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 concept  room
texts and plans views
of the exhibition
Curator’s notes
In many respects the exhibition is a venture. Its theme, the cultural
dialogue between Germans and Russians as regards art from the middle of
the last century to the present day could hardly be more complex, more
difficult to illustrate or more political in the historic context and
at the same time more pertinent to the present. Following the previous
exhibition about Berlin and Moscow in the first half of the 20th Century,
the exhibition deals with the period of the Cold War between communism
and capitalism, with the division of Germany and the Berlin Wall, Glasnost
and Perestroika but also with the increasingly global world of today,
perceived as a latent threat. Furthermore, the exhibition calls to mind
the elements which link the two former enemies: the experience of totalitarian
systems and the trauma of the Second World War; unleashed by the Germans
and victoriously ended by the Russians as “the great war for the
fatherland”.
Those who remember “Berlin-Moscow / Moscow-Berlin 1900-1950”
may expect the second exhibition to continue where the first ended. However,
from the curators’ first discussions it became clear that the successful
framework of the first, tailored to the two metropolises, was not sufficient
for the subsequent project. Differing to the period after the First World
War there was, after the second, little significant cultural discourse
between Moscow and Berlin, initially divided into four sectors and subsequently
into two parts until the end of the Eighties. And whilst on the Russian
side Moscow was responsible for cultural development, the western part
of Berlin, in spite of the blockade and the Wall, held its ground as the
cultural frontier of the Federal Republic of Germany as well as of the
American protecting power at the side of the capital of East Germany.
So it was the East-West conflict and prevailing over this in general which
determined the cultural relations between the two cities. Berlin and Moscow
each stand, pars pro toto, for their countries as poles of a German-Russian
ellipsis with international tangents.
At the curators’ very first discussions it emerged that it would
not be easy to draw up a cultural-historic discourse, functional for exhibition
purposes, which would do both sides justice. It would be difficult to
find accord between Soviet and post-Soviet historical notions and the
self-perception of the West. The curators would have had to have had considerably
more time to clarify terms, reduce mutual preconceptions and then reach
agreement on the legitimacy of differences. Initially the only common
ground was to assess the time after the fall of the Berlin Wall by uniform
principles and to commission some artists from Berlin and Moscow to create
new works for the exhibition. It was perhaps this decision that led the
curators to repeatedly reaffirm their intention of organizing an integrated
exhibition instead of showing Russian and German sections separately,
which would have been otherwise inevitable.
Among the expectations which the curators had to examine was the idea
of an interdisciplinary panorama in which the various forms of the arts,
in cross-section, refer to the zeitgeist which they embody. The German
curators voiced their concerns about this kind of concept from the first
stages of planning. What they imagined was an exhibition from the perspective
of art, concentrating on the media and on the different forms of fine
art. They were not interested in a production with the epochal flair of
a multi-media show, nor had they thought of a cultural-historical report
in the style of a museum for history.
But there were also practical reasons for these considerations. With the
limited personal and financial capacity of the newly formed team it would
not have been possible in the length of time given to produce the different
parts of the exhibition from the diverse areas with the due attention
to detail and to coordinate this with the Russian partners. Therefore
the decision was taken to deal with the disciplines not represented in
the exhibition in the second volume of the catalogue; architecture, urban
planning, film, literature, theatre and music, with the hope of creating
a cluster for a satellite programme.
The second volume also contains a series of texts concerning political
history and ideology criticisms of general interest as well as a richly
illustrated cultural and historical chronicle. Thus the requirement of
a pertinent introduction into the history of the cultural relations between
Germany and Russia are fulfilled. The exhibition itself also provides
chronological information. A selected archive of two hundred remarkable
documentary and aesthetically powerful photographs forms a literal and
figurative corridor of memories.
The principle “from the perspective of art”, which the exhibition
is committed to, does not limit itself to an exclusively specialist understanding
of the object as one might fear. It implies media, representative, socially
and culturally critical, institutional and self referential aspects, in
brief, a multitude of conditions in which works of art are produced and
perceived. The art system is itself an indicator of Zeitgeist. Especially
if one brings in the Russian development, the aims and objectives, the
avant-gardes and the revisions, creative impetus and de-construction of
the visual arts make clear what extraordinary cultural changes have taken
place in the second part of the Twentieth century.
