Funded by the German Federal Foreign Office, the remarkable Übermut Project launched by Berlin and Hamburg provides German artists and creatives with a chance to present themselves to a global audience. The project not only creates a space and infrastructure to support exchanges and networking, but also an international stage where a broad spectrum of artists and creatives can offer a direct insight into Germany’s creative potential and diverse event landscape. But how do you present special locations, edgy ideas, unusual spaces and innovative formats? Quite simply – for example, with a Spacebuster truck and a translucent inflatable ‘bubble’, just as in America last autumn.
For six weeks, the Berlin artists and architects’ collective raumlaborberlin took to the highway for an experimental road trip across the USA with the Spacebuster truck. On the We Like America tour, at stopovers from the Chicago Architecture Biennial to St. Louis and Cleveland and on to New York, the inflatable ‘superbubble’ provided German artists and creatives with a flexible stage. Wherever this seemingly ordinary vehicle stopped, it quickly created a large event space by pumping air into an inflatable membrane at the back of the truck. And everywhere this translucent balloon-like event space was inflated, it soon attracted an audience – and effectively promoted Berlin.