Registred time®

Tempelhof Collection by Askania, are watches fit with "the robust stainless steel housing" - its "daily usage" design "follows simply and clearly the basic forms of the airport" [Askania, 2012c].

The company that built aircraft instruments also manufactures the series Alexanderplatz, with a hand-winding mechanism and was inspired by "films, spies, the Cold War, tears and joy" [Askania, 2012a], and Quadriga, with concepts of "separation, fear, hope and the reunification of Berlin and Germany" a design for second time zone [Askania, 2012d].

Askania seems to have registered the word Hauptstadtuhr® [Askania, 2012b].

Askania [2012a] Alexanderplatz Collection. [Online] http://www.askania-uhren.de/collection.php?c=6
 [09/02/2012]
Askania [2012b] Hauptstadtuhr® [Online] http://www.askania-uhren.de/ebook/ASKANIA_Katalog_2011/#/10
 [09/02/2012] 
Askania [2012c] Tempelhof Collection. [Online] http://www.askania-uhren.de/collection.php?c=7 [09/02/2012]
Askania [2012d] Quadriga Collection. [Online] http://www.askania-uhren.de/collection.php?c=8 [09/02/2012]

Art, architecture and memories

The Architektonika exhibition illustrate the ways in which artists since the 1960s have reflected "at the cross-roads between art and architecture," with focuses the architectural design of buildings and urban spaces as well as the social and economic implications [Hamburger Bahnhof, 2012]. The artists include Sophie Calle, Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani, Thomas Florschuetz, Dieter Roth & Björn Roth, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Thomas Struth and Jeff Wall, whose "works unlock the door on imaginary spaces, stir memories of well-known buildings or revive various visions of the future that may now seem dated" [Hamburger Bahnhof, 2012].

Hamburger Bahnhof [2012] Architektonika [Online] http://www.hamburgerbahnhof.de/exhibition.php?id=34328&lang=en [09/02/2012]

Invisible reservour of the GDR

Filmmaker Phil Collins talks about his installation and short film marxism today (prologue) (2010), new video use! value! exchange! (2010) and teachers he interviewed for his work. Collins highlights melancholy and loss in the former-GDR, where icons or symbols associated to individuals' biographical history fall away and create "invisible  reservour" [Collins, in BFI, 2012].

BFI [2012] Phil Collins. [Online] http://www.bfi.org.uk/live/video/590 [09/02/2012]

Global contemporary art, since 1989

1989 was an eventful year, with the military crackdown on the pro-democracy protest in Tiananmen Square, the uprising in South Africa prior to the reforms that ended apartheid, the opening of the Berlin Wall following mass protest rallies and emigration in the GDR. 

The Global Contemporary exhibition also highlights shifts in contemporary art in 1989, noting: Xiao Lu who fired a gunshot at her installation Dialogue at the exhibition China/Avant-Garde in Beijing, and providing "voice to a form of contemporary art that was not rooted in western Modernism"; Centre Pompidou in Paris opened the exhibition Magiciens de la Terre, where "for the first time works by artists from countries such as Haiti, India, Madagascar, Australia and South Africa were displayed alongside their counterparts" and including series of works that previously "would have been labeled 'World Art' and confined to ethnographic museums"; and in London, the Other Story focusing on the Afro-Indian artists' contribution to British modern art, curated by Pakistani artist Rasheed Areen, whose Third Text Journal "had already begun rewriting art history from a 'Third World' perspective" in 1987 (ZKM, 2011).

ZKM (2011) Face the Facts: 1989 & the Arts [Online]
 http://www.global-contemporary.de/en/room-of-histories/172-face-the-facts-1989-and-the-arts [09/02/2012]

Images over time

"A millimeter this way or that can make all the difference. The transient quality of light and atmosphere. The passing stray cat, the discarded soda can, the random interplay of people moving through the scene. All these variables give the image its uniqueness. But what’s equally important, I think, is not the individual photograph, but the gradual accretion of images made over an extended period of time by a particular photographer." (Rose, 2011)

Brian Rose, a photographer and author of The Lost Border and In from the Cold, also has an online photographic chronicle which covers the city from 1985 to 2009.

Rose, Brian [2012] Berlin: In from the Cold. [Online]
 http://www.brianrose.com/infromthecold.htm [09/02/2012]

Rose, Brian (2011) New York/Uniquity. [Online]
 http://www.brianrose.com/blog/2011/03/new-yorkuniquity/ [09/02/2012]
Rose, Brian (2010) Berlin: In from the Cold. [Online]
 http://www.blurb.com/books/1235115 [09/02/2012]

Architecture and contemporary photography

Envisioning Buildings exhibition, with eight thematic chapters on Restoration, Reanimation, Dwelling, Utopian Visions, Refraction, Deconstruction, Critique, and Systems Analysis [MAK, 2012], reviews discourses and "major conceptual, theoretical, and visual concerns of photography as a specific contemporary art medium" [e-flux, 2012]. The exhibition presents works of camera-based artists who, since the 1980s, "have changed discourses about the production and reception of photography" [e-flux, 2012] along with debates throughout January and April. 

