Daniela Wolfer: Ohne Titel, 2001, Deutsche
Bank Collection
The idea of the cosmopolitan
city as a battle concept aimed at the motherland, however, shies away from
a closer look at the deeply provincial and even countrified longings that
become reproduced relatively easily in the trendiest areas of a big city.
Spengler opposed the "sharp and cool intelligence" of a city with rural
good sense, the soul of country culture with the soullessness of urban
civilization, and in this sense his populist opinion is still as up to
date as it was in his time. To him, big cities were cold, uncomfortable,
nihilistic, anonymous, and impersonal. A threat not only for conservative
cultural critics like Spengler, but also for many of his contemporaries,
who declared Berlin to be a Babel of godless, ice-cold, immoral creatures,
even back then, during the Weimar Republic. In Germany as elsewhere, the
fear of modernism went hand in hand with the fear of the coldness of an
existence in a vast metropolis. One imagined the icy winds of alienation
blowing down the lonely streets of urban architecture, creating an
existential homelessness: to the nostalgic, the big city was a
non-location. Progressive artists such as
George Grosz, Alfred Döblin
, Fritz Lang, or
Mies van der Rohe utilized the survival technique of distance and the new
objective intelligence arising out the coolness of Modernism as
springboards for an anti-nostalgic aesthetic whose gaze was not directed
backwards, but forwards and full of expectation.
Christiane Dellbrügge, Untitled, from the series "Die Zurschaustellung von
Fleiß", 2001. Sammlung Deutsche Bank.
Christiane Dellbrügge, Untitled, from the series "Die Zurschaustellung von
Fleiß", 2001. Sammlung Deutsche Bank.
Yet the avant-garde of Classic Modernism were already living in conditions
that shut out precisely this urban coldness. The concept of the Bohemian
quarter, the ghetto of artists and intellectuals contrasted with the
anonymity of the big city. This has remained the case to this day: trendy
neighborhoods and Bohemian spots make the big city seem smaller - this is
why every city guide and magazine offers them so lovingly as points of
orientation. They promise a public sphere easy to absorb, one capable of
counteracting the feeling of alienation in a foreign place (a conceivable
reason for tourists to travel in the first place): recognizable and
defined, they are familiar images easy to consume.
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As a laboratory of artistic innovation, the metropolis
benefits from the size and complexity of the city just as much as from the
Bohemian ghetto's tranquility and quality of being a village, a place
where artists and intellectuals can feel at home.
Seen in terms of
culture and fashion, social proximity produces homogeny. Due to the
success of concepts, looks, ideas, images, and visions, an amalgamation of
cliched stereotypes grew out of the outrageous, the never before seen, the
incredible - monolithic and rigid, it propagated conformism rather than
individuality. In contrast to the
dandies of the 19th century, who wanted to save individuality in the hour
of its downfall, and in contrast to Camp, which ironically tried to trick
alienation in the hour of its triumph, post-modern heroes unable and
reluctant to do anything, really, mobilized themselves in the Mitte look.
At the very most, they embody a new, complex form of what the bourgeois
classes value as "good taste." Lacking the rebellious urge, the look
possessed a naivety that is initially charming but then, due to its stoic
lack of development, very quickly inspires boredom.
Michael Bach: Lesley, 2000,Deutsche Bank Collection. Courtesy Galerie
Heinz-Martin Weigand.
Thus, the German
trauma of its own provincialism reproduces itself in a longing aimed at a
territory as thoroughly commercialized and stereotyped as Mitte. Over
time, the persons who established themselves there as the players of a new
cosmopolitan culture have also become aware of this. All attempts at
escaping provincialism adhere to a provincial structure. Mitte itself,
circling around the Hackesche Höfe, Sophien Strasse, August Strasse, and
up to Tor Strasse, is reminiscent of a village idyll in an architectural
sense, as well; the process of restoration lent it an elegant urban touch,
without spreading that cold wind of alienation that makes Germans so fear
the big city. Mitte is a big city on a small scale, reminiscent more of
urban towns such as the two Sohos in London and New York, the two New York
villages, or the Parisian
Marais Quarter.
As a metropolis, Berlin offers modernity without
prosperity. Style, innovation, and the avant-garde have to compensate for
financial misery. This is why it was no accident that the short-lived
economic senator Gregor Gysi of the PDS originally wanted to become
cultural senator. Berlin illustrates the fact that the economic curtailing
of a metropolitan discourse doesn't work: in an economic sense, Berlin is
a dwarf; culturally, however, the city is inching its way towards
acquiring, if not a giant, then at least a well-grown stature.
Matthias Zinn: Tegel 15, 2001, Deutsche Bank Collection
Extract from the essay in: Marcus S. Kleiner/ Hermann Strasser,
Globalisierungswelten, Köln 2003.
Ulf Poschardt is
co-editor of Welt am Sonntag. He
lives in Berlin. His
publications include DJ-Culture, 1995, or Anpassen (Adapt), 1998.
Poschardt is the curator of the exhibition
Video - 25 Jahre Videoästhetik (Video - 25 Years of Video
Aesthetics ), which can be seen from 1/24 through 4/18/2004 in the NRW
Kulturforum in Dusseldorf.
Translation: Andrea Scrima
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