Needless to say, 2020 has been a challenging year for everyone, not only for creatives. When we wrote our last review about 2019, there was just no way of knowing what the next twelve months would bring. Between the global pandemic, environmental crisis and many social and political movements across the globe, it is important to reflect on the lessons we have learned and how we have grown, in order to find meaning in this crazy year.
2020 has definitely changed the world immensely in so many ways – the way we create, the way we work, the way we live. This new way of living required all of us to adapt, but also made time to rediscover and restart. For some of us, this transition stripped away all the distractions and left space for productivity and creativity. It has been a time to slow down, to reevaluate our priorities, to rediscover, and restart – professionally and personally.
In the face of canceled projects and events, lost clients, production delays, self-quarantine and the disruption of our daily routines, not everyone might have been able to be productive during those uncertain and overwhelming times – and that’s okay too. Acknowledging that we are all experiencing this stressful situation, we should not put too much pressure on ourselves or on others, to self-improve, to work hard or be productive in any other way.
That said, it is important to understand that we are all going through this together. 2020 has revealed the importance of community and building a supportive network. With collaboration at the heart of C24, we want to work on strengthening our community and increasing diversity and inclusion on our platform in the upcoming year. We are always open for any kind of feedback, criticism or suggestions, as it helps us growing and improving.
We are thankful for every form of support that has reached us in the last year, for every interview, every contribution, every collaboration. We hope to see you back in the beginning of this year and wish all of you a safe, healthy and happy new year. Let’s see what 2021 holds for us!
SIX PERSPECTIVES ON 2020
In order to leave room for other perspectives on the past year, here are some thoughts from artists, designers and creatives from our interviews:
EUROPIUM
“As for everyone else, this has not been an easy year, in our case especially when launching a new practice it means the process of everything is much slower. We are much less able to attend social events, meet new contacts, set up meetings, and it is even difficult to foresee a clear future for the studio. However the situation has not held us back from producing and making. We spent confinement together and kept ourselves very busy working on some projects, documenting/editing our work, and designing and launching our website. We even produced some self-initiated projects, an aspect of our practice that is very important to us and that has been a real source of comfort and pro-activity. It’s a dynamic that we both need and luckily we are able to continue to research and produce in these uncertain times, hoping the future will hold easier days for everyone.“ Read more
GABRIEL MASSAN
“I looked at my own situation as a newcomer to Berlin. As an immigrant from a Latin American country, descendant of black and indigenous people, queer and artist. What being who I was, a person in the process of immigrating during a pandemic, told me. I went through a rediscovery. Deep and distressing. There were so many points to be discussed. And I was isolated. Days and days inside my room, living in a city that I didn’t know and that didn’t want to know me either. I decided to tell about this wall that separated me from the others, protected me and cornered me. And how it had been built or acquired by me, and how my own body was also a wall. It was built under the same needs.” Read more
CLUB LATE MUSIC
“The global challenges we currently face are of a true complexity, and they are diluted across intricate layers of society. The response we give to them must be equally complex, and therefore needs various profiles to come together and go beyond their own interests. But it’s not easy, as the past decades have exacerbated the importance of the individual, so we need to learn (or re-learn?) how to interact together in a meaningful way to develop new models. We believe the tools we have at our disposal, with all their flaws, can be of great help to that. They are unprecedented in human history. We must take this opportunity to learn to use them in this context for what we believe in.“ Read more
ANNA ZIMMERMANN UND NADJA ZERUNIAN
“As mentioned before we tried to identify situations that defined our last months and what we imagined were collective experiences. The confined legally enforced continuous togetherness that made not only the fragility of our relationships apparent, but also the cautiousness required to keep these intact. The loss of self, the feeling to disappear, to vanish when dialogue and exchange came to halt. The new routines that were needed to structure our days. Strong memories triggering longing for future intimacy. We gave Voids and Loneliness the substantial weight they deserved. We visualized the grinding obsessiveness of our darker than dark moments. We started going round in circles, turned into voyeurs of other people’s perfect lives – while reducing our communication to a few emojis. We also took the opportunity to reassess our values, embracing rare moments of clarity – while pausing from the repetitiveness of every day life.” Read more
LIEL BOMBERG AND KARIN KIMEL
“The last few months remind us that political values are inherent and inseparable in any queer activity whatsoever- starting with its very existence. Our responsibility as humans, especially as queer artists and designers, is to use our platforms to constantly uplift and empower marginalized voices. We need to build and sustain environments within our field that promote opportunities for our sisters and brothers from the LGBTQIA+ community. But most importantly, us creatives carry a responsibility to use our critical thinking towards the world to constantly challenge and work to abolish oppressive systems, within ourselves and the world around us.” Read more
HIATUS COLLECTIVE
“The message we want to spread with this project is probably that design can and should go beyond its own discipline. We want to show that there is room for design to experiment outside the common areas of commerce and culture. It is time for the designer to acknowledge that his responsibility goes beyond flooding the internet with posters about the washing of the hands, and instead provoke discussions, give opinions and raise questions about the situation in which we live.” Read more
