New Berlin. Traces of urban memories / Forum, 2009

MAR

ZAHN

, 1979 > M

ARZAH

N, 1979

Prendere atto della vita nell’immediatezza del realeQuando guardo le mie vecchie foto noto sempre latranquillità della gente, i volti più rilassati, non segnatidallo stress, dalla competizione e dall’ansia. Ecco, all’epocail tempo non mancava. Certo, tutti avevano i propriproblemi, ma anche delle sicurezze. E poi le persone eranopiù naturali di fronte alla macchina fotografica... Oggi nellasocietà dei media tutto è molto meno spontaneo e diretto.Siamo più sospettosi, chi ritraggo si accorge subito diessere fotografato, si mette in posa o si rifiuta, quindi nonha senso. Ora non voglio più fotografare, non ho più leragioni che avevo. [...] Sviluppo le foto da solo, così vedoriaffiorare il passato; è come un processo di rinascita. [...]Fotografare è trattenere il respiro di fronte alla realtà chefugge, diceva Cartier Bresson. E la realtà della DDR èfuggita proprio in fretta, scomparsa per sempre... se avessisaputo che sarebbe finita così, l’avrei certamentedocumentata di più.

Gerd Danigel, luglio 2009, da un’intervista della curatrice.

Gaining insight into life through the immediacy of the realWhen I look at my old photographs I’m always struck by theserenity of the people, their more relaxed faces, unmarkedby stress, competition, or anxiety. Back then, there was noshortage of time. Certainly, everyone had their problems,but they also had security. And they were also more naturalin front of the camera... In today’s media driven societyeverything is far less spontaneous and direct. We are moresuspicious, everyone is immediately aware if they are beingphotographed and either strikes a pose or refuses, so it’spointless. Now, I don’t want to photograph anymore, I nolonger have the motives I once had. [...] I develop thephotographs myself, that way I see the past rematerialize;it’s like a process of rebirth. [...] To photograph is to holdone’s breath in the face of fleeting reality, Cartier Bressononce said, and the reality of the GDR has fled all too quickly,gone for ever... if had known things would end this way, Iwould definitely have documented more.

From an interview given to the Editor by Gerd Danigel in July 2009.

Gerd Danigel

2

Due to contractual obligations, this is only a brief excerpt.

If you wish to continue readingplease contact the publishing house.

LAVAGGIO DELLA TRABANT, 1987 > WASHING THE TRABANT, 1987

ALLA FINESTRA, 1986 > AT THE WINDOW, 1986

RESPIRARE LIBERI, SCHWEDTER STRASSE, 1989 > BREATH FREE, SCHWEDTER STRASSE, 1989

NUOVABERLINOTRACCE DI MEMORIEURBANE

NEW BERLINTRACES OF URBAN MEMORIES

A CURA DI EDITED BY LIZA CANDIDI TOMMASI C.

FORUM

NUOVA BERLINOTracce di memorie urbaneNEW BERLINTraces of urban memories

A cura di / Edited by Liza Candidi Tommasi C.Traduzioni in inglese / Translations into English by Amanda HunterTraduzioni dal tedesco / Translations from German by Liza Candidi Tommasi C. Progetto grafico / Graphic design cdm associati Stampa / Print Poligrafiche San Marco, Cormons (Go)

Copyright © 2009 by Forum, Udine, e Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento

Forum Editrice Universitaria Udinese srlVia Palladio, 8 – 33100 UdineTel. 0432 26001 / Fax 0432 296756www.forumeditrice.it

