM
CONVERSATIONS is a publication series of transcripts of public conversations we had with our guest speakers during the gatherings. The texts are edited in a dialogue with the speakers and additional elements that they have suggested are included.
PROJECT BY:
Boiling Room Collective
PRESENTED AT:
Art As Social Practice, HfMDK Frankfurt, DE
Floating University, Berlin, DE
“SITUATED ECOLOGIES – sounding ecological entanglements in urban environments”
ZK/U “Towards a shimmer on the horizon series”,
Flutgraben Berlin
KBK Brussels
Floating University Berlin
After the Butcher Gallery
(“Common Joy isn’t for us” exhibition)
Info about upcoming sessions at
@boiling_room_berlin
Collecting groceries for collective cooking at Berliner Tafel
Art in my opinion is an attitude towards a material as a subject. An attitude that is based on openness, curiosity and negotiation. In social work the employees often offer a service to a target group. Such projects are goal oriented, well planned and have a clear separation between the service taker and service giver. What is missing is spontaneity, openness to the circumstances and the potential of failure. Elements that I think are important to feel agency as a participant in a process. This is what Boiling Room is about: we want to come together as equals. Often after a short moment of chaos where everyone is slightly lost, somehow the collective intelligence clicks and everything falls in place. One just has to trust in it. So, is this art? I think yes. If Boiling Room would be organised by a social institution it would be more managed to make it safer and more efficient, and it would lose what I think is the central point of community: its spontaneity and its beautiful messiness where the focus is on people and not on outcomes. Maria comes to us after the session and says, this is not like any other thing we have gone to, this feels like home. Yes, home is where you feel agency and where you are an equal part of the family, and this is how I see an artistic process and Boiling Room.
Conversation with Vitsche Berlin
Poetry and conversation with Natalia Yeromenko
