Kay Lotte Pommer & Alicia Franzke

Micky

I'm here with Kay and Ali from Bistro 21 and I'm really excited to talk with you guys today and get to know more about the space and more about you. Could you introduce yourselves and speak about your roles at Bistro 21 and how you came to Leipzig originally?

Kay

Bistro 21 was founded by Christian Bär and Manuel Schneidewind 10 years ago. They started it when they were still studying painting. With no funding, with painter friends and people from HGB exhibiting there.

Six years ago, Nora Langen joined the team. And then they were a team of three. Nora redirected the focus a bit and put sculpture in the picture, and also formats beyond sculpture. And she also put it to another level with funding. Then it was possible to invite not just Leipzig based artists, but also go more international. I joined Bistro 21 with Lara Hampe in 2023. Now the Team is formed by Ali, Laura Wichmann and me.

Then Nora went back to Cologne. And it was a critical moment, with keeping the space or not. Somebody needed to take it over and by coincidence Lara and I took it over. Lara was doing her diploma in media arts and sculpting at that time, and my background is sculpting. We tried to get a little new shape for the space and ideas.

Taking over from Nora, keeping this idea, but also our ideas of opening it up, having more collaborative works in the fields of installation, and with literature. We had a collaboration with Edit, the literature magazine, hosting readings at the space. And we wanted to have more of a program. Our first show we curated was 24 hours, and it was an event with twelve artists and 6 writers reading. Ali was also performing.

Ali

I was in the artist position these days.

Kay

And there were concerts, but also an exhibition, and a lot of different scenarios throughout this 24 hours. At some point we slept there, and it got really cozy, and there was a morning show and so on. But this was our starting point. The idea to have more concept based exhibitions.

Ali

I remember when you started it was a big, big event. Hanako Emden made this beautiful poster. Somehow it was a good kick off for the new program. And also I had the feeling there was so much going on afterwards.

Micky

Ali- did you already have a feeling that you wanted to join the space after this event?

Ali

Yeah, I remember because I knew Lara from Klasse Blank, where Kay also studied. And I remember I was in Athens for Erasmus and Nora asking on Instagram, who wants to take over the space. So I was already thinking about it. And then Kay presented the program to me, and it sounded very nice. Also because they opened it to more social interactions, literature, and interdisciplinary formats. In general, a bit more friendlier, with a chance to experiment.

Micky

In my research about Bistro and many of the events over the past two years, I found completely different formats involved- performances and workshops and reading circles- is this kind of a standard thing now? Does that reflect your own artistic practices? And what brings it all together?

Ali

I speak for myself, but I think we have common grounds. I always have the feeling that we are very much space-based, probably from our similar educational background. Kay started the program with these social events, and then when I came to the team, I was studying performative arts. I studied with Isabel Lewis, and she's doing these 'hosted occasions'.

Micky

Oh yes, I am a huge fan of her work. She's very impressive.

Ali

I learned a lot about hosting, and the many roles someone can take in these situations. And also from a curatorial perspective:how curatorial settings can be situations where elements come together and exchange, and become dynamic parts inside an apparently “static” exhibition.

Laura Wichmann, who is also part of our team, is coming from a photography background. So we're kind of mixed. Kay is very much sculpture, I'm more into performative and participatory formats, and Laura is from a photography and moving images background. Our practices are reflected in the curation.

And I think the common ground is really that we are all very much interested in exhibitions, and designing sceneries. We also want to go more into the direction of scenographic exhibitions like the one we did now.

Kay

I think it overlaps. Everybody brings a perspective and then we have common fields we are interested in, like thinking about the space as also the social space inside the exhibition.

Micky

Tell me more about the space. It's been 10 years since it was originally founded as an art space. How do you feel about the location itself? I mean as a physical thing.

Kay

I love it in the summer, and I'm scared of the winter. It's like, okay, now winter is there. Now we have to get in this state. But the space itself, I love how it developed over the last year. And when Nora was there, I remember it from the outside, the perspective of being a guest in this hall, to now getting a home feeling with the space. It's very close emotionally.

But then there is always maintenance. It's a lot of work, it has so many mixed feelings. It's very wholesome to see how it grows with time. How we develop as a team, as individuals, as individual artists, and also within the space which reflects onto each other.

Micky

You've just said maintenance, can you talk about the current exhibition a little bit? Is there something visitors should know about the current exhibition ‘on maintenance’?

Ali

With this exhibition, we were in the precarious situation that we didn't know if the funding would come or not. The public funding got frozen and we heard very late that we got all the money we were supposed to have. So in the meantime we tried to come up with alternative plans.

