Photographer Warren Naidich notes that the opening of the Berlin Wall delivered immediate and long-term consequences: "this once important monument depicting two famous philosophical figures has become nothing more than a backdrop for staged photographs by tourists visiting the city elucidating the ideological changes that have resulted form the fall of Communism and the rise of Capitalism" [Neidich, 2012b].
Neidich created a series Marx and Engels (2008-09) from photographs he took between 2008 and 2009. Installed in 1986, the Marx and Engels statue has moved about in Alexanderplatz, and can be seen in his series as a tourist backdrop with the disappearing Palast der Republik. He has also created an installation Undoing the Palast der Republik (2007) capturing the Palast being demolished.
For the Black Square, Triangle, Circle Fragment 2 (2007), which he describes "a series of performative sculptures that reenact the memory of itself as a fragment of a once enacted performative space," Neidich states that "altogether the undoing of the Palast is metonymic for the process of undoing of Architecture as a cultural act. The Palast was not demolished but is being slowly and meticulously taken apart. The cultural undoing, assimilation and subsuming of the communist block by Capitalism after the fall of the Berlin is re-enacted in this work" [Neidich, 2012a].
Neidich, Warren [2012a] Black Square, Triangle, Circle Fragment 2 (2007) [Online]
http://www.warrenneidich.com/black-square-triangle-circle-fragment-2-4/ [17/02/2012]
Neidich, Warren [2012b] Marx and Engels (2008-09) [Online]
http://www.warrenneidich.com/marx-and-engels-2008-09/ [17/02/2012]
Neidich, Warren [2012c] Undoing the Palast der Republik (2007) [Online]
http://www.warrenneidich.com/undoing-the-palast-der-republik/ [17/02/2012]
