curating architecture || in the shadow of monumentality

In the Shadow of MonumentalityAuthor(s): Ole W. FischerSource: Log, No. 20, Curating Architecture (Fall 2010), pp. 117-123Published by: Anyone CorporationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41765379 .

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Ole W. Fischer In the Shadow of

Monumentality

Editor's note: Regrettably, Christoph Schlingensief suc- cumbed in late August to com-

plications from lung cancer. His ideas , however, will live on.

In February this year, the German Foreign Office named Susanne Gaensheimer the curator of the German Pavilion for the 54-th Venice Art Biennale. Charged with selecting the artistes) who will represent Germany at one of the most

prominent venues for contemporary art in 2011, Gaensheimer, an art historian and the current director of the Museum of Modern Art Frankfurt, announced her choice in early May: Christoph Schlingensief.

A performance artist and political provocateur, Schling- ensief became well known in the 1990s as a stage director for the Berlin Volksbühne,1 for movies, TV shows, exhibitions (which included a performance piece at Documenta X in 1997), as well as for his political actions, founding his own

political party for the unemployed in 1998 and establishing a satirical adaption of the reality TV series Big Brother in 2000.

Schlingensiefs actions are often smiled upon, viewed as

slapstick or self-promotion, yet he gained official recognition as a stage director of Richard Wagnerů Parsifal at the Bayr- euth Festival in 2004. No stranger to Venice, he participated in the 200? Art Biennale with Church of Fear - a critical parody of religious fundamentalism and George Bush's "war against terror." Today there are rumors that the terminally ill artist will use the international platform in Venice to promote his

plans for building an opera house in Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso, a project he developed with Berlin-based architect Francis Keré.2 This cross-pollination of the glamour of

Schlingensiefs theater, opera, art, and media with Kere's small-scale social activism in West Africa could be productive and culminate in building an institution. It returns to the

avant-garde ideal of reuniting art with life while expanding the borders of the discipline. This transgression is deliberate.

Schlingensief has long been consciously crossing thresholds such as art and politics or art and privacy, and now art and illness, exploiting his struggle with lung cancer.

Yet what brings us down this track is not an analysis of a

specific Schlingensief project but the interview following his nomination, in which Schlingensief said that his wish was to "click away" the "suspicious" German Pavilion in Venice by just pushing a button. His comment triggered a debate about

117

1. The Volksbühne was the former work- ers' cultural center of the Weimar Republic and a major cultural hotspot in East Berlin after the fall of the wall. 2. See http://www.festspielhaus afri- ka.com/.



Daniele Donghi, Bavarian Pavilion, 1909. Right: Ernst Haiger, German Pavilion, i9î8. Photos courtesy the author.

the building and its historic burden as a showpiece of national socialist architecture. This is not the first time since World War II that there have been rumblings in favor of clearing the spot of bother. Yet for the reopening of the 194-8 Biennale

only the emblems of the Third Reich - the eagle and swastika above the entry - were taken down. Then, in 1957, Arnold Bode, artist and founding director of Kassel's Documenta, sketched a proposal for a modern adaptation of the pavilion structure. His suggestion, a second story that halved the monumental height of the pavilion and provided an asym- metric course, was never implemented.* The 1989-90 fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification of Germany seemed to pro- vide another opportunity to rethink the pavilion. Instead, the

existing structure simply underwent a major renovation in 1995, which reduced an international design competition in 1997 - hosted by Frankfurt's Deutsches Architekturmuseum Director Wilfried Wang - to shambles.

Now, the president of the Bundesarchitektenkammer (Federal Chamber of German Architects), Arno Sighart Schmid, has seconded Schlingensief 's demand to demolish the existing edifice, asserting that the pavilion by no means

corresponds to the democratic self-conception of the nation it supposedly represents through its national-socialist monu-

mentality.4 The building, he adds, has the reputation among both art and architecture curators of being difficult to fur- nish. More, Schmid misses an architectural response to the favorable site on the waterfront. The current building ignores the genius loci of the small hill bordering the Giardini, over-

looking the lagoon and offering a panoramic view of Venice.