ISBN 978-88-8420-571-1

Un’iniziativa di / Project developed by

Con il sostegno di / With the support of

In collaborazione con / In collaboration with

PROVINCIA AUTONOMA DI TRENTOSOPRINTENDENZA PER I BENI LIBRARI ARCHIVISTICI E ARCHEOLOGICI

2 Gerd Danigel

Liza Candidi Tommasi C.46 Intermezzo51 Interlude

56 Robert Conrad

64 Jordis Antonia Schlösser

72 Jacopo De Marco

80 Luca Chistè

88 Marina Rosso

96 Biografie Biographies

INDICE SUMMARY

51

«Condemned forever to becoming and never being»1 was how Karl Schefflersaw Berlin’s destiny back in 1910, the «ugliest city and the most lacking inphysiognomic character»2 of Germany.Berlin’s amorphous and fragmented structure reached its extreme duringthe ‘ideological century’, the destructive and creative violence of which leftits mark on the city’s urban fabric, imbuing it with a profound radicalism.The dreams of omnipotence and the devastating annihilation of the capital ofthe Third Reich, its occupation and subsequent division into two distinct andantithetical expressions, the reunification decades later that came toembody the hopes of a new united Europe, all are assimilated within theformless structure of this dynamic yet simultaneously inert city, a citysubject to an alternating cycle of construction and demolition, frenzy andparalysis, hopes and disillusionment.Berlin is a city without tradition, the only constant in its history being change.This instability has become the catalyst for the novelty and innovation thatcharacterizes the city, a city in constant flux, a city whose identity resides in thevery negation and transcendence of identity. In Berlin, in contrast to othercities, the confusion of different architecture, an open-air historic memoir,manifests itself with a harsh, at times even hostile rawness. Just as, in thecase of neurology, experience works on our cerebral matter, leaving memorytraces of itself in the brain, so too is Berlin’s urban landscape marked by‘engrams’, deeply incised traces of its past, which represent a troublednarrative landscape – at times hidden, at times overt – the survival and readingof which strictly depend on the logic of existing power groups and on thecontingencies of the time. The city has thus become a ground for mnesticexperimentation, for the destruction and construction of memory, where thepast is constantly readapted and rewritten upon an ever changing urban face.In 1990, the institutions of the reunified city immediately set about the taskof first eliminating the signs left by Berlin’s division during the Cold War and

Interlude> Liza Candidi Tommasi C.

52

then hiding traces of the sutures. Also here we find the same explicit dialectic,inevitable to Berlin: demolish and rebuild. The swift destruction of Berlin’s alltoo uncomfortable socialist heritage proceeded in tandem with the frenziedconstruction of skyscrapers reminiscent of New York and the simultaneous, exnovo reconstruction of Prussian buildings destroyed during the 1945bombardments. Grand international architectural projects together withnostalgic restorations thus succeeded in sweeping away the inferiority complexendured by a divided Berlin and in forging the very much longed for image of atrue capital city. Berlin is a capital poised between the progressive prospects ofan imminent future and the reassuring past of Prussian glories, yetunblemished by Nazi shame or the blunders of State Socialism. And yet the stage of this brave new city is never entirely convincing. Despiteconcerted attempts to hide its incongruities and contradictions, thesepersist and are precisely what constitute the city’s charm and appeal. Theambiguities and anarchic irreverence that have characterised the city for solong continue to be its main strength and attraction. ‘Berlin, poor but sexy’ was the famous slogan launched in 2003 in prouddefence of the city’s flawed image. Berlin may have been suffering fromchronic economic shortages, but it still had the power to charm andcaptivate. Despite the efforts of its institutions, Berlin is still a monument, a eulogy to theprovisionary, the indefinite, a guarantor of a freedom that no longer seems afreedom conquered, but already a natural right. This ambiguity eschewshierarchy and stigmatization, exalts the demiurgic force of improvisation andallows for the existence of complex variables; it fosters shared experience,promotes tolerance, and welcomes difference. This extraordinary potential,shaped by its traumatic history, remains with Berlin still. Such is its elusiveness, that the new capital has not transformed itself into aplace but continues to be a space. In contrast to a place – which is loadedwith meaning as it results from an agreement or negotiation – a space issubject to continuous change, it is extended and circumscribed, conqueredand expropriated; it is not the outcome of a tacit agreement, convention, orsettlement treaty, but rather a disputed territory, a battle ground. Space, asan absolute value, can only be altered by another pure measure: time. It isthis continuous tension between the two poles that causes the city’s diverse‘memories’ to develop and flourish, creating a fusion of evocative,associative, individual and collective meanings, the spontaneity of whichphotographic testimony so eloquently captures and conveys.

