Jun 27, 2009

State of Control: Art Installation at the Stasi Headquarters


Normannenstrasse 19 in Berlin-Lichtenberg. The address is enough to send a chill down the spine: till 1989 it belonged to the headquarters of the MfS, the Ministry for State Security, or Stasi. 

Here, in a complex of grim-looking Plattenbau concrete buildings, a well-oiled administrative machine employed a staff of eighty thousand to keep the population of the DDR under constant surveillance. In January 1990, when the German government authorized the destruction of Stasi files, civil rights groups stormed the complex.  Graffiti on the walls ("Never again the SED Mafia" says one) still bears witness to the event. Since then, the building has been closed to the public, its starkly neon-lit hallways and meeting rooms echoing with silence.

For the first time since 1989, the building is once again open to the public. Stripped of all furniture but still haunted by its past, these large silent rooms were the perfect space for Thomas Kilpper's art installation "State of Control." 

"I was immediately inspired by the space," says Kilpper, an artist and sculptor from Stuttgart. "I found exactly what I was looking for." Kilpper converted the 800-square-meter floor of what was once the ministry's dining hall into a giant printing block. Etched into the linoleum floor are 92 images of divided Germany, for which Kilpper used a kind of woodcutting technique. First, he projected photographs onto the yellow/green linoleum, then cut into the outlines of the negative images. Finally, he ran  a black-ink roller over the surface, leaving the non-print surface in the original linoleum color.

The effect is striking. The images have been cut into the floor just as they have been sharply etched in the nation's memory. The three underlying themes are clear:  state security, resistance and terrorism. Only the lines of differentiation between them are deliberately left blurred. 

Silvio Berlusconi and John Heartfield. Photo: Jens Ziehe. Courtesy Neuer Berliner Kunstverein

I was lucky enough to visit with a historian friend who helped fill several gaps in my knowledge. For the most part, viewers are left to "read" images on their own. The floor map that accompanies the exhibition is difficult to follow, and the images don't have a chronological or thematic sequence.  Kilpper does not guide you with any kind of commentary. It is as if the artist says: See in your mind's eye that press photo from the 70s. Remember that image from a documentary film made twenty years ago. Or the popular movie released two years ago. Or the news headlines from four weeks ago. Remember and connect.


A Surreal Portrait Gallery
Before we knew it, we were treading over the first of Kilpper's linoleum-cuts: Erich Mielke, Minister of State Security and head of the Stasi till 1989, clinking champagne glasses with Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker. Toward the middle of the room is the high-ranking Stasi spy Günter Guillaume whispering into the ear of Chancellor Willy Brandt as though giving him the Judas kiss. Then there is French philosopher Michel Foucault giving a lecture at the Technische Universität Berlin in 1976; directly below him, an idyllic picnic scene in the DDR. Across from the picnickers are the protesters against the Pershing missiles; next to them, Erich Mielke again, this time dancing with his wife in the ballroom in the very building in which we stand. 

Kilpper lets the images, drawn from national and press archives as well as from his own private collection,  cluster in an intuitive rather than ordered way: "The whole constellation emerged like a labyrinthine blackberry bush," he said.

Just about four weeks ago, the case of Benno Ohnesorg, the student shot down in the 1968 demonstrations, was making national headlines when it was discovered that Karl-Heinz Kurras, the West Berlin police officer who shot him, was a Stasi agent. Clearly, Kilpper's themes reach from history into the present. In the end, though, this is more than a collection of images having to do with just the Stasi. "Instead," says Kilpper, " I wanted to show the fine line everywhere between resistance and terrorism."

While at Normannenstraße 19, don't overlook the opportunity of visiting the Stasi Museum, also in the same complex. The exhibition features a lot of explanatory text (all in German), but the still-palpable atmosphere of the powerful machinery of repression needs no translation. Mielke's office, the canteen and the conference room have all been preserved in their original state, and there are rooms full of operative technology for spying -- including a hidden camera in a birdhouse.


