Dining with Princess

Kemmler Foundation: What is the origin story of "Princess"?

Princess: We both met as colleagues for a fashion retailer doing graphic design some years ago, and after going freelance a year later, found ourselves sharing a studio space together on Oranienstraße. We became close friends, and increasingly found our worlds intertwined. The studio space on Oranienstraße was, in some sense, a little incubator for the two of us. We saw it as a kind of perfect setting for the many ideas we’d ping-pong between one another. From the seeds we sowed two years ago, producing dinners together for friends and friends of friends, Princess has grown into a graphic design and web development studio. We have always been motivated, as many people are, to bring to life what we couldn’t find otherwise. 

What made you think about hosting a dinner series?

It all kind of unfurled naturally. We were going to a reading one afternoon, and both realised that we tend to have pretty bad experiences in these settings. The seating arrangements aren’t great, the sound is often poor, and there tends to be a strange hierarchy between the artist and their audience. It just wasn’t it. As the conversation matured over the following weeks, we also spoke about a feeling of Berlin missing spaces that nurtured new connections and intimate conversation, outside gallery openings and club settings.

So you just made it happen.

On a Saturday night some months later, we invited around twenty friends to our studio space for our first performative dinner. It was a small, intimate affair, pairing different friends next to each other, and asking those who were interested to read something they liked. As designers, we were of course tickled by this blank canvas we could completely design: the acts, intermissions, menus, wine pairings, invitations, scenographies, and so on and so forth. We’d ruminate over ideas on how food is shared, what etiquettes are followed, what becomes entertainment, and where you would eat. It was a smorgasbord of many things. 

Sounds quite ambitious!

Our first dinner was very DIY. As we said, we invited around twenty friends to our studio, and garnished desk tables with bunches of herbs and spreads of lettuce. We made sure there was around two-kilos of whipped butter next to some thick slabs of sourdough, just to make sure everyone was full. We fashioned a forty by two metre long roll of curtain to create a ceiling under the ceiling. There wasn’t a kitchen at the studio, so everything was market-fresh and put together that same afternoon. It was truly a labour of love. Throughout the course of the evening, friends would simply stand up from their chairs, and read. Fast forward two years, and we’re working together with you at the Kemmler Foundation.

What was your vision for the dinner at Kemmler Foundation?

“Child’s Play” was the theme for the dinner and actually the first thing we decided on - it inspired everything else. We invited sixty friends and friends of friends, along with an incredible group of artists (Céline Mathieu, Octavia Bürgel, Nikolas Brummer, Theresa Patzschke and Olga Hohmann, KF), a set designer, some chefs, and a sommelier, who completely transformed the Kemmler space over the following five hours. Throughout the five courses, we set the stage for an inaugural play, one reading, and two performances. It was truly a blast, and gave us the privilege of working with so many talents.

In the future, how do you want to develop Princess as a project?

Now that our dinner with the Kemmler Foundation has finished, we’re changing gears back again into graphic design and web development. We’re still figuring out the right ingredients which make up a Princess recipe, to somehow include our interests in production, alongside the spheres we’re already working within.

We’ve been working between clients in Los Angeles and Berlin, for galleries, product designers, and ceramicists. We’ve got tabs on a few friends of ours who’d like to publish monographs of their work in the coming months, which excites us a lot! At some point we also want to design a series of our own objects, but that’s another gear change we’ll come to when we’re ready. All in all, we’re trying to create a body of work that’s beguiling, often with a collaborative spirit. Delving into the worlds of others and seeing it through their lens. Finding pleasures, focusing on the in-between, not forgetting to play, and building bridges. These things excite us most.

"Child's Play", a performative dinner hosted and curated by PRINCESS took place on July 12 2024 at Kemmler Foundation with performances by Céline Mathieu, Octavia Bürgel, Nikolas Brummer, Theresa Patzschke and Olga Hohmann.