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The real tensions of Berlin – «the urban experience of fragmentation, ofsimultaneousness and multiplicity, of penetration, of overlapping andsuperimposition»3 – are, according to Philipp Oswalt, best reflected inexpressionist figurative and Dadaist art and in music by the cacophonousrupture brought by punk and techno music. Yet it is the medium ofphotography which, in its merging of thought and action, is best able tocapture the soul and the eternity of the instant. The exhibition and catalogue entitled New Berlin. Traces of Urban Memoryare the outcome of a photographic project promoted by the Bruno KesslerFoundation - Italo-German Historical Studies of Trento (FBK) on theoccasion of the LII FBK study week ‘Reflections on the GDR. InternationalMultidisciplinary Perspectives 20 Years after the Fall of the Wall’. The impressions that emerge from this series of photographs are as diverseas the experiences of the photographers themselves, and include threeinternal and three external perspectives of Germany, the latter realized byItalian photographers. The first memory traces date back to a more distant past and are the workof the photographer Gerd Danigel, who was born and bred in the GDRcapital. These too depict a ‘new Berlin’, the city forged by those whoemerged from the ashes of Nazism and set off along the path towards a newfuture. Danigel’s photos, which were realized using the renownedphotographic film OrWo, capture precious glimpses of Berlin daily life in alltheir authentic spontaneity. It is this unique ability to detach himself, to seethings through the eyes of an outsider, that gives him the Archimedean pointfrom which he observes the world, and this he does with the heightenedsensibility and insight of one who already seems to foresee the end. After reunification, Danigel experienced at first hand the more shadowy sideof the West’s triumphant capitalist society and the labour market crisis thatensued. A selection of his extraordinary photographic archive on the ex-GDR– an archive consisting of more than 4,000 rolls of film – is currently beingexhibited in a market in the East of the city centre. Only in a second handmarket such as this, where value is frozen in time, it is possible to breathenew life into a past all too hastily forgotten. An extensive collection of photographs has been dedicated to this buried historyhidden beneath the debris of the Wall, each portrait prompting reflection on theperceived remoteness of that period and on what it has left behind.The second series of photographs is by Robert Conrad. Born in Greifswald,Conrad moved to East Berlin in 1986, where he joined the Prenzlauer Berg

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dissident movement. His photographic condemnation of the dilapidated stateof historical buildings and of the GDR’s building policy made him unpopularwith the government and he was consequently refused access to university.In 1990, he graduated with a degree in architecture, and has continued todocument demolished and neglected buildings: his latest target in thisunrelenting historical nemesis is the GDR’s socialist architectural heritage.Conrad’s series of raw, brazen images entitled Plattensterben – ‘deadslabs’, roughly translated – attest both the desolation of prefabricatedbuildings, the jewel in the crown of GDR urban planning, and the economicdecline and atrophy of the east of Germany today. Also in the very heart ofBerlin all the buildings that once represented the old Republic have beenswept away by the destructive impetus that relentlessly traverses the city.The third perspective represented is West German and is offered by JordisAntonia Schlösser. Born in Göttingen, Schlösser moved to Berlin in thenineties and began working for the Ostkreuz photographic agency. Her lensgoes straight to the heart of East Berlin’s crumbling districts, zooming in onthe collision between old and new and the sudden dramatic upheaval thatensued reunification. Her photograph of Potsdamer Platz with horse bringsto mind Boccioni’s The City Rises, the horse representing the manic andfrenzied change of the futuristic ‘rising city’, the years of grand hopes anddreams but, in equal measure, disappointments and losses. Beneath theshadow of omnipresent cranes, rise mountains of burrowed earth, rubbleand debris: the secretions of an autophagic city. It is hardly surprising if thefoundations of the city are subsiding in its shifting sands, which find norespite even when the winds are calm. In the 1990s, the German capital, a new star in an already familiar galaxy,became a magnet for young people wishing to contribute to a collective work ofart. Artists the world over came and settled in the city. One of these young artistswas Jacopo De Marco who, after studying photography at the IED in Milan,adopted Berlin as his new homeland, absorbing and replenishing its energy. Thus, even in the last decade of the 20th century another ‘new Berlin’ beganto take shape, a city where it seemed no dream would be denied, everythingwas possible, utopia had become a place. The portrait of Berlin thatemerges from De Marco’s photographs is of a pulsating city with a raw,anarchic energy, of dirty streets and clubs; an ideological Berlin representedby both old and new symbols; a squatters Berlin; an angry Berlin of politicaldemonstrations and ritual clashes between the forces of good and evil.Luca Chistè’s work presents a different take on the new capital. His is an