"State of Control" runs till 26 July 2009 at the former Ministerium für Staatssicherheit der DDR (MfS) at Normannenstraße 19, Berlin-Lichtenberg. Admission is free and staff on duty are happy to answer questions. Public Transportation: U5 to Magdalenenstr. 
The Stasi Museum is at Ruschestraße 103, Haus 1, 10365 Berlin. Admission is 4 EUR, reduced fee 3,50 EUR. Open Monday to Friday from 11:00 am to 6 pm, on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays from 2 pm to 6 pm.

Jun 25, 2009

Visions of our Time: Tenth Anniversary of the Deutsche Börse Photography Collection

Nikita Kruktunov and Rufina Muharanova, Omsk, May 2005. Picture: Simon Roberts/Courtesy Art Collection Deutsche Börse


"Visions of our Time" at C/O Berlin celebrates ten years of the Art Collection Deutsche Börse and features the work of the 4 nominees for the 2009 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. 

The prizewinning and shortlisted photographs take pride of place in the exhibition, but the more interesting section, at least in terms of technique and composition, may be the other half of the show: a group of 100 of the more than 700 works in the Deutsche Börse's collection of contemporary photography.

Filmic Haikus
Paul Graham is winner of the £30,000 award for his series named a shimmer of possibility after a collection of Chekov's short stories. Graham made an extended road trip across the US between 2004-06, taking pictures of everyday life. What interested him was not the one defining moment but sequences that capture simple human activities -- somebody lighting a cigarette, cutting grass or waiting for a bus. 

Graham's photographs are sequential shots of these single activities, and Graham likes to call them "haikus" rather than narratives.  Not much is happening in Graham's shots. They are often ad hoc pictures, sometimes badly lit, as in the sequence of the (homeless?) person selling a bunch of flowers, and mostly about no more than "being there." 


Archivist, Detective, Activist
Kuwaiti artist Emily Jacir is one of the three other nominees for the prize, and her featured work is "Material for a Film," a multimedia installation documenting the assassination of the Palestinian intellectual Wael Zuwaiter by Israeli agents in Rome in 1972. 

Jacir arranges photographs, texts and objects to piece together the story, and some stop you in your tracks -- such as the copy of the 1001 Arabian Nights Zuwaiter was carrying in his pocket when he was shot. Lodged in the cover is a bullet, the only one which did not pierce Zuwaiter's chest. 

Still, you can't help wondering what Jacir's work is doing in a photo exhibition. She is much more of an archivist than a photographer.


White Tiger
The White Tiger is the most well known of Taryn Simon's picture-and-text series entitled "American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar." Simon, another nominee for the prize, concentrates on images of contemporary America that tap into the hidden or darker sides of the culture, a kind of nationwide Discomfort Zone. 

The white tiger (Kenny) at the Arkansas zoo is a product of selective inbreeding, and he is physically and mentally malformed. Like Kenny, all of Simon's subjects are fascinating: the contraband room of the customs section of JFK Airport; a Braille edition of Playboy; a female patient undergoing hymenoplasty, a surgical procedure which masks the loss of virginity; and a bird's eye view of drums of nuclear waste under water. In the end, though, Simon's subjects may be more memorable than her use of the medium.


Adam and Eve in Central Park
Tod Papageorge is my favorite of the four shortlisted artists. His black-and-white series shot over twenty five years in Central Park is called "Passing Through Eden" and is based on the first six chapters of Genesis. 

Through Papageorge's lens, Central Park is transformed into a prelapsarian world. It's a familiar world (still recognizably New York of the 60s and 70s) but also strangely magical. As you walk by the pictures in the first half of the series it is not difficult to decode a sequence of Biblical references. The narrative then continues to unfold in the second half, and Papageorge's photographs seem able to encompass all of human life within the boundaries of the Park: its innocence, beauty, ugliness and mystery, but also its humor. 

