Usually the story goes the other way. Usually the artists move in at the start and are moved out at the end. Usually the artists do the scrubbing and weeding and revitalizing and repainting of a place, only to be shown the door to the next rough edge of town. So that's why this story is different.
I sit at a dinner party outside an old repair station for trains, the switch yard in view, listening to Paul Elsner tell me of his adventure saving this studio space from the city of Dresden. Overgrown tracks, languid sumacs and chestnuts against the dusky sky where the word MEGA glows in big red letters above a warehouse. Paul was walking through these yards on the northwest side of Dresden eleven years ago when he peeked into a broken window of the repair station to see a vision. Two stories of metal framed windows in sand-stucco walls, ancient grease smell in the air, elevated work platforms, spacious rooms that would be perfect for repurposing into studios for artists and architects.
"I thought, who owns this place? What can be done to bring it to life?" Paul takes a drink of his Meinz Pils, waves hello to a lanky man arriving by bicycle to the party, then continues with his story. "So I found the owners, Deutsche Bahn, the German railway . They said, 'Yes, you may rent it. Just we don't want to be responsible for anything. You do everything and take all the risk.' Then we signed a contract which gave us no protections except that they must tell us three months before eviction."
On that paper-thin agreement, they moved forward. Other artists joined Paul in cleaning, arranging, fixing and switching the repair station onto tracks of a new destiny. Stock rooms converted to studios; catwalks of dangling wire cleared of hazards; an open main floor where a bar was built and events are held with the roll-top doors raised to a view of the leafy rusty yard. Events like this dinner party to celebrate Paul's birthday on a late spring evening.
"We say artists are the thing that heats the water in coils and sends it out again: like a boiler. Artists are the boiler in a society. They reheat the cold water and make circulation."
"But boilers aren't removed in the end."
"No. That is why I like this story," he smiles. "They wanted to move the boiler. It was a very difficult year. One day a man came looking around. What are you doing here? he asked, amazed at everything. I asked the same of him. He showed me his papers. I'm from the city, he said. And you should not be here."
Paul stands to kiss goodbye a friend who's departing. The long table is cluttered with dishes and wine and beer bottles and tobacco pouches. The man who had arrived on bicycle begins grilling wursts over a portable grill. Others recline in humorous conversation, occasionally speaking English to accommodate their American guest. The friend walks off, becoming a shadow in the yard, and Paul sits down again. In the European manner, he's hosting his own birthday party as a gift to his friends. He's a focused, affable man, smartly dressed in sport coat and jeans, his black hair combed back, his blue eyes squinting thoughtfully. He was raised in East Germany, shepherded through the DDR schooling system to become an electrical engineer, before the Wall fell and he found architecture to be his truer calling. Architecture and art inspired by ideas of language, such as Marshall Mcluhan's concept that modes of communication inform our societal norms. Presently he has a light installation on the roof of Kraftwerk-Mitte, a former power station in Dresden. It's a large LED display that, as Paul explained earlier, "deals with what it means to convert the alphabet into the binary code, and vice versa."
Paul refills our glasses and resumes his story. The man snooping about the station was an official from the Planning Department. The city of Dresden had just purchased the rail yard and repair station, and the official, coming to examine the property, had no idea anyone was inhabiting the place. Both men were vexed at each other's presence.
"It's a little strange they didn't know we are here," says Paul. "Or they knew, but they acted not to know. They were ready to send us away. But, but, I had this contract they couldn't ignore. And we showed them news stories of our events and shows, so they saw we had a history of being responsible for the place. Still, Planning wanted us out. They wanted their big design to rebuild this area with two schools. But in the Cultural Department we had some friends. So we dug in and worked with them. And always I had this contract with me as the principal leaseholder, something they couldn't ignore.
"But they gave us a challenge. They made a list of improvements we had to make, expensive ones. I thought, how can we pay for this? We had a newsletter with circulation of over six hundred. I came up with this number: 600 times ten. If everyone gave ten euro we would have six thousand for the improvements. And everyone came through, supporting us. We put the necessary electric brake on the roll door (which it never had for decades and all was fine.) We made some further electrical improvements, we did all that was wanted. And they accept us now into their plan. They will build two schools, a primary and a high school on the yards. But they will leave this green area open and our studio space to us.
"And we are changing the relationship so we have an association, and perhaps a non-profit to run the events and make a permanent bar here. For me, I must change a little too. I can't be the main person anymore. It's a bit too much. In German we say you are a dancer with your legs spread out, so you can't move one way or another. I made this place for my art, but it's become a job that keeps me from my art. So we change it for the better, I think. And the important thing is: we're still here."
Paul sits back and savors the evening, the table surrounded by friends and artists, the orange sky behind ragged sumacs at the back of the yard, the soft air clinking with the sounds of raised glasses and conversation where once trains were brought to be renewed. And where, the tracks switched by a degree, trains of a different kind are still brought today.