They begin with the known debates between traditionalists and modernists,
which, if we think of the inquisition, censorship, exclusion or suppression,
have left one or another bitter taste in their wake. In the East they
led to the removal of the state ordained differentiation between “official”
and “unofficial” art. In the West these debates had the effect
that borders between the artistic genres towards multimedia, kinetics,
environment and installation were crossed. What was referred to as a “work”
is stripped of its material texture and duration by concept and event.
The transient ousts the museum aspect. Sub cultural trends undermine (infiltrate)
high art conventions. Photography, design and film compete with the Fine
Arts for their rank whilst images, objects, recording and reproduction
techniques from mass culture conquer the lofts and ateliers and from there
gain access to museums for contemporary art…..
Looking back on this half century of art the question arises how the kaleidoscope
of traditions might be mediated without ignoring the historical divergence
of cultures in the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic and the
Federal Republic of Germany and West Berlin.
The curators were quite aware that their examination of the past is actually
an assessment of the present. For this reason it was close at hand to
conceive the exhibition “from today’s perspective”.
With this prerequisite the usual method of retelling art history by decades
up until the present day lost its necessity. What mattered more was to
fathom the common interest in the heterogeneous developments at certain
points and, in the literal sense of the word, in retrospect. At the same
time the opportunity presented itself with the selection of art which
is currently of topical interest to take the presence of the past into
consideration..
The question remained, what moves us today, when we try to compare the
collective and individual experiences handed down to us by the visual
arts and we try to make them transparent in their variety. During a conference
lasting several days in Zermützel, for which we owe our thanks to
the Ferdinand Möller Foundation, the curators outlined a series of
parameters intended to enable these kind of comparative viewpoints. A
divide between the generations became apparent which applies to both the
exhibition and to its audience, whereby the generations are determined
more by experience than by actual age.
The already historic generation is that of the survivors of the Second
World War and those returning from it. It emphasizes the existential examination
of the political and aesthetic sublime. The middle generation departs
from the rituals of great mourning. Initially it wants to reform, criticise,
turn to the everyday and take a stand. Following this it pursues the deconstruction
of ideological doctrines, analyses the inherited “leaning”
to the synthesis of the arts and risks opening the floodgates on pent
up national feeling. The last generation is one of global urbanity. It
sympathises with Attac, counts on the power of illusions, strives towards
transparency and delights nevertheless in portentous clichés of
stagnant pathos.
The parameters which crystallised during the curators’ discussions
about the generations on both sides form the structure of the essays in
this volume. They represent the attempt to find evidence for a comparative
thematic interpretation of art in East and West without claiming to be
research in the sense of the Humanities. Short introductory socio-cultural
texts on the parameters are supplemented by short, one-page studies on
artistic tendencies, groupings or individual artists.
In this way an interesting and varied anthology has been produced which
shows the suppositions, some of them very different, which move the German
and Russian authors.
Parallel to the texts on the parameters, constellations of artworks have
been worked out for the rooms in the Gropiusbau to which the blocks of
illustrations in the catalogue roughly refer. The intention to illustrate
the parameters entailed an extended curatorial dramaturgy for the compilation
of the artworks - as was to be expected. Even during the selection of
the exhibits additional criteria played an important role, for example
the institutional position of the artists in each system, a known reference
to art in the other country, or one yet to be discovered, the context
of Berlin and Moscow and of course in each case the qualitative discrimination
of the curators. Also to be taken into consideration were the space and
exhibition conditions on location. Yet it was the constellation itself
which turned out to be a medium of remarkably explosive nature.
Art exhibitions are known to always consist of a series of temporary,
partly accidental, more or less pleasingly arranged, sometimes didactic
combinations of otherwise unrelated exhibits. A constellation, if it is
successful, goes further. It draws attention to an interrelation which
evokes as well as deciphers the contrast between the individual works
of art. The application of this hermeneutic principle accommodated the
fact that the curators had agreed to approach “Berlin-Moscow”
as impartially as possible, literally “from today’s perspective”
instead of on already beaten tracks. By risking denying the artworks their
usual positive categorization to a certain extent and even to miss out
periods, they at the same time opened new possibilities for interpretation.
Whether Russian-Russian, Russian-German, German-Russian or German-German:
with the parameters in our minds and the works of art before us, quite
unexpected constellations appeared. It almost raises the question why
art criticism has not liberated us sooner from the necessities of coexistence.
Jürgen Harten, Angela Schneider, Christoph Tannert
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