Picture: Tod Papageorge/Courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

I returned a couple of times to one particular photo -- in perfect symmetrical proportions -- of three men on a  park bench. The first is straddled by his girlfriend in an amorous embrace, the second is lost in his newspaper, the third is trying to decipher something on a slip of paper -- a shopping list? an incomprehensible bill?

On the upper floor are the 100 photographs from the rest of the collection, among which are some unforgettable images. I'll mention just three. First, the striking portraits of Seydou Keita, the photographer from Bamako, Mali, who never went to college, never saw the works of photographers outside his country, and never had a teacher. His clients, the simple people of his hometown in the 1950s, lined up outside his studio because Keita's portraits made them beautiful, and he gave each a touch of West African tradition.


Then, the portrait series called "Heads" by Philip-Lorca di Corcia, who marked a spot on the ground at Times Square, New York, mounted a camera and telephoto lens a long distance away, then released the shutter every time someone he found interesting walked over the spot. From the swirling life around the Square, the camera seizes his subjects while the background melts away, and the viewer sees a cross-section of New Yorkers as individuals in a moment of unawareness.

And finally, the selection of photos from British photographer Simon Robert's series called "Motherland,"  the result of his yearlong exploration of Russia, documenting the lives of local people through a vast sweep of the country. The proud gaze of the two young competition dancers from Siberia, the girl in a peacock blue dress, is one of the images that stayed with me.


"Visions of our Time" is at C/O Berlin, Oranienburger Straße 35/36, 10117 Berlin (S Oranienburger Straße) and runs till 19. July, 2009. Open everyday from 11 am to 8 pm. Tickets cost 7 Euro (reduced: 5 Euro). See www.co-berlin.com for more details.



Jun 15, 2009

Extravagantly Newton

The Helmut Newton Foundation presents a Larger-than-Life Collection at the Museum for Photography


XXXL

Helmut Newton SUMO, published in 1999 by Benedikt Taschen and presented by the Helmut Newton Foundation, is not exactly a coffee-table photography book. Rather it is a photography book with its own coffee-table.




The gigantic 464-page book weighs 66 pounds and needs a custom-made metal holder, designed for SUMO at a cost of $15,000 by Phillip Starcke. Taschen originally introduced the book as a limited edition of 10,000, signed by Newton, but this September a more handy edition will appear on bookshelves for those who could not afford the stand.

To mark the tenth anniversary of SUMO, all its 394 photographs are on display for the first time at Berlin's Museum of Photography. The pictures in the book appear as framed pages: the fashion photography for Vogue, the nudes, portraits and advertisements.  All the classic Newtons are here: the striking Big Nudes; the domestic nudes; the celebrity portraits: Elizabeth Taylor half-submerged in a swimming pool, a resplendent greeen parrot perched on one finger;  Versace unclothed;  Charlotte Rampling sinuously draped on a baroque dining table.



Charlotte Rampling. Photo by ⓒ Helmut Newton Estate


Newton's photographs read like a thriller. They are set in basements, empty streets, anonymous lobbies or palatial European interiors. His beautiful women wear treacherous stiletto heels, cruel steel leg braces, handcuffs, or transparent trench coats, and there is mysterious, psycho-sexual sinister drama behind each shot.

Villa d'Este
Photo by ⓒ  Helmut Newton Estate

Arranged in three halls in the imposing interior of the Museum of Photography (once the casino for the Landwehr officers), the extravagant sweep of the exhibition reminds us how many iconic photographic images Newton produced in his lifetime.

Parallel to the main exhibition is the smaller "Three Boys from Pasadena," featuring Mark Arbeit, George Holtz and Just Loomis. All three were students at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California in the 1970s and later became Newton's assistants.

Don't miss the excellent documentary film in the video room on the making of Helmut Newton SUMO .


Helmut Newton SUMO runs till 31 January 2010 at the Museum for Photography, Jebensstraße 2, 10623 Berlin. Take public transportation to U Zoologischer Garten, then take the Jebensstraße exit from the station. The museum is open every day, except Monday, from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. and tickets cost 8 EUR (reduced cost: 4 EUR).









