This is us, the stattLAB collective, drinking Vodka from film canisters.

We are toasting to stattLAB, a community laboratory for analogue photography and silk printing that we build during the last 1 & 1/2 year.

StattLAB was based in Stattbad, a former state swimming pool compound turned into cultural complex located in Berlin Wedding. Until few days ago, Stattbad has been the home for one of Berlin’s most visible clubs and hosted Boiler room’s sessions. Sadly, last Friday the whole building had to close down due to management negligences: long story short, no fire alarms nor emergency exits where installed in the building — especially in the dungeons of the labyrinthic club. Practically a mouse trap.

Stattbad management provided a short explanatory statement on their pages -

Due to an order from the building authorities, based on an anonymous report attacking the whole project, STATTBAD had to shut down late Friday afternoon. We’re in talks with the responsible authorities to meet the conditions. The temporary closing affects the complete independent and self-financed cultural project including the events, the gallery, the café as well as the working artists and their studios until further notice. Our goal to create a cultural event space remains. We have some leads on potential locations to host the upcoming events and will update as soon as we have confirmations.

- making it crystal clear that everyone running operations in the building had to leave as soon as possible. That’s about 200 people.

As a consequence, stattLAB too had to leave the building.

We are now packing our enlargers, printing facilities and personal belongings and looking for a new home for our collective.