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outsider’s eye, the eye of a curious traveller with a penchant for detail, andthe Berlin that emerges from his portraits highlights the homogeneous andcontrasting colours and figures that shape the new face of the city. After thebombardments of 1945, the bold, daring fragility of the glass and steelstructures that soar skywards to dizzying heights represents an openchallenge to history, an investment of trust in a transparent future. Theclean and linear modular buildings of the administrative quarter, whichunderline the solid, long-term vision of the present institutions, depictanother ‘new Berlin’, one that also finds expression in the discordantphysiognomy of Potsdamer Platz, a simulated urban centre frequented bybureaucrats and tourists. The surgical-like scrutiny of these photographsnot only reveals a glaring artificiality, but also the newfound right of the newGerman nation to invent its own future. The series of photographs that closes the exhibition depicts the vibrant andbrightly coloured capital seen through the eyes of twenty-four year old,Udine born Marina Rosso who, after graduating in architecture, decided tocultivate a long-time passion and study photography. And it was preciselyBerlin that she chose as her training ground. What emerges through her lensis a carefree city of fun and amusement, a city of free time pleasure seekerswho, thanks to the still relatively low cost of living, are able to get by workingon creative ‘Projekte’. This multicultural capital, magnet for young people theworld over, breeding ground for innovation and laboratory of new trends, findseloquent expression in the city’s recent marketing campaign slogan ‘Be Berlin,be welcoming, be warm’. During this iconographic journey through a city whichis always new, the portraits and fragments that emerge of life in Berlin areextremely varied. By tracing these links in the metamorphic urban landscape,one is able to piece together and understand the city’s many intricate layers. Asin a palimpsest, when ultraviolet light causes erased engravings to re-emerge,here the six different perspectives reveal impressions that time has painted over– or is erasing – but which nevertheless, beneath the surface, continue toproduce effects. In transforming these captured glimpses into memory, eachphotographer uses their own personal key to reading the world, each, intheir way, expressing their warmth and love for an unfaithful city.

1 Karl Scheffler, Berlin. Ein Stadtschicksal, Berlin, Fannel & Walz, 1989 (1910), p. 219.2 Ivi, p. 195.3 Philipp Oswalt, Berlino_città senza forma, Rome, Meltemi, 2006, pp. 49-50.

Due to contractual obligations, this is only a brief excerpt.

If you wish to continue readingplease contact the publishing house.

JENA-N

EULO

BED

A, THÜ

RIN

GEN

, 2004 >JEN

A-NEU

LOB

EDA, TH

ÜR

ING

EN, 2004

Cancellati dal ventoLa tua città è oggi come straniera, come può esistere ancora?La casa è diventata una casa di lacrime, il mio cuore è come d’acqua...Ur e i suoi templisono stati cancellati dal vento. [...]A Ur è stata concessa la regalitànon le è stato concesso il regno eterno. Fin dai giorni antichi, quando fu fondata Sumer, fino a oggi, che le genti si sono moltiplicate, chi ha mai visto un regno che dura per sempre?

