1. August 2006
“I visited places from which symbols of GDR history have been effaced.
I asked passers-by and residents to describe the objects that once filled these empty spaces.
I photographed their absence and replaced the missing monuments with their memories.”
—Sophie Calle
—Die Entfernung (The Detachment), 1996
In the five months that I have lived in Berlin, fundamental changes have taken place in Berlin’s landscape. The cold and snowy winter turned into a rainy spring, which turned into a marvelous summer and the architectural preparations for the Weltmeisterschaft, which gave the impression of impossible dreams, finally came into focus. Tramlines have been extended; the Hauptbahnhof, with its network of perpendicular levels and its curved glass roof, is open and functioning smoothly. And all in just five months.
Cities update their infrastructure all the time; there is nothing particularly remarkable about changes in public transportation or necessary maintenance construction.
But Berlin presents a special case: Upon closer examination, each change is not only an alteration but an addition that fills an empty space in this city’s landscape. This is not only a sign of the city’s status as a “work in progress”—a bit unusual for a capital city in Central Europe—but the many historical causes for Berlin’s patchwork personality. And this unfinished quality, still apparent even sixteen years after the Wall fell, is what makes Berlin such a fertile space for artists and gallerists.
Empty lots and decaying facades have become canvasses for the graffiti artists crawling all over the city. A building-sized man, clad in a skin-tight orange shirt showing off his bosoms can be seen looming above Schlesisches Tor, courtesy of the Brazilian twins Os Gemeos, while the quieter wheat-paste cut-outs by New York graffiti artist Swoon are pasted outside Görlitzer Park and on Fehrbelliner Straße. This immediately apparent characteristic of Berlin’s landscape was officially introduced into art institutions last summer, when Kunsthaus Bethanien sponsored an exhibition of Berlin’s graffiti artists in an exhibition called Backjumps, the Live Issue #2.
An abundance of galleries, too, have sprung up in the last sixteen years, filling the empty buildings in neighborhoods situated in the shadow of the Wall. For example Zimmerstraße, just around the corner from the now tourist-ridden but historically significant Checkpoint Charlie, houses some of Berlin’s most successful and exciting gallery spaces, such as Max Hetzler Gallery, Barbara Weiss Gallery, Arndt & Partner, and Klosterfelde. Even the arches beneath the S-Bahn near Jannowitzbrücke have been transformed into gallery space, some with cracked and uneven concrete floors, including Max Hetzler’s second space, Büro Friedrich, and carlier / gebauer.
The work on display in each of these spaces could exist in other cities. Perhaps. But the exhibition of the work of Haluk Akakçe, a Turkish artist, at both of the Hetzler spaces, might not have the same significance outside Berlin, which contains the largest population of Turks outside Turkey itself. The rough quality of many of the works as well, and the rawness of the spaces—often left with flaws intact or even purposely exaggerated—corresponds specifically to unfinished, untamed Berlin.
The Barbara Weiss Gallery, for example, consists of four medium-sized rooms, only two of which are currently employed to display work by Frederike Feldmann and Rebecca Morris. Both artists display works on un-gessoed canvases or with encaustic paint; the resulting texture is as rich as that of city outside, with its rough edges and unfinished or decaying buildings. Feldmann’s encaustic paintings offer a blurry, yellow-tinted version of what appear to be grand spaces from the 19 th century, as if the artist is trying with all his might, eyes squinted, to see and depict a way of life that feels entirely estranged from Berlin in 2006.
The remaining room in Barbara Weiss is white and empty, save for the red border painted around each wall, itself uneven and jagged. Such a large, unused art space might be considered a crime in cramped cities like New York, but this is what makes Berlin so unique. Indeed, the tendency of Berlin’s artist community to make use of every available space as an opportunity, to use all of Berlin’s gaps as material and as exhibition space, is recognizable and firmly established. This characteristic of the Berlin art scene is no longer just an underground side effect, but an ingrained, repeated, and in fact marketable asset.
The perfect example is the recent 4 th Berlin Biennale für Zeitgenossische Kunst held earlier this spring, hosted by Kunst Werke from March 28 until June 6, and curated by Maurizio Cattelan, Massimiliano Gioni, and Ali Subotnick. Perhaps partially in response to the absence of a large exhibition hall suitable to their purposes, but also in an effort to capture Berlin’s specific spirit, the curators made the choice to expand the Biennale beyond Kunst Werke, along the length of Mitte’s Auguststraße, to intensify the effect of the jarring show they had already assembled. The show itself, entitled “Von Mäusen und Menschen / Of Mice and Men,” sought to document the trauma of human existence. To this end, the exhibition stretched literally from a church to a cemetery, and its location in private apartments and offices as well as in established institutions mixed public and private to offer a microcosm of an entire society.
But even more fascinating—and harrowing—is the use of now defunct spaces, such as the Former Jewish School for Girls, to exhibit. Shut down by the Nazis in 1942, the school resumed its identity as a place of learning only after the Second World War. During the regime of the GDR, the school was re-opened only to be closed again in 1996. The peeling wallpaper of the school, its’ faded posters, murals, and graffiti, reveal the ravages that both a complex and painful past, as well as the simple passage of time, have wreaked here. The specters of history that continue to haunt Berlin, its residents, and its rebirth as a cultural center, are made explicit in this deliberate choice of venue.
The layers of time and space evident in this and each of the Biennale’s locations evoked a sense of impenetrability, or of how incomplete the city remains. But perhaps this was a perfectly apt reflection of a city— Berlin, in 2006—that has not yet fully fleshed out its identity, its direction, or its solutions.
