Benjamin Foerster Baldenius, raumlabor_berlin

A big bright studio with indirect light so that when you’re painting or sculpting, the sun casts no side shadows on the artistic object. It would be good to have a small shelf in the room on which you can deposit your mobile phone, video camera or laptop and avoid having them lie around on that small round table among ashtrays, empty paper coffee cups, half-eaten herb cheese spread and jars with paintbrushes in solvent. A small flap door in the window and a staircase leading to the garden for the cat that you bring along.
An exhibition space in the focus of public attention, preferably underground, that does efficient PR work, sends out invitation cards and emails, and provides professional support in producing a catalogue. An old lady who manually embroiders the address stickers on the invitation cards. A bit of money on your account every month, just enough to pay for what isn’t already provided: food, work materials, public transport, cigarettes, a sailing yacht, clothes, services, embroidery thread, pleasure. Someone who picks you up at the train station and shows you around, who hands you a city map and answers your first questions upon arriving in a new place. Where to find the next scrap yard, for instance, where the gay scene meets, where the nicest place under a bridge is and where to meet Klaus Biesenbach.

A nice flat that isn’t IKEA-furnished, set in a lively community, with a nice view and friendly next-door neighbours who leave you alone, and with a hardware shop around the corner. A washing machine, a good stereo system, a bike, a mobile phone, a fridge, if possible always filled with beer, butter, tomatoes, cheese. Enough to eat in the kitchen, so you can always cook something. Or a warm meal per day in the company of other grantees or varying interesting guests from the area. But no fish and no garlic. Cooked by a young ambitious cook, no canteen food. Or better still, cooking yourself.