Kay

Yeah, like bar21.

Ali

And we designed a Bistro 21 edition Knuffel game, a soli-object, designed by Samuel Wendland. We were very occupied with this, and also like worrying about the space and how to pay the rent.

Micky

I love the game, it is so beautifully designed. I definitely recommend that people support the space and purchase one. And it reminds me of another thing I really want to discuss- the graphic designs for your exhibitions. Particularly the collaboration with Nelly Nakahara over the past year, year and a half. I've seen that she's continuously the designer for the exhibition graphics. Tell me about this relationship.

Kay

Before, for each exhibition, we had a different graphic designer and wanted to spread the opportunity. Then at a certain point, we had worked with Nelly a couple of times and it worked so well. Communication, her understanding of the space and the exhibitions, it felt like we got the language there together. Also, when the workflow was so good we were like, 'Okay, we have to stick to it.' It was really cool that she was part of the team.

Micky

Do you think that continues into the future?

Kay

I mean, we were discussing it when we were writing the new applications for next year and we wanted to stay with Nelly, but also open it up a little bit for other formats. Like we did now for the Frankenstein reading circle. The Bistro 21 reading circle with Hanako Emden and Sophie Florian. They design their posters themselves, and they will also design a reader after the next reading club is finished.

Micky

Nice. Ok, we were discussing the current exhibition, and we came to the solibar and the Knuffel game, because of the funding cuts and pauses… But the current exhibition looks beautiful. We were joking earlier about how it looks like you got really proper funding.

Kay

The exhibition was initiated before all the funding froze. There was unclarity, and then it felt like we go on with this now. It felt natural to me to call it 'on maintenance'. After the solibar to maintain the space, and always maintaining this pre and post exhibition work. The artists we invited really fit with their positions inside this framework.

Ali

We wanted to reference this situation that we have the problem with the funding, but at the same time keep it very open in which way you can read the exhibition. The artworks in the exhibition all have a tendency to maintain, but in very different forms. For example, Emilia Trog is relating all kinds of patterns: toilet paper patterns, fishing flies, and bobbin lace; and it's more like breaking up the logic,finding a new one and maintaining the pieces. Also Samuel Ellinghoven somehow, the works remind you of furniture, but they lose their purpose, so you don't know what they become.

We wanted to deal with the state of maintenance. Which can also be a very unclear state. And I think tbsclr’s 5-channel sound work opens various auditory perspectives on how to experience the exhibition. This exhibition is so nice because it gets to something magical in between this easy topic, maintaining. Where you think like, cleaning the carpet, cleaning the windows, opening the space, but then there's these magical parts of confused logic.

We put up this exhibition so fast, the concept of the exhibition and the design. We were super surprised and happy how it turned out. It was also a bit of like, wow. I mean, this all sounds a bit inappropriate in the context of frozen funding, because for us this year was very difficult. But the spontaneity of putting together a show so fast also had something nice.

Kay

We had planned another exhibition, but because it was so unclear if we had the money or not, the artists were not able to do the exhibition anymore. And then we were able to do this exhibition in the end.

Micky

It seems like you did it all very gracefully.

I’m curious who you find showing up to Bistro 21? What is the audience that you try to reach, or are reaching or would like to reach?

Kay

It's a big topic. For a long time it was mostly art students. We want to open it up to the neighborhood. Have formats that don't feel exclusive. This is a big question of our curatorial work, this inviting gesture, which is also part of who's there and how accessible the space is.

It changes with the format. Also, now that we graduated and are not so much connected to the school, all three of us try to bring different people into this place. But yeah, what's the audience now? It's very mixed.

We have a format called 'Bistro im Bistro' where we thought about how to invite people from the neighborhood, first to get in touch, then to talk about art, and also not talk about art. All around the base of food, because the location was originally a bistro, and we thought to bring it back to being a place where the common ground is eating together.

Micky

Food is always a good way to bring people together.

Ali

This was also the starting point for what we did in 2024, the exhibition with artists from CROMA, Mexico City, who we will visit this December. We started this 'Bistro im Bistro' performance, inviting the people from CROMA for an intervention inside the exhibition by /POKY, and then also inviting Nazle from Taksim Bakery, a local baker here on the Eisenbahnstrasse, and the choir from HGB to sing a text which resulted from the correspondence between /POKY and CROMA.

It brought different people together. There was a scene of Mexican people that are based in Leipzig that came in. Then a lot of people from the street passed in. It really felt like it worked. People walked by and were interested in coming in.

This specific exhibition was on the topic of hosting, and then partly also on the topic of the host and the parasite when CROMA came in. So it added many layers, different commentaries on hosting situations.