Jun 1, 2009

"To the Green Forest": the Jagdschloss Grunewald

Copyright Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg.


Berlin's oldest palace, the Renaissance-era royal hunting lodge known as the Jagdschloss Grunewald, opened  on May 28 after almost three years of renovation.


The Jagdschloss has opened with an art exhibition called "Von Angesicht zu Angesicht," featuring 300 years of Berlin portrait painting (17th-19th c). This returns the building to its 1932 role, when art historian Georg Poensgen first transformed the royal quarters into exhibition space for Berlin portrait art and paintings by Old German and Dutch Masters.

The paintings are mostly unremarkable, and not till the Lucas Cranach paintings that belong here return in 2011 (beginning October, they are showing at Schloss Charlottenburg in an exhibition called "Cranach and the Art of the Renaissance under the Hohenzollerns) will there be an art lover's reason to visit.

For now, a better reason to visit the Jagdschloss -- and it is well worth a visit --  is for its setting and interiors, both a part of Berlin's architectural and archaeological history.


Getting There
The path through the Grunewald forest to the Jagdschloss must be one of the loveliest approaches to a museum. The ground is soft underfoot, tree branches rustle overhead and the only people you will meet are walkers, joggers and dog owners. 

If you want to savor a bit of history as well, you will breathe deep and revel in treading ground that was once the hunting environs of the Hohenzollern royalty. In 1542, when Prince Joachim II  had the palace built,  he called it simply "Zum Gruenen Walde" or (in a clumsy translation) "to the green forest."

In summer the deep green foliage keeps the palace from sight till you actually get there. It has a modest exterior, this white and brick-red building on the side of the placid Grunewald lake. But for Berliners,  it has a special significance. Over 460 years old, it is the only remaining Renaissance-era palace in the city since the the Berliner Schloss was destroyed in 1950. 


There's History in these Rooms
In 1973, construction work in the Große Hofstube (Great Hall) revealed painted wooden ceilings behind the Baroque moldings, and 15th c. arches which had been walled in by Baroque-era architects. Thanks to archaeological reconstruction, the beautiful Renaissance wooden ceilings and arches are now back in view. 

In other interior rooms, the baroque moldings from the time of King Friedrich I (1705-06) have been retained. And in the exhibition rooms you sense the spirit of the 1930s: the clean functionality of white walls and oxblood red hardwood floors. The fresh blue of the lake visible through large windows on each floor pervades the atmosphere of these interiors.


Sunset over Berlin: The Lake Terrace
What a pity that the viewer is denied access to the neo-baroque lake terrace, which once led directly from the castle, and which has also been handsomely restored. The reason? Dogs, says the guard on duty. We had to cordon it off to keep the dogs from using it as a diving board.

The lake terrace in summer is an ideal spot to enjoy the natural beauty of the Grunewald. "Here you can experience the most beautiful sunset over Berlin," rhapsodizes Hartmut Dorgerloh, General Director of the Palace Foundation, and I believe him. The terrace is open for a glass of wine after special events, but how about making it available for ticket holders to the museum? 


Jagdschloss Grunewald is at Hüttenweg 100, 14193 Berlin.
The Jagdschloss is open every day (except Monday) from May to October,  from 10 am to 6 pm, and from November to April on Saturday, Sundays and holidays from 10 am to 4 pm. 
The exhibition "Von Angesicht zu Angesicht runs from 28.05.09 to 31.10.10.

Reaching there:
By car: To Hüttenweg up to the parking lot for Forsthaus Paulsborn, then walk about 400 m. 
By public transportation: U-Bahn Dahlem Dorf or S-Bahn Zehlendorf, then with Bus X83 to the corner of Clayallee/Königin Luise Strasse, then a 10 minute walk through the Grunewald.
A green trail for those who prefer to hike: From U-Bahn Podbielski Allee, take Im Dol to Messel Park, cut through Messel Park till Pücklerstr. Take a left and keep straight till you enter the Grunewald. Follow signs to Jagdschloss (about 30 min).

For more information: www.spsg.de




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