The Bille Raum Archiv tests collaborative forms of knowledge production by assembling spatial practices and experiences, stories from the past and future, people and things. A specific environment frames the area of action of the archive: the space around the Billebogen in the southern center of Hamburg. The archival practice of the Bille Space Archiv provides narratives from below that shape the space around the Bille: by and for city activists.
The Bille space as an urban and social space has been around for a very long time. As well as emancipatory practices of various kinds and the knowledge assambled around them that are located here. With the Bille Raum Archiv, we would like to begin a living archive that crystallizes this knowledge as an attempt at collective, site-specific history production and makes it legible.
Not as an investor project or glossy master plan rendering, but as a narrative and realization of polyphonic and diverse neighborhoods in the space around Bille – as we perceive them now and which, like this archive, can and should be co-created. The archive stands for urban spaces in which the common good is in focus, contradictions can assemble and conflicts can become loud. For a collaborative way of working, supporting each other, arguing together, sharing knowledge and thus continuously producing commons.
We understand the archive as a collection of narratives that comes from the people who live, work, sweat, talk, swim and rest in this space and therefore know it best.
The Bille Raum Archive is therefore being created step by step. In a collaboration between Hallo: e.V, HafenCity University and various mostly self-organized spaces and people from Hammerbrook and Rothenburgsort, observations, insights and questions about what a (district) archive can be, whether and how it can be collectively self-empowering, and what content should or should not be represented were discussed and condensed. We also discuss whether there should be a joint sponsorship and what this could look like. This work is never finished or completed. In May 2021, the first status was published. Anyone interested in the space is welcome to visit the archive further and to write along.
To the Bille Raum archive: hallohallohallo.org/billeraumarchiv