Deutsches Bundesarchiv (2009) File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1986-0417-414, Berlin, XI. SED-Parteitag, Eröffnung.jpg [Online] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-1986-0417-414,_Berlin,_XI._SED-Parteitag,_Er%C3%B6ffnung.jpg [08/02/2012]
Deutsches Bundesarchiv (2008) File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R0821-400, Berlin, Palast der Republik.jpg. [Online]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-R0821-400%2C_Berlin%2C_Palast_der_Republik.jpg [08/02/2012]

e-flux [2012] Envisioning Buildings: reflecting architecture in contemporary art photography. [Online] 
http://www.e-flux.com/announcements/envisioning-buildings-reflecting-architecture-in-contemporary-art-photography/ [08/02/2012]
MAK [2012] Envisioning Buildings: Reflecting Architecture in Contemporary Art Photography. [Online] http://www.mak.at/e/jetzt/f_jetzt.htm [08/02/2012]

A memorial in Tallinn

"Memory has to belong to people and not the government" (Norman, in Tulca Festival, 2011)

After-War by Kristina Norman is "a case study of the conflict" [Norman, 2012] surrounding the removal of a monument in Tallinn, in 2007. Although for the Russian residents the statue of a solder from 1947 symbolized victory over Nazism and positive identity, it signified the following Soviet occupation and political repression for many Estonians [Norman, 2012]. The Estonian government relocates the Bronze Soldier from central Tallinn to a military cemetery 2.5 km away, in a move according to Norman, to distance the Russian minority community from the majority Estonians, two "memory collectives" (Norman, in Tulca Festival, 2011).

On the Victory Day two years after these events, "I brought a full-size golden replica of the sculpture to its former location, which still remains a sacred place, although the government claims it is now profane. With this act I visualized my argument that although the upstaged problems surrounding the Bronze Soldier and the drama of its relocation are now neatly tucked away and removed from the public space, they nevertheless continue to exist and they should be dealt with" [Norman, 2012].

Norman, Kristina [2012] After-War. [Online]  http://www.cca.ee/?id=11280#Kristinatekst  [08/02/2012]
Tulca Festival (2011) Kristina Norman Tulca 2011. [Online] http://vimeo.com/30189884 [08/02/2012]

Higgie, Jennifer (2010) 10th Baltic Triennial. [Online]
 http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/10th_baltic_triennial/ [08/02/2012]

Sediments of the Wall

From top: How long is now; Mit Sicherheit keine Freiheit; Die Grenze verläuft nicht zwischen oben und unten, sondern zwischen dir und mir; and When you're strange

"The series of four panoramic views of the Berlin wall form their own group of works. Walls as a symbol for separation and boundary setting, and also as an artistic element, have formed a common thread in Mona Breede’s works for many years now. In Berlin the wall is inextricably linked to the history of Germany and the few remains are traded today as relics for tourists or are accordingly set in a new context.In the artist’s group of works the Berlin Wall is merely a reminiscence, a historical transparency and resonating space for further reflections on walls and the conflict potential that can arise in a society confronted with a wide range of social upheavals. In this way, the work “Mit Sicherheit keine Freiheit” (Freedom cannot be secured), a slogan taken from an advertising poster from the organisation Aktion Mensch, broaches the subject of a conflict in our society in which an increase in surveillance can result in a danger to our freedom." [ArtDaily.com, 2012]

ArtDaily.com [2012] Berlin: Sediments of a City by Mona Breede at Galerie Dittmar in Berlin. [Online]

 http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=43664&int_modo=1 [06/02/2012]
Galerie Dittmar [2012] Mona Breede II [Online]
http://www.galerie-dittmar.de/artist/breede2/ [06/02/2012]

Joshua Lutz and borderlands

Joshua Lutz's series The Border focuses on the lives by the US-Mexico border. Below are the photographs from his work Meadowlands.

