date > 2005

medium > site-responsive installation with plants and soil transplanted from empty lots

dimensions > room 80 sq. m. (800 sq. ft.)

description >
Instead of displaying a crop of new work, for one exhibition period the space lies fallow. The floor space of the gallery is completely covered with soil and plant matter from a nearby site about to undergo construction (Bethaniendamm, a piece of land along the former "death strip" of the Berlin Wall, which thus has a certain memorial status). Plants and seeds in the soil continue to grow over the course of the show, during which the trade practices and commercial goals usually associated with an exhibition are slowed to processes of waiting and watching. Still, within this environment there is a multitude of quiet and sensuous details to be observed, as well as wide-ranging opportunities for reflection -for example, upon the social functions of productivity, or the value and relatively endangered nature of open space. The temporary situation might give pause to consider whether, like crop rotation, enforced downtime - time outs - may actually be an important part of a sustainable production cycle. Although withdrawn from "constructive" use, the space is far from empty, but rather full of richly non-productive time and process. In Berlin, the situation inevitably carries a strong relationship to the large amounts of currently unbuilt land that significantly mark the city, and that exist in a state suspended between previous histories and an unknown fate. These gaps seem an important aspect of the city’s everyday fabric. They are unplanned reminders of a former cityscape, and also harbingers of their own eventual and inevitable re-absorption into the next form chosen for the city. In this way, these grounds could be seen as unplanned repositories of memory and history, and also socio-historical breathing spaces, place markers. They are markers of the perpetually in-between state of a city whose most persistent self-image is arguably its fate “forever to become and never to be" (Karl Scheffler, Berlin - ein Stadtschicksal, 1910).

exhibition > Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, 2005

bibliography >
Sascha Hastings, "Postmark Berlin", Canadian Art, Spring 2006, pp. 62-67

acknowledgements > Thank you to the Straßen- und Grünflächenamt, Bezirksamt Berlin-Mitte for permission; and to Phil Klygo, Andree Wochnowski, Josée Dubeau, Elmar Schlenke, Toni Lebkücher, and Peter Rosemann for assistance.