"Linking the existing with the imaginary!" was the subtitle of the mobile platform The Knot that occupied three different public sites in the cities of Berlin, Warsaw, and Bucharest from April to October 2010.

The Knot was as mobile platform for artistic presentation and production. In each of the three cities, it stopped for a few weeks, inhabiting different areas of public space, and offering itself as an open space of encounter, exchange and experimentation.

The physical core of the project consisted in a specially designed structure, adaptable to different urban situations, easily expandable and transportable. Conceived by architectural office raumlabor Berlin, this unit did respond to the programmatic needs of The Knot project, comprising different functions such as: production/manufacture workshop, kitchen, café, laboratory, classroom, stage, dormitory, disco, exhibition space, and archive.

Through its unexpected presence in the city, The Knot proposed a model for social interaction, thus being not so much a container as a transformer, creating new ways in which the public space could be used and produced. The participants invited by the curatorial collective to activate THE KNOT put forward not only their professional skills, but also their physical company, their desires and imaginative will. They became temporary members of a protean and nomad crew, acting both as hosts and guests in a shared and welcoming place.

At the intersection between the real and the imaginary, The Knot is an initial point where a thorough examination of the relationships between the individual, the group and the place of interaction is undertaken. The project did respond to the increasingly normative way in which these relationships are defined in our current societies. Envisioning alternative behaviours in the city, based on cooperation and self-empowerment was one of the main tasks of The Knot. Furthermore it served to explore what is left of collective ideals or how one can overcome the current conditions of harsh economic competition and the tendency towards national or ethnic isolation. Temporary communities are the tool of creating another notion of a “cities”, apart from its capitalist vision.

The project took its inspiration from and linked back to the cities of Berlin, Warsaw and Bucharest, always with references to other cities wherefrom the participants originated or lived. Personal and institutional partnerships in each place made The Knot a living organism which wass integrated in the life of the specific city of its appearance. At the same time it was an obstacle disrupting the daily habits and rituals, and an autonomous zone of experiment, The Knot provoked and satisfied the public with every object, performance, installation, action, screening, party, discussion, meeting, workshop, dinner or other activity which took place in and around it.

The Knot program was a compilation of ongoing projects – realized by The Knot residents: Pola Dwurnik, Roman Dziadkiewicz, h.arta, Katharina Koch, Heimo Lattner, Kai Schiemenz, <>TAG and Michelle Teran – site-specific works, discussions, concerts, screenings, workshops on urbanism and architecture, as well as a series of plug-in events which linked to the context of its surrounding spaces. The program was a live, ongoing process.

The project was conceived by Markus Bader (raumlabor berlin), Oliver Baurhenn (DISK Berlin), Jakub Szreder (freelance curator) and Raluca Voinea (E-cart.ro).