"As fond as I am of documentary photography I think that we have come to a point in the history of photography where we need to think about photographs more in the way we do paintings and less in the traditional sense of a document. For that reason I generally don’t caption or title my work and I try not to say too much about the process of making my work. I like the ideas of possibilities and the more I talk about them the less experiences people can have with looking at them." (Lutz in Hulin, 2008)

"One of my first assignments was to travel the Texas-Mexico border. It came as a welcome relief from the Meadowlands project I had been struggling with. There was something really nice about the massiveness of this task, and the impossibility of coming to any conclusions on a place I knew so little about." [Lutz, 2012]

Hulin, Rache (2008) Shoot! Interview: Joshua Lutz and The Meadowlands. [Online] 

 http://blog.photoshelter.com/2008/08/shoot-interview-josh-lutz-and-the-meadowlands/ [06/02/2012]

Lutz, Joshua [2012] The Border. [Online]

 http://www.joshualutz.com/#/commissions/the-border  [06/02/2012]

Last Call by Cathrin Schulz

Schulz, Catharin [2012] Last Call. [Online] http://virtual-exhibition.deconarch.com/cathrinschulz-lastcall/ [06/02/2012]

Lenin tour 2009

"l show Lenin to my contemporaries. And the 21st century to Lenin. Who will explain it to him?" (Herz, 2009: 78)

The city council in Dresden decided to remove its Lenin statue, a in a move to move away from the GDR past. In 2004, Rudolf Herz from a stonemason borrowed the decommissioned torso of Lenin and drove around Europe with two other anonymous statues. In the evening the truck would stop in cities asking artists, sociologists and economists to give their views on Lenin in the twenty-first century. The tour was filmed and photographed.

"I am searching for images, I am exploring the life in our globalised, capitalist world, am enquiring after memories and current views of utopia... Our journey takes us through contemporary everyday life, high-tech zones, and desolate industrial areas in the East and the West. A change of locale engenders a change of references and perspectives, Prage is not Zurich, Dresden is not Rome."  (Herz, in Museum Ludwig, 2012)

Herz, Rudolf (2009) Lenin w Trasie / Rudolf Herz. Lenin on Tour. [Online]
 http://www.erasedwalls.eu/erasedwalls.pdf [04/02/2012]
Museum Ludwig (2012) Rudolf Herz. Lenin on tour. [Online]
 http://www.museenkoeln.de/museum-ludwig/default.asp?s=2665 [04/02/2012]

Artimageslibrary (2010) Rudolph Herz Dachau Museumsbil
 http://www.flickr.com/photos/artimageslibrary/4954051621/ [04/02/2012]

Remembering is "re-remembering"

"Memory is endlessly creative, and at one level it functions just as imagination does... endlessly rewriting the self." (Fernyhough, 2012)

Memories are constructed when needed "according to the demands of the present" claims Fernyhough (2010). And as a result they are "soberingly fragile" (Fernyhough, 2010). He argues that memories are "nifty multimedia collages of how things were" which are mental reconstructions and are "shaped by how things are now" (Fernyhough, 2012). 

"If the experimental conditions are set up correctly, it turns out to be rather simple to give people memories for events that never actually happened. These recollections can often be very vivid... [Kim Wade at the University of Warwick] colluded with the parents of her student participants to get photos from the undergraduates' childhoods, and to ascertain whether certain events, such as a ride in a hot-air balloon, had ever happened. She then doctored some of the images to show the participant's childhood face in one of these never-experienced contexts, such as the basket of a hot-air balloon in flight. Two weeks after they were shown the pictures, about half of the participants 'remembered' the childhood balloon ride, producing some strikingly vivid descriptions, and many showed surprise when they heard that the event had never occurred. In the realms of memory, the fact that it is vivid doesn't guarantee that it really happened." (Fernyhough, 2012)

"Remembering is always re-remembering" (Fernyhough, 2012) and it's the the assembly of memory and the resulting editing process that may distort how things actually were. He also notes that "contamination by visual images, such as photographs and video" may alter our memories and "when we look back into the past, we are always doing so through a prism of intervening selves".

Memories are "curiously susceptible to distortion, and often not nearly as reliable as we would like", however, knowing uncertainties in remembering makes memory into a kind of storytelling which "contain a rather wonderful kind of truth" (Fernyhough, 2010).

Fernyhough, Charles (2012) The story of the self. [Online]
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/13/our-memories-tell-our-story [03/02/2012] 
Fernyhough, Charles (2010) Ideas for modern living: memory. [Online]
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/aug/22/charles-fernyhough-school-life-memory [03/02/2012]

Errol Morris on truth and reenactment

The documentary film director Errol Morris claims that he "can't know for sure" whether an interviewee is telling the truth or not, and further notes how a reenactment can create "a kind of strange abstract world around a photograph" for his documentary films.

Morris claims that there is a line between the "mistaken idea about reenactments in general that you're showing somebody what really happened" and "a little world where people can think about a problem or a set of questions". which gets "the audience to think about certain questions about who was where, when, and what did they see" and "forces you into a position where you are asked to think about something or to think about something the way I am thinking about it".

