Kotti & Co.
The tenant initiative Kotti & Co was founded in 2011 in order to protest against the rising rents within berlins social housing and to obtain its reformation. Besides the rentstruggle issue other central topics of the initiative are the history of migration, racism as well as the economic issues and the neighborhood.
“It’s not about multiculti-, integration- or tolerance chitchat. It’s about the average contact between different people. Not only do we tolerate each other. We are curious about each other and face each other with respect. Every human is diverse. This is our fundamental attitude.”
In 2012 Kotti & Co errected a protest-house (the Gecekondu ) over night at the Kottbusser Tor in Berlin Kreuzberg. Combined with extensive protest campaigns, diverse media formats and expertise the initiative formed itself to a central venue of a new rental and urban development policy – as well as for issues of migration, racism and poverty.
“We are like you, like all at the Gecekondu, but of course we are also not new humans – this society is also reflected in us with all its dividing lines and irritations. Parallel universes of unemployment and a steady job, university and lower secondary education, German, Persian, Arabic, English and Greek and Turkish speaking etc. fat, thin, old, young – and all in a mix… Every day we live a thousand contradictions, biases, categories. Just how this society is constituted today.” (from Merhaba, Salam und schönen guten Tag,.. Kotti & Co 2012)
Our interest in the research project “Welcoming Neighborhoods” is what conditions, structures and resources are needed in order to be able to practice a welcoming culture. Furthermore we want to know how the structural conditions of the so called “Gastarbeiter*innen migration” can be connected with those of the new arriving refugees since 2015.
Website: www.kottico.net
Movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS6KrhBcvVU
Photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kottiundco/