Kathrin Böhm

Company Drinks

United Kingdom · Visual Arts

Kathrin works across interdependent realms of cultural production, including the art world. Her organising and constructing supports collective forms of (re-)producing public space, taking back the economy for people and the planet and enabling a new trans-localism that acknowledges the rural.

Since the mid 1990s Kathrin has expanded the terms of socially engaged ways of working by co-producing complex spatial, visual and economic forms. These often entail the production and ongoing re-production of organisational infrastructures, manifested in collectives such as Myvillages (since 2003), Public Works (active 1999–2012), Keep it Complex -Make it Clear (2016 -2020) and Company Drinks (since 2014).

Kathrin teaches and publishes regularly and as a researcher contributes to the wider topics of New Economy, Usership of Art and Re-production of Public Space. 

In 2020 Kathrin stopped initiating new projects and engaged in a process of ‘composting’ what she had produced as an artist so far, in order to make ‘fertiliser’ for evolving long-term infrastructures such as The Centre for Plausible Economies c/o Company Drinks and Myvillages’ Rural School of Economics.

Company Drinks, a community economy drinks enterprise and space for commoning in Barking, east London, photo: Jennifer Balcombe

Double Sided Coin, diagram co-designed by the Centre for Plausible Economies and Textbook Studios for Economics the Blockbuster, Whitwoirth Art Gallery, Manchester, 2022

Kathrin Böhm is a British-German artist operating in and outside of the art world, and her work supports and enables practices of commoning and the collective (re-)production of public space.

Company Drinks (since 2014) is a drinks company based on community economies values. The “company” is an expanding network of users, collaborators and partners, who encourage each other to re-imagine new ways of working, trading and existing together. The Centre for Plausible Economies (together with Kuba Szreder) is an associated platform for mapping and reimagining economic systems, in the arts and beyond.

The Rural School of Economics is a multilingual, inter-generational and trans-local cultural infrastructure, to make visible and connect rural knowledge and practices, with a focus on land-use, drawing as language and feminist economies. It was set up and is run by Wapke Feenstra and Kathrin, both founders of Myvillages.

Kathrin Böhm in her studio in Hackney. April 2019. Image courtesy Dominick Tyler.

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