Calling its historic value as a protected monument into question, Schmid demands an architectural design competition for a new German Pavilion. This alliance between the provocateur of the German theater scene and the representative of the German architectural establishment seems peculiar, and,

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I. This project was taken up and repro- duced as a model by Liam Gillick, who was selected as the artist of the German Pavilion for the 2009 Venice Art Biennale. 4. Press release of the Bundesarchitek- tenkammer, UPM 05/10: Ein neuer mod- erner Pavillon fur Venedig," June 24, 2010. See http:/ /www.bak.de/site/ItemID=685 /mid=2196/686/default.aspx.



indeed, Schlingensief immediately revised his "wish" to "click

away" the pavilion to argue for maintaining the historic leg- acy of the built environment. In his blog he writes that bull-

dozing history would be a signature of totalitarian regimes.5 In the discussion that ensued, several curators and artists

also favored maintaining the German Pavilion, including Gregor Schneider, who installed Totes Haus u r - a trans- formed, haunting interior from a petit-bourgeois row house from the city of Rheydt - in the German Pavilion during the 2001 Biennale (and for which he was awarded the Golden Lion for best artwork). Even if we do not question the diffi- culty of dealing with the overwhelming pathos and ideology of the existing pavilion, the artistic confrontation with the

pavilion has arguably proven to be fruitful: next to Schneid- er^ installation, one of the best known pieces is Hans Haacke's 1993 Germania.6 Haacke welcomed the observer with an enlar-

ged press photo documenting Adolf Hitler's visit to the 1934- Yenice Biennale and then confronted the visitor who entered the dimmed hall with the broken marble floor plates that Hitler's regime had left behind. Prior to this, another well- known example of working with/against the pavilion was

Joseph Beuys' 1976 installation Strassenbahnhaltestelley or Tram

Stop. Beuys attempted to plug into the energies of the lagoon to counter the obstructive force field emanating from the

building by combining an industrial train track with the cast of a 17th-century peace monument that commemorated the end of the Thirty Years' War7 and by digging the foundations for the piece deep into the brick rubble of the San Marco tower that had collapsed in 1902, the site of which now con- stitutes the hill of the German Pavilion. Beuys' instruction not to plaster and paint the walls for the exhibition - his famous "verschimmeln lassen" or let it mold - underlined his

struggle with the pavilion's claim to eternal classicism and his

attempt to counter it with temporality, vital forces, and decay. Astonishly, the contributions of architects for the Archi-

tecture Biennale have often been less site-specific. In most cases, curators of the German Pavilion, who are architects themselves, take the existing structure of a main hall and two

flanking side chambers as a given set of white cubes, littering the space with two-dimensional representations such as pictures, drawings, sketches, and plots, as well as projections, exhibition furniture, etc. One exception was Berlin-based Grüntuch & Ernst's 2006 Convertible City, in which the architects added a red-roofed platform to the pavilion, next to the arris portico. The installation reconfigured the pavilion's monumental dimensions, reduced some of its "awe-inspiring" 119

5. See the blog entry of Christoph Schlingensief, June 23, 2010. http://schlingenblog.posterous.com /sofortiger-abriss-venedigs. 6. Klaus Bußmann, Florian Matzner, eds., Hans Haacke Bodenlos: Biennale Venedig 1993, Deutscher Pavillon (Stuttgart: Cantz, 1993)- 7. See Klaus Gallwitz, ed., Beuys , Gerz, Ruthenbeck: Biennale 76 Venedig , Deutscher Pavillon (Stuttgart: Cantz, 1976).



Joseph Beuys, Strassen- BAHNHAL TES TELLE, GERMAN Pavilion, 1976. Photo: Manfred TlSCHER, 1976. © 2010 ARTISTS RIGHTS Society CARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Top: Hans Haacke, GERMANIA , German Pavilion, i 99?. Photo © 2010 Hans Haacke / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild- Kunst, Bonn

effect, and offered a view of the lagoon, thereby temporarily altering the "difficult" building with an ephemeral prosthetic.

That architects have largely neglected to engage the exis-

ting building, its specific site, and its charged history seems to be even more puzzling, since an architecture exhibition faces a fundamental problem by definition: unlike sculpture, painting, video, or even performance art, architecture is

generally absent from its own exhibition - if we do not con- sider projects such as the Vitra Campus, the summer pavilion series of the Serpentine Gallery in London, or world exposi- tions such as the current one in Shanghai. Instead, most architecture exhibitions display representations of architecture, such as drawings, images, models, projections, videos, and books. There is nothing wrong with this, and one could

argue for easier access to architectural concepts via representations rather than readings of whole buildings, not to men- tion unexecuted projects that are bound to such means of

representation. Yet there remains a fundamental difference between exhibiting a photograph of a building and visiting the actual edifice on site. Of course it is neither necessary nor