‘Lamentazione sulla distruzione di Sumer e Ur’, testosumerico del XXII sec. a.C., in Zecharia Sitchin, ‘Guerreatomiche al tempo degli dei’, Milano, Piemme Edizioni, 1999, pp. 360-361.

Swept away by the wind Your city has become a strange city, how can you still exist? The house has become a house of tears, it makes my heart like water...Ur and its temples have been swept away by the wind[...]Ur was indeed granted kingship,but it was not granted eternal reign. From time immemorial, since Sumer was founded, until today that the people have multiplied,who has ever seen a reign of kingship that would last for ever?

‘The Lamentation over the destruction of Sumer and Ur’,Sumerian text 2200 BC, in Zecharia Sitchin, ‘Guerre atomiche al tempo degli dei’, Milan, Piemme Edizioni, 1999,pp. 360-361.

Robert Conrad

56

WITTSTO

CK

, BR

AND

ENB

UR

G, 2007 >

WITTSTO

CK

, BR

AND

ENB

UR

G, 2007

L’arbitrio esattoBerlino è una città giovane, sfortunata e ancora da venire.La sua tradizione ha un carattere frammentario. [...] Unaconfusione ordinata; un arbitrio esatto e pianificato; unosmarrimento che appare rivolto a un preciso obiettivo. Mai così tanto ordine si è accompagnato al disordine, cosìtanto spreco alla miseria, così tanto ragionamentoall’incoscienza, così tanto sistema al delirio. Se il destinopuò essere capriccioso, allora è per un capriccio della sortetedesca che questa città è diventata la capitale dellanazione. Come se volessimo mostrare agli occhi del mondoquanto tutto sia più difficile per noi rispetto ad altri! [...] Oraci ritroviamo questa capitale. I suoi interessi sono diventati inostri. Dal suo passato, del quale siamo responsabili soloparzialmente, dovremmo comprendere come sarà il suofuturo, del quale la Germania intera si assume l’interaresponsabilità.

Joseph Roth, ‘Das steinerne Berlin’, 1930, in Michael Bienert, ‘JosephRoth in Berlin. Ein Lesebuch für Spaziergänger’, Köln, Kiepenheuer &Witsch, 1996, pp. 163-165.

Exact arbitrarinessBerlin is a young and unhappy city of the future. Its traditionhas a fragmentary nature. [...] A tidy mess, an exactarbitrariness, a purposeful-seeming aimlessness. Neverwas so much order thrown at disorder, so much lavishnessat parsimony, so much method at madness. If destiny canbe capricious, then it is a caprice of German fate that thiscity became the capital of the nation. As if we wanted toshow to the eyes of world how much more difficulteverything is for us than it is for others! [...] Now we findourselves with this capital. Its interests have become ourown. From its past, for which we are only partiallyresponsible, we should understand what its future will be, afuture for which the whole of Germany assumes fullresponsibility.

Joseph Roth, ‘Das steinerne Berlin’, 1930, in Michael Bienert, ‘JosephRoth in Berlin. Ein Lesebuch für Spaziergänger’, Cologne, Kiepenheuer& Witsch, 1996, pp. 163-165.

Jordis Antonia Schlösser

64

MITTE, 1997 > MITTE, 1997

La città antigerarchicaI gesti dello spazio urbano s’interrompono in modo inatteso.A mantenersi non sono le forme fissate intenzionalmente,ma tracce di processi quali dividere, penetrare, tagliare,spezzare, avvolgere, deformare, spostare, torcere,perforare, sciogliere. [...] Non segue alcun principiogenerale, ma si sviluppa localmente secondo diversespecificità, è allo stesso tempo continuo e vario, non ponecontraddizioni, ma rende possibile la coesistenza. È, ancora, un luogo dove si possono sviluppare e mescolaretra loro forme e qualità di ogni sorta; nel paesaggio, nonsono le strutture a plasmare gli eventi, ma sono gli eventi a comporre le strutture.

