Offering apartments for rent on a temporary basis or sharing an apartment are possible options for those who can no longer pay the rent or who need to travel on short notice for a project. Or when cultural institutions don’t pay on time. Or when sociopolitical conditions make it necessary to cohabit to make ends meet. The friendship between Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht was based on such conditions. Shortly after Benjamin had written about Brecht’s epic theater, they developed a “typology of domesticity.” A diary entry Benjamin wrote during this period reveals that home life was his favorite topic.

kunstraum_8020, which transposes Benjamin’s themes onto today’s world, has taken up Benjamin and Brecht’s collaboration as a way to mount an exhibition not only in the classical art context but also as a post in online marketplaces. The 25-minute apartment tours on six different days also constitute the exhibition project Living with Benjamin and Brecht, featuring works by Markus Wilfling, Minh Duc Pham, and Bettina Allamoda, whose medium straddle the border between sculpture and social sculpture.