Son[i]a #393 Kathrin Böhm

Kathrin Böhm’s (b. Höfen, 1969) practice spans several decades and branches out in many directions, constantly in dialogue with others. She approaches her field of action from a social perspective, while very consciously situating herself on the margins of the art market and of the white cube, in order to explore other ways of understanding the economy and relationality. Predisposed to communal and practical thinking, Kathrin has concentrated her efforts on the (co)production of many and varied organisational forms, focusing on issues such as usership and utility of art on different fronts and by means of different strategies. A long list of initiatives, communities, and even companies under a variety of names and constellations—Myvillages, Company Drinks, and the Centre for Plausible Economies, among many others—serve as relational experiments and exercises in shared learning that involve understanding culture as an everyday practice that can be found everywhere.

In this podcast, we open up a glossary of concepts that affect and leave their mark on Kathrin Böhm's many constellations and collective projects. From the notion of compost—which triggered a radical shift in her way of working and interacting with her material archive in recent years—to a reassessment of the very idea of economy, which, as Katherine Gibson writes, helps us discern spaces of value production that are not immediately apparent. We talk about how these other strategies and ways of doing things lead us to qualify and problematise alternative ways of understanding social and/or participatory practices, and even to read the idea of community critically.