Philipp Oswalt, ‘Berlino_città senza forma’, Roma, Meltemi, 2006, pp. 54 e 56.

The anti-hierarchical city The manifestation of urban space is interrupted inunexpected ways. It is maintained not by deliberately fixedforms but by underlying processes that divide, penetrate,cut, shatter, bind, distort, displace, twist, pierce, dissolve.[...] Urban space does not follow a general principle butdevelops locally according to different circumstances. It iscontinuous and varied at the same time yet is withoutcontradiction, making coexistence possible. It is still a placewhere forms and characteristics of every kind are able todevelop and merge; in the landscape, it is not structuresthat mould events, but events that shape the structures.

Philipp Oswalt, ‘Berlino_città senza forma’, Rome, Meltemi, 2006, pp. 54 and 56.

Jacopo De Marco

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Il glamour della nazioneIl vacuum pietrificato di Berlino alla fine del conflitto fraOriente e Occidente [...] ora deve esser riempito dallefinzioni dell’architettura da capitale, deve essere resoglamour nazionale. Qui la città o, meglio, la capitale siconcretizza come luogo di costruzione identitaria. Ciò che la nuova Germania dovrebbe rappresentare politicamenteviene in certo modo anticipato per decreto architettonico.

Ulrich Beck, ‘Risiko Stadt - Architektur in der reflexiven Moderne’, inUllrich Schwarz, ‘Risiko Stadt? Perspektiven der Urbanität’, Hamburg,Junius Verlag, 1995, pp. 49-50.

The showcase of the nationThe petrified vacuum of Berlin at the end of the conflictbetween East and West [...] now has to be filled again withthe fictions of capital city architecture, to become a nationalshowcase. Here the city, or better, the capital becomes aplace for the construction of identity. What the newGermany should represent politically is thus to a certainextent anticipated by architectural decree.

Ulrich Beck, ‘Risiko Stadt - Architektur in der reflexiven Moderne’, inUllrich Schwarz, ‘Risiko Stadt? Perspektiven der Urbanität’, Hamburg,Junius Verlag, 1995, pp. 49-50.

Luca Chistè

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EDIFICIO GSW, KOCH STRASSE, 2009 > GSW BUILDING, KOCH STRASSE, 2009

Ich bin kein BerlinerNon sono un berlinese. Non sono nemmeno Germania. Lacampagna di marketing sociale dello scorso anno ‘Tu seiGermania’ mi ha solo irritato. Di fatto non sono propriopratico di qui. Quindici anni fa sono venuto a Berlino Est permotivi che mi sono ancora misteriosi. A portarmi a Berlinosono state probabilmente la semplice curiosità di vedere ilmondo e un’irrefrenabile voglia di viaggiare. Quel viaggio siè rivelato una decisione fatale. Una volta approdati qui èben difficile andarsene. A Berlino ci si lega.

Wladimir Kaminer, ‘Ich bin kein Berliner’, München, Goldmann, 2007, p. 9.

Ich bin kein BerlinerI am not a Berliner. I am not even Germany. Last year’s ‘Youare Germany’ marketing campaign only irritated me. In factI don’t really know my way around here very well. Fifteenyears ago I came to East Berlin for reasons that are still amystery to me. What brought me to Berlin was probably thesimple curiosity of seeing the world and an irrepressibledesire to travel. The journey proved to be a fatal decision.Once here, it’s almost impossible to get away. Berlin binds.

Wladimir Kaminer, ‘Ich bin kein Berliner’, Munich, Goldmann, 2007, p. 9.

Marina Rosso

88