In fact, the Jewish Girl’s School’s reopening as a space for contemporary art may hint at the city’s future. The city’s increasingly established reputation as a crossroads for artistic exchange and creation may be the force that restores and renews bankrupt, unemployed, and historically scarred Berlin.
If the Biennale was the moment in which this uniquely-Berlin tendency became solidified and celebrated in an international event, there are other examples of this cycle—of Berlin’s underground art scene feeding into established institutions—that are not yet complete. Nothing symbolizes this use of empty space, its destruction and recreation, and its subsequent appearance in the established art world of museums and galleries more than the Palast der Republik.
As the former seat of the East German government as well as a site for East Berlin’s cultural events, the bronze-glass façade of the Palast symbolizes a regime, and a way of life, that has been dismantled and replaced. And, like the government it used to house, the Palast der Republik is slated to suffer the same fate: currently in the process of being torn down, the building will be replaced, first by a large hole at the very center of the city, eventually by a copy of its predecessor, the Stadtschloss, or City Palace.
The recent history of the building can be seen as a case in point for Berlin’s never-quite-completed landscape and identity, and the artistic opportunism that follows Berlin’s developments wherever they crop up. The decision to begin destruction of the former “Volkspalast” was confirmed only this past January, but not before it could be transformed into an exhibition space just three weeks before the building’s condemnation.
In December 2005, the artistic community, lead by White Cube Berlin and the brains behind its idea, Coco Kuhn and Constance Kleiner, seized the opportunity to use the Palast der Republik as a Kunsthalle. The symbolic meaning of such a gesture is clear: by usurping the location of the former government, the 36 participating artists, all working and living in Berlin, asserted the power of Berlin’s artistic community. In addition, the location of the Palast der Republik—right beside the symbols of high-culture found in the multiple collections of the Museumsinsel—draws attention to the cultural importance of contemporary art as a movement that should be recognized and appreciated along established works.
The exhibition, entitled 36 x 27 x 10 after the metrical dimensions of the Palast, also sought to point out what is missing in Berlin despite its 300 galleries and 20,000 artists: a cutting-edge, large-scale exhibition space. The invitation to the event read:
“In Berlin, an art space is forming which to this point had not been imaginable…. The participating artists [of White Cube Berlin] want to draw attention to a historical moment at which such a site, shortly before its destruction, can reflect the artistic and aesthetic situation that Berlin creates in a specific way. Furthermore, with their participation in the exhibition, the artists call for preserving and using this exceptional building as an exhibitions pace for contemporary art.”
White Cube may not have succeeded in its most concrete aim—the Palast der Republik is being demolished as this article goes to press, and the lack of a replacement exhibition hall remains, like so many problems in Berlin, unresolved—but the message was heard: the Berlin art scene is powerful, both in its particular idiosyncrasies and in the quantity and quality of its creative production.
The growing fascination with these unique Berlin qualities exists not just among viewers, but among artists as well. Berlin itself is often the subject of the art produced here, such as in Christine Hill’s current installation at Galerie Eigen + Art. Hill created her own company, known as the Volksboutique, using her experiences as an entrepreneur to feed her artistic output, and then began an archive of different shops in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin. Her work emphasizes the personal histories—often long-lived, painful, and complex—behind even the smallest neighborhood establishments, and peers behind Berlin’s façade to make its personal side more clear.
The Palast der Republik, too, has become a topic for many artists working in Berlin; so much so, that there is an exhibition on display at the Hamburger Bahnhof through August 27, 2006 about the building and the art it has inspired. Tacita Dean, whose work was also shown at White Cube, made videos of the renowned bronze windows of the building, recording the light reflecting off its surface. Thomas Florschuetz’s large-scale photographs freeze the phases of the Palast’s destruction, a project that so current and fresh that it could almost be construed as journalism.
The exhibition also features a series by Sophie Calle, originally shown by Galerie Arndt & Partner in 1996, entitled “Die Entfernung (The Detachment).” After photographing the spaces in which symbols of the GDR once stood, Calle asked passers-by to describe what has been removed. She then produced a collective text of the contradictory responses from Berliners in an effort both to record the memory of what was there, but also to replace the emptiness with these recollections. One such symbol—a bronze wreath of barley with a hammer and sickle in the center—once hung on the outside of the Palast der Republik.
Calle’s work appropriately draws attention to the process of filling holes left by the steady march of history, the processes of confronting absence, and the importance of remembrance. And as her work makes clear, these holes are not always filled with new buildings or monuments, but with reflection and memory.
Many of the Berliners that participated in Calle’s project commented on how strange it felt to have central symbols and monuments removed after 27 years. In particular, many expressed the feeling that these items had been stolen from them by a foreign regime, without their consent.
Though Calle’s work was done at time when the Palast remained intact at Berlin’s center, her methods and concept lead us to the questions: Why destroy this building, despite the outcry of Berlin’s citizens? And what will Berliners say about the Palast der Republik once it is only a memory?
The show at the Hamburger Bahnhof that includes the work of Calle, Dean, and Florschuetz, is partially an elegy to those parts of Berlin’s history that are currently being erased. Another hole will be created in the city’s landscape. Hope for a transformed Kunsthalle is, at least temporarily, lost. And the possibility of integrating an ambiguous symbol of the city’s past into its historical landscape will be gone forever.
That these works are on display at the Hamburger Bahnhof, an established museum for post-war art, allows a glimmer of optimism in the face of these losses. Like with Berlin’s Biennale, the transformation of Berlin’s empty spaces by art and creativity has penetrated the walls of internationally acclaimed art spaces. The Palast der Republik may be a lost cause, but an artistic community that sought to make itself heard—that has transformed Berlin’s gray corners into lively and fertile space—is being recognized and celebrated for its role in Berlin’s renewal. And rightly so.