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fabrikneu was a cross-media working group and community of six people who lived and worked in a loft in Berlin Kreuzberg.

Claudia and Jürgen Skoda had already lived in a loft with Jenny Capitain and Klaus Krüger, before they all moved to this new location in Kreuzberg in 1972.

Jürgen was a mason and sculptor. In the early 70s he earned his living by designing and creating polyester objects, furniture and living areas for apartments and shops.
He was the one in fabrikneu who "built" fabrikneu, constructing the stage and the pedestals in fabrikneu's huge media room and helped us to design and build our private rooms.

In 1976, he supported Kippi - who had moved in after we had moved out of fabrikneu - to fix and seal  » 1300 Kippenberger photos to the floor of the media room
and create the huge tableau
EINE WOCHE IM LEBEN DER FAMILIE SKODA UND BEKANNTENKREIS
which became the infamous
KIPPENBERGER CATWALK
in fabrikneu
(have a look  » HERE ).

 » Claudia built her career as a
knitwear fashion designer here in fabrikneu.
Her knitted dresses, sweaters, trousers and accessories were more objects of art than ordinary street fashion. Each piece was an hand-made original, produced on a hand driven Japanese knitting machine.
In 1973, we had the first experimental fashion show - using the boardwalk along a rotten and political shibboleth bedaubed  » Kreuzberg wall as catwalk.

In 1972, Jenny studied photography and graphic design in her final years at the Berlin HdK, as did Klaus Krüger. Jenny teamed with Claudia to produce Claudia's knitwear designs and did a lot of planning and organizing work for the fashion shows in fabrikneu and other impressive locations like Gropiusbau and  » Kongresshalle.
 » Later Jenny started a model career, became close friend of Helmut Newton in Paris, worked as stylist and editorial journalist at American Vogue in New York.

 » Klaus was a drummer at heart but still had to earn his living in a part-time job in a record store. Later, beginning in the mid 70s, he was recording and touring with Tangerine Dream, and with Iggy Pop until the late 70s.
He recorded his own music in the early 80s using his self-built seven pieces polyester drum set.

Then I moved in, in the winter of 1972/1973, whilst  » Angelik Riemer was still doing a year abroad in London after graduating from the Berlin HdK master class.

Returning to Berlin, Angelik immediately begun the first of her  » nine stages of painting: she painted large egg tempera on canvas formats of "ROOMS", as in London's Slade School of Fine Arts she exclusively had produced large-format etchings showing these rooms.

I had to work in the church archives for my PhD - but most of the time I was shooting Super8 clips and films in and around fabrikneu: Claudia's fashion production and the  » shows or Angelik's  » world of images or some  » imaginative short film productions with friends.

Day and night friends dropped in for a coffee, a drink, a joint. People chatted, laughed, discussed - there was a lively exchange of opinions, views and attitudes from all areas of art and culture. Or we squeezed ourselves into the VW Bully owned by Klaus and off we went to  » raid a club somewhere in Berlin.

fabrikneu it was.