Gob Squad, “Are You With Us?,” 2010

The expression “pay attention” acknowledges that our attention is a commodity, a thing with which we can give or afford to something or someone. In today’s understanding of attention economies, attention is treated as a scarce commodity, for which market participants compete with each other in order to monetize it or to gain power. We would like to call to mind that understanding attention as a scarce, contested commodity vice versa reveals attention as a precious good. A good we are not only forced to pay but can actively spend.

Thinking of attention as a precious good calls us to pay attention to the question of whom/what we’re spending our attention on.

Thinking of attention as a precious good grants us the possibility to resist the passive attention of a swipe-up dopamine hit of technology designed to squander our attention – or the shock-and-awe effect of political rhetoric and news cycles that is already becoming a cultural norm but also offered to lure our attention into an emotional vortex.

Thinking of attention as a precious good offers a possibility for a very simple but active response to the new cultural and political context that is rapidly unfolding. A context in which the budget cuts in culture, education, science, and the social sector by the Berlin government are not only due to fiscal circumstances but follow an only slightly veiled plan where one can draw a line from the initially announced 100-percent cuts to Berlin’s IMPACT funding [1] to the CDU/CSU’s joint vote with the AfD in the German parliament at the end of January to the recent “Kleine Anfrage” of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. [2] What has been considered a consensus in postwar Germany – no cooperation with right-wing extremists, a strong, state-funded but independent cultural sector, and an independent civil society – is being torn down. We see spaces being shut down. And voices being silenced.

Gob Squad group shot

The cultural networks and communities, projects, and groups most at risk in this rapid cultural-political shift are those who are not primarily profit-driven in a monetary sense but who prioritize care, visibility and coalition. Built on inclusion, alliance, cocreation, and support, they spend their attention, time, and resources on advocating for equal rights and freedom. As rightward shifts gain momentum, such socially cohesive frameworks are already faltering, increasingly vulnerable to being pushed aside or dismantled altogether.

So, what should we give our attention to in this situation? Where and how can we spend it wisely, to positively strengthen the existing networks and groups that have taken years – often decades – to build, and that have been built, in part, by the artists who have gathered and worked here in Berlin, who have helped define Berlin’s cultural identity? We want to use the space offered to us to share where our attention went in the last few years, in the hope that it might connect to other people’s thoughts and practice across creative sectors.

Gob Squad is a collective. Our attention is on non-hierarchical collectivity, and on continuing to expand and diversify our networks. Standing on the shoulders of giants, our teachers at Nottingham Trent and Giessen University in the early 1990s, taught us an interdisciplinary arts practice, meaning that we were asked to work between disciplines and with the dialogues and tensions that exist in between. [3] We learnt that how to make a piece of work is as important as the work itself. Resisting hierarchical structures and building a cohesive practice remains central to our work. We celebrated our 30th birthday last year. Over the decades and after making more than 60 pieces, we can say that Gob Squad itself is our major work (of art).

Gob Squad’s 10th anniversary, 2004

Gob Squad’s move to Berlin in 1999 followed an invitation from Aenne Quiñones to become artists-in-residence at the Podewil Centre for Contemporary Art. The city was a heaven for artists, providing squats, cheap rents, and the opportunity to live and be an artist. It was a melting pot of potential and freedom. We were very lucky to experience the city and grow with it since then. We have been part of the city’s cultural landscape for a quarter of a century. Over these decades Berlin has been unmatched for its holding and nurturing of cultural production and its inclusive political agenda. In the late 1990s and early 2000 the city was spacious and abundant with a DIY ethos. The city was completely unique and pulsating with a creative energy. Our work is in many ways a product of that time. Anyone who has worked in Berlin in the creative field for that long will feel that they have, in one way or another, very concretely contributed to the city. [4] This explains why the present slashing of cultural budgets is met with a deep sense of betrayal: we helped lay important foundations for what the city is now known for internationally and now suddenly we “cost too much.” How could this happen here? Here of all places.

Today, we are faced with the new realities in the present political and cultural landscape. Realities that are urgent and existential. In this situation, we are invited, through this article, to imagine a way forward. It is important to acknowledge that as a group we do not have a utopian vision of what a future might look like in relation to the shifts taking place and that we speak on behalf of no one but ourselves. The shock of financial cuts and the feeling that cultural infrastructure is now denigrated has produced a great wave of protest and action. First and foremost, we are aligned with, and express solidarity with everyone affected by the cuts, especially in the Freie Szene, [5] one of the most groundbreaking and challenging but also most fragile sectors of creative output.

We believe, like many, that in these times we must strengthen, enrich, and extend our communities and networks. The Freie Szene already has many networks in place [6] that have been capable of giving voice to the response of a sector that strives to make prescient work that confronts and speaks to the here and now. It would be possible to dedicate the rest of this space to argue how vital we believe the work of the Freie Szene to be as a critique and as a feeder to mainstream cultural consumption. However, we decided instead to focus our attention on further reinforcing and expanding the communities and networks we are part of.