possible to exhibit a new pavilion with each Yenice Biennale, but, as the art installations illustrate, there are many more

ways of interacting with the existing structure than placing objects, setting lighting, installing projectors, and hanging pictures. Even the most conventional hanging of pictures on the wall can be a critique of the monumental German Pavilion and notions of artistic representation, as seen in Gerhard Richters 48 Portraits at the 1972 Biennale. Here Richter dis-

played 48 paintings of 48 male subjects who contributed to the development of the modern project - composers, philo- sophers, scientists, writers - painted in a black-and-white

photorealistic manner. Richter chose photographs from stan- dard encyclopedias, cropped and repainted the heads with similar contrast, slightly blurred and similarly formatted, then

presented them as a series, nullifying any figurative likeness to a model. In fact, there is no model at all, only the artistic

reproduction of technical reproduction, and hence a commen-

tary on painting, representation, and perception. The equal distribution of these strangely similar portraits in a single line along the walls of the German Pavilion, arranged accord-

ing to formal differences rather than in chronological or thematic order, culminated in a portrait of Franz Kafka at the center point of the apsis. The series of portraits evokes, on the one hand, an idealist pantheon of great men, but on the other, critiques the bourgeois expectations of artistic enlight- enment and spiritual uplifting. Richter takes up the most

120



representational category of traditional painting, the portrait, yet undermines the content of those depicted through broken references, neutrality, and seriali ty. Thus the installation

questions the national representation of a Walhalla, or a hall of fame that honors laudable and distinguished Germans, in a former Nazi temple.

Beyond the iconography of the pavilion, however, is the

question of the national frame for contemporary art, which itself has become problematic. It could be argued that this is

especially true for German artists and their skepticism about nation, state, and authority. The institution of the national laureate is suspect, even if on other occasions artists accept positions at state academies or public funds for the arts. The national contribution to the Yenice Biennale itself is support- ed by the German Federal Office (for art) and the German

Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development (for architecture). If the Austrian art historian Werner Hof- mann is right that "nations do not paint pictures,"8 only individuals embedded in specific social networks and cultural conditions can, then the question of national representation and competition is important: is the Biennale as a world's fair of contemporary art (or architecture) an outmoded relic of

19th-century nationalism? And if we reflect on taking down the German Pavilion, shouldn't we dare to include all of the national pavilions? Or follow the curator Nicolaus Schaf- hausen - who, despite some criticism,9 invited the British artist Liam Gillick to the German Pavilion in 2009 - and think of a new transnational curatorial concept? Compared to other international exhibitions and fairs of contemporary art or architecture, the strategy at the Venice Biennale of having a

general director for the thematic show (Kazuyo Sejima for architecture in 2010 and Bice Curiger for art in 2011) in par- allel with a multitude of curators for each of the national

pavilions10 seems doubly tracked and odd. Given the inherited

organizational structure, it will be impossible to address any larger curatorial question. Instead, with the Golden Lion as a

prize for best national participation, it shares similarities with a World Cup championship.

Internationalism based on national representation is

deeply rooted in the history of the Yenice Biennale. Founded in 1895 as an exhibition for selling contemporary art, the Biennale followed the established models of the Parisian salons and the newer Munich Secession.11 From the start the idea was to show international art in separate national salons, although with strong regional representation under the patronage of the city of Venice and the Italian royal house. Successful with

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Gerhard Richter, 48 Portraits , German Pavilion, 1972. Photo © Gerhard Richter, 2010. Courtsey THE ARTIST.

8. Werner Hofmann, Wie deutsch ist die deutsche Kunst? (Leipzig: E. A. Seeman, 1999). 9. Among other, more conceptual issues, critics asked why the robotic cat in Liam Gillick's exhibition spoke English to the visitors. This was changed for the second display at the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn in 2010: now the cat spoke German. 10. The number is growing each year, since countries without a pavilion exhibit in the Arsenale or rent additional spaces all over the city. 11. The Munich Secession was founded by a group of artists who left the annual academic salon in 1892 and set up their first independent exhibition in 189?.



