TURBA
Arts of the Working Class
Germany
Across Europe, cultural spaces are closing, solidarity movements criminalised,
communities displaced by war and polarisation. These are pressures Mediterranean spaces
have navigated for years. The knowledge of how to survive and visions of what to build after
collapse exist. Not circulating. A space in Tunis kept its doors open when funding collapsed. A
space in Berlin is trying to do the same. Between them: movements carrying knowledge neither
space has heard.
Arts of the Working Class and Space of Urgency host the first node of TURBA, reclaiming space
for cultural resistance, seed by seed.
Once a month a space in Berlin opens. Grassroots movements,
artists, and cultural workers gather, and a screen connects them live to a space in the
Mediterranean already through what Berlin fears is coming. Someone shares how they kept
their doors open when funding collapsed. Knowledge that took years to earn moves across the
room in an evening.
This is the heart of TURBA: a mutual aid network and independent media platform connecting
cultural spaces and grassroots movements across Europe and the Mediterranean, so the
knowledge of how to survive, resist, and build starts circulating.
A filmmaker documents six practitioners, three from European spaces, three from the
Mediterranean: what have you figured out? What are you building after systems fail? Filmed
portraits unearthing buried knowledge and visions of what comes after collapse. They introduce
the people the network mobilises around.
A movement that needs a lawyer finds one. A space that needs a filmmaker finds one.
Emergency support gets named and the network responds. Everything learned becomes a
practical guide any space can use to build their own node.
The soil is being fertilised.