Gob Squad group shot with kids

The ways in which we reinforce and expand depends on the coalitions that we can maintain, on how they can be held and who they can be held by. This is a shared responsibility. Attention needs to be paid to our networks. From the collective structure that we operate under in Gob Squad, we also know that shared responsibility does not mean that everyone does a little bit of everything, rather that we play to skill sets. Individuals step forward and agree to hold space and responsibility for the group. We don’t focus on equality as us all being the same. We focus on respecting and utilizing (and challenging) our differences. This takes time to really see and hear… It can be messy and inefficient and painful. For us it is worth it.

Especially since the pandemic, Gob Squad has worked extensively to broaden its audiences and participants within this co-creative work. Our recent projects Handle with Care (2023–24), Dancing with our Neighbours (2024) and News from Beyond (2025) are examples of this – still the work reaches far beyond the show. When everything stopped during the pandemic, the space arose to ask fundamental questions about the endeavor of producing art in the first place. Most importantly, who was it for? In that period Gob Squad’s Sarah Thom was extensively working in the UK and was bringing back observations of how artistic groups are working there.

The UK is an example of a country that has already operated along the lines of mainstream political parties adopting populist right-wing policy to promise voters that they will solve all their problems and appease a minority of bigotry. This strategy has been enacted for almost a decade and a half: public budgets have been decimated massively, with the result that the country is seriously struggling to provide the most basic of public services. The case of the UK can be a warning and prediction that the path Germany now seems to be taking will only lead to further social fragmentation and hardship at a time when the opposite is needed.

Since 2020 we have forged a valuable alliance with the performance collective Common Wealth, based in Bradford and Cardiff. It has a bold policy of placing work directly within local communities – work that is made by and for them. For example, Speaker’s Corner (ongoing) invites young women from Bradford to “create positive action around issues and topics important to them.” Common Wealth have realized projects dealing with pressing social issues such as mental health, “bridging generational gaps and international activism.” [7] They call this strategy outward-facing work. It takes a great deal of time and effort to establish grassroot connections with communities directly around them, to make performance work in, with, and for those communities on all levels, from research on production to presentation. It means directly involving greater groups of people in collective artistic processes.

In the urban environment, the experience of stepping outside our homes and not expecting to know the people and places we encounter is commonplace. This anonymity of the cityscape has been a theme of many pieces Gob Squad has made. We are familiar with making work outside of theater contexts, on streets or locations beyond black box theaters or galleries. Direct contact with passersby is an essential part of our practice – in which anonymity gives us a type of freedom and, at the same time, a distance from what we do.

In the last few years, we have begun to cultivate deeper encounters. One example is with local residents in the direct vicinity of HAU – Hebbel am Ufer, a production house we are deeply connected to. Why do some neighbors of HAU do just that – pass by? Why don’t they ever come into these buildings that are, after all, public spaces? Why don’t they feel that the theater over there somehow belongs to them? And who are they? Who are we? We might think that we know the answers to these provoking questions but have we asked…? [8]

Gob Squad, “Dancing With Our Neighbours,” 2024

Making fragile work that perhaps asks difficult questions in challenging ways requires a degree of sensitivity, protection, and support – economically and socially. The opening up of spaces to critical exchange takes years of trust-building and shared partnership with other groups, organizations, and individuals. Not least thanks to relatively stable funding over the past years, we have been able to form and maintain such partnerships – e.g., locally, with “HAU to connect,” a part of Hebbel am Ufer’s team creating programs with neighbors and artists, or internationally, with Common Wealth. Both partners retain a strong need for artistic integrity in their outcomes, whilst being fiercely committed to an “open space” concept of participation directly with the communities on their doorsteps.

Every artist, group, and institution is different. But what we all need, now more than ever, is solidarity. Especially in a time when hostility and drama seem to have become easy entertainment and provide a new level of distraction. Staying focused will be one of our hardest tasks. Attention is one of the most valuable things we own. Our attention has the power to acknowledge someone or something, bringing it into existence beyond itself. It confers a place within the world, giving birth to and holding in existence.

There will be no phoenix rising from the ashes of cuts to culture, and the effects that the cuts will have will not be quantifiable. When something disappears, the gap it leaves behind soon seamlessly blends into everyday life because we forget what once was, and what’s been lost. Just as when it's freezing cold it's hard to remember what warmth feels like.

Being aware of our solidarity and what we spend our attention on is a practice we can immediately adopt and apply: pay attention to your attention.

Gob Squad is a seven-headed monster, a multinational arts collective with seven bosses, a patchwork family, a Berliner institution and a social utopia. Gob Squad have been devising, directing and performing together since 1994, working where theatre meets art, media and real life. Always on the hunt for beauty amidst the mundane, they place their work at the heart of urban life. Everyday life and magic, banality and idealism, reality and entertainment are all set on a collision course and the unpredictable results are captured on video. Motivated by a desire for collective experience and meaningful encounters, they often invite local guests, audience members or passersby to step beyond their traditional roles and look for ways to transcend barriers of language, class, age and culture. Core members are Johanna Freiburg, Sean Patten, Sharon Smith, Berit Stumpf, Sarah Thom, Bastian Trost and Simon Will joined by a pool of collaborating artists.

Image credit: Courtesy of Gob Squad; photos 1. David Baltzer / Bildbühne.de; 2. Manuel Reinartz; 4. Manuel Reinartz, 5. Dorothea Tuch