Both invited collectives, CROMA and /POKY, thought of hosting in such different ways. /POKY dealt a lot with architecture, structures, support structures, and the people from CROMA were thinking about bodily interactions, hosting something inside your body, through eating and digestion for example. The combination of those two, the macro and the micro, was very interesting…

Also, when we did the show 'LA TERRE: My likeness in relics', there was a big group from the queer scene of Leipzig coming to the exhibition. This was also working very well, because the artist Luis Javier Murillo Zúñiga is very active in the Drag scene in Vienna.

Micky

It sounds as though inviting and who shows up is something that you really consider. So– what does the future look like for Bistro?

Kay

The format of radio has been knocking at the door for quite a while. We had that idea for a long time, and now it's actually coming to reality.

But next year is a big question mark, actually, and scary to not know if we get funding at all. We had thought about a really amazing program, also about these topics of inviting and how to open the space up, and at the same time, how to come into them. You mediate the exhibitions on a high level, which is also part of the radio format, where it's accompanying the exhibitions.

Ali

I think we're always thinking about how to do art mediation that is good for a small space that cannot be open all the time. And radio is a good idea for having the space online. It's both about the exhibition, but also expanding the exhibition and the topic and the theme.

Coming to next year, we worked really hard on a new program. And I think we kind of found more of what we want to do as a trio, after the experiences in the space. But it is really unsure if we will get any funding.

I always have Plan B's in my head, such as doing a nomadic thing that travels. We traveled to Athens with Hannah Francke, where we met people from Okay Space. It's our new international collaboration, where we want to do a program next year. But unfortunately, Goethe Institute stopped funding this category this year as well, which was a big surprise for us.

Kay

We really cannot say at all what happens next year. But it feels like it's never the end point. It's just getting a stronger connection and building from there. That's how we see Bistro, not as only the physical space, but looking beyond this funding situation, to see what we gain from this.

Ali

Yeah, it's always crazy how insecure you can be in this. I really have to learn to stay flexible, to not get a negative view on all these things. Because every time something changes it's kind of the thing you have to do, stay flexible and find solutions in real time.

Micky

It seems to be like this for the world in general, in our society, where we are forced to find new methods and new ways to support each other. Because the system is broken, and we're seeing that and feeling it very strongly. Everyone's searching for these new methods of support and sustainability, and it will be really interesting to see what we can do. We can't completely lose hope. We have to continue.

I have one last question which I like to ask in these conversations, about the Leipzig scene. A lot of the work that I do is seeing different spaces, the different subcultures, and different collectives here. Do you have any thoughts on what's working here, or what's missing? Or maybe a wish for how spaces could support each other?

Ali

We're very much supported by our neighbors, the Risoclub and Hitness Club. They always lend us stuff when we do exhibitions.

Micky

When we walked over here, Kay, you were saying that you feel like the neighborhood itself is well balanced right now, between the spaces here.

Kay

Yes, I think Leipzig really has a scene. And still so many people are coming here. We're all told, ‘you missed the perfect time’, over and over again. But still it's working, and new spaces open up, like SMS, who are doing it without funding and are super engaged.

But I'm really thinking, that's why it took a moment. We talk about support structures, about networks, about the funding situation– but I'm wondering how it will be with this funding situation. How people get closer, the spaces get closer, the scene gets closer. And thinking of support structures within the scene itself. How can we all sustain our work in a way we don't think that we can?

Ali

That was also a very interesting conversation we had with Stavros Capitanos from Okay Space. In Athens, it's clear that they don't have any funding for a long time, and some years ago they founded the “collective of collectives”. They meet every month and give tools around, ask for exhibition materials, set up help, whatever. And I think that's also something that we now have to face in some way.

Micky

This was part of the idea of LEICO, right? But it's not an official collective yet...

Kay

No, it’s not a collective in this way, but it's also getting a little bit the perspective for what is outside, like, what is there? But maybe this can also be where we start to feel this. In a really small circle, this works, like in a neighborhood.

Ali

When we don't have the money anymore, exhibitions will change, for sure. But yeah, I think it has to go back to DIY, and doing more things together, and asking for help. Lifting a lot of weight with more people, at least.

Micky

Yes, that is something as a community that we have to start a discussion about. Thank you both so much. Super nice to hear more about the history of Bistro 21 and also contemplate the future.

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This conversation for eos archive was hosted by the project's founder, Micky Arratoon. Micky looks forward to hosting more conversations with those who are shaping and redefining subculture in Leipzig, Berlin and beyond. Get in touch to say hello@eosarchive.app.