international participation, art sales, and growing number of visitors who fed the tourist sector of the city, the Biennale even survived limited funding. One way to grow was to build alliances by involving foreign artists and patrons directly. The first "national pavilion" in the Giardini was built in 1907 by the city of Venice for the exclusive use of a Belgian artists' circle, provided that they would undertake future mainte- nance. The German Pavilion was similar: in 1909, the city of Venice presented the site to the Munich Secession, with whom the Biennale had kept close contact from its inception. The "Bavarian Pavilion" was a modest historicist temple used

exclusively by the Secession only twice. In 1914- it was official-

ly incorporated by the German Empire, and in 1922 it was inherited by the Weimar Republic. In June 1934-, when Hitler made his inaugural visit to Mussolini's Italy, he was not sat- isfied with Germany's representation. Ernst Haiger, a collab- orator of Hitler's architect for the Haus der Kunst12 in Munich, delivered drawings and a model for a monumental, neoclassical transformation of the 1938 pavilion, which this time would be financed by the Nazi state. Not only did the

appearance of the building change, but also the exhibitions, which followed the new directive of neoclassicism and dis-

played sculptures by Arno Breker and Josef Thorak.

Though the history of each national pavilion varies with

regard to sponsorship and institutional oversight, to this day the Venice Biennale still depends on external organizational and financial support.1* To run a national pavilion was first and foremost physical proof of the belief in the exhibition's

long-term success. This ideological layer was paraphrased as a "peaceful" race between nations and individual artists, similar to 'the Olympic movement of 1894, or the world's fairs, from which the idea of the national pavilion originates.

Such a history still does not discern what "German" or

any other national art or architecture actually means. Though the contexts, practices, and discourses of art and architecture left the national frame long ago, the institutional frame has

yet to adapt. This institutional frame includes not only the Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia and the sovereign terri-

tory of the participating nations,14 but also the physical frame of the pavilions.

Historically, a pavilion is a small, light, temporary structure open to nature that came into fashion with landscape gardens of the 18th century. As themed architecture for plea- sure, contemplation, and display - antique, Gothic, Chinese - the typology easily migrated into fairs and exhibitions. Located in the Giardini, the pavilions seem right for Venice,

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12. The Haus der Kunst was the first monumental building of the Nazi regime. It was constructed to replace the Glaspalast (Crystal Palace) in Munich, which had burned down in 1951, to house the annual arts exhibition. Originally called Haus der deutschen Kunst (House of German Art), it was built from 191Ì-Ì7 after designs by Paul Ludwig Troost (1878-1934) and finished by his widow Gerdy Troost. The new building show- cased the phenotype of Nazi architecture: a reductive, monumentalized neoclassicism (yet underneath the cut-stone sur- face is a structure of reinforced concrete and steel). It opened in 1937 with the "Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung" (Great German Art Exhibition) repre- senting the official art of Nazi Germany, paralleled by the propaganda show "Entartete Kunst" (Degenerate Art) nearby, which condemned modern art from a racist perspective. 13. See Jan Andreas May, La Biennale di Venezia: Kontinuität und Wandel in der venezianischen Ausstellungspolitik, 1895-194-8 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2009), 74-82. 14. In the case of the German Pavilion, the territory of the building belongs to the German Federal government, not unlike the way nations handle control of foreign embassies.



Grüntuch & Ernst, Convertible City , German Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale, 2006. Photo: Jan Bitter, 2006. Courtesy THE ARCHITECTS.

but the superhuman scale, authoritative rhetoric, buttoned-up and pseudo-sacral interiority of the German Pavilion exclude it from the category of pavilion as folly. Instead, these features relate to a different tradition of arcadian architecture: the tomb, cenotaph, and memorial, where the monumental object reminds the viewer of the dead. The artistic interventions of Schneider, Haacke, Beuys, or Richter addressing death, mem-

ory, and the monumental relate to this architectural atmos-

phere in a specific, critical way. Should the pavilion be a container for art or an artwork

in its own right? What happens, as in the case of the German Pavilion, when the historic theme - here, built propaganda for Nazi Germany - and the contemporary self-perception of that nation are discrepant?

A curatorial concept cannot avoid the secret collabora- tion (or obstruction) of the architectural container, nor the

agency of the institutions* respective politics. It has to take a stand - either by actively addressing the building, the institution, and their respective histories, or by admitting the effect of them. While art curators and artists have expounded several interesting possibilities for the German Pavilion, it seems time for architecture curators and architects to step up and take charge of what arguably is their very medium.

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Ole W. Fischer is a practitioner, THEORETICIAN, HISTORIAN, AND CURATOR OF ARCHITECTURE. HE HAS TAUGHT AT THE ETH ZURICH, RISD, AND MIT AND IS CURRENTLY A RESEARCH FELLOW AT HARVARD'S Graduate School of Design.



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