About

Fluentum is a non-profit platform for the production, collection and presentation of contemporary art with a focus on time-based media, in particular moving image. It was founded by Berlin software entrepreneur Markus Hannebauer, who started collecting video art in 2010 when visiting LOOP in Barcelona for the very first time. On the occasion of this festival and art fair he found a piece by American video artist Reynold Reynolds called Secret Machine that became the first in a growing collection of works.

Markus decided to give the collection its own name to step behind the works and present all activities related to them, which are not necessarily initiated by the collector himself. As a private venture, Fluentum is subject to personal taste. Still, it aims at supporting artistic works that are relevant to a broader public.

Fluentum is located in the main building of a former military compound on Clayallee in Berlin-Dahlem, built during the Nazi era in the late 1930s and originally used as an administrative and barracks complex by the German Air Force. After World War II, the building served as headquarters of the United States Army from 1945 to 1994—the famous Berliner Luftbrücke (Berlin Airlift) was directed from here.

After four years of redesign by Berlin-based architects Sauerbruch Hutton, the listed building today serves as an exhibition and private space. On over 600 square meters, not only works from Fluentum's own collection are made accessible to the public; the focus is rather on thematically related group exhibitions and extensive solo shows. Likewise, the space functions as a testimony to a conflict-laden as well as contradictory chronicle. The confrontation with the history of the building as well as its architecture therefore plays a key role in a continuous examination within the exhibitions and beyond.

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