"If the idea is entering history through a photograph," he notes on his work Standard Operating Procedure, "if you're somehow going through the surface of that photograph and going beyond, the reenactments help you to do that". He slows everything down, "almost, but not quite, to that instant of photography and ask you to reflect, to listen to what people are saying about that moment when the photograph was taken and the circumstances under which it was taken."

He argues it's simply wrong "that you can only talk about the real world in one way, that journalism has to be conducted according to a certain set of styles"  and claims "the pursuit of truth, the underlying reality of what happened, and anything which is in service of that is fair game."

"The photographs that fascinate me the most are the photographs that were posed, where they created some odd tableau vivant for the camera. It's almost as if in some strange way the soldiers were reenacting the essence of the war on a very private level. I guess that's the sick reading of it."

In the following interview he argues against the notion of subjective and varying truths, that there is truth based "in the real world" different to that of a personal opinion.

"What is true? What is false? What really happened?"

Columbia Journalism Review (2008) Recovering Reality: A Conversation with Errol Morris. [Online]

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHNf4No5WtY [02/02/2012]

Spiegel Online (2008) Interview with Abu Ghraib Documentary Director Errol Morris: 'I'd Like to See a Lot of People in the Administration Indicted'. [Online]

 http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,535350-2,00.html [02/02/2012]

True memory gone, illusion remains

"This is a memory of my sophomore year of 1989, the year when I almost got killed. I don’t feel lucky for my survival, but a strong feeling of sadness for myself, because of my inability to do something in the face of death. Twenty years have passed. Mother’s hair has turned gray; beloved ones have dried up the tears. Glorious as forever on this first street of China, silence prevails. Silence, forgetting and deliberate covering, people’s memory turns into a vacuum. The bygones twisted into a blurred picture, true memory gone, illusion remains. That memory makes us more helpless as the time passes by. Remaining silent in the face of reality is a testimony of our hypocrisy and weakness. The living still live in the question of the dead. The sun always rises the next morning and the four seasons remain alternate. The innocent died on the side of the world, while the guilty are at large on the other side of the world. This is the reality that has not yet changed throughout the history." [Liu, 2012] 

Liu, Wei [2012] Unforgettable Memory. [Online]
 http://www.transmediale.de/unforgettable-memory [[01/02/2012]

The Utopian Spaceship

The social experiment "based on an initially utopian, then scientific, notion of the future: Communism" [Transmediale.de, 2012] is portrayed in the first GDR-Polish science fiction film, Der Schweigende Stern (First Spaceship on Venus) (1959) by Kurt Maetzig. Based on the early works of the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem the film projects "a vision of the future that would incorporate technological, social and psychological criteria" and "reveals how a global visual canon of utopian ideas was begun to be created in the 1950s".

Transmediale.de [2012] Matinee: Der Schweigende Stern. [Online]
 http://www.transmediale.de/matinee-der-schweigende-stern [01/02/2012]

The corrosion of time and being "too late"

When Tacita Dean tried to film the Chalon-sur-Saône Kodak factory in France, which had stopped producing film, she was told she had come too late. "I like too late," she replied (Schama, 2011) and went on to create her work Kodak (2006) which Simon Schama describes "one of the most visually compelling of her works". Six years after Dean's Kodak, the company has filed for bankruptcy accumulating debates about film and digital media. 

"While the television tower filmed in Fernsehturm owes its continued survival to its suitability for adaptation to tourism, the government building whose windows provide the screen for Palast was demolished a few years after Dean made her film. Similarly, although the Kodak factory in France continued to make X-ray film for a short time after it stopped 16mm production, its premises were demolished in December 2007 to make way for new industries." (Manchester, 2009)

Manchester, Elizabeth (2009) Kodak (2006) [Online]
 http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=91369&tabview=text  [21/01/2012]
Schama, Simon (2011) Tacita Dean talks to Simon Schama. [Online]
 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/b94bfcb4-e973-11e0-af7b-00144feab49a.html#axzz1k5RDnVhM [21/01/2012]

Moss, Ceci (2010) Kodak (2006) - Tacita Dean. [Online]
 http://rhizome.org/editorial/2010/apr/14/kodak-2006-tacita-dean/ [21/01/2012]

Accuracy of collective/collaborative memories

"Memories are always being negotiated, fought over and shaped by the memories of others." (Fernyhough, 2012)

We sometimes "wrongly incorporate information that has been provided by other people into our own memories," notes Fernyhough (2012). This is also known as "social contagion" caused by the "pressure to fall in line with the memories of family, friends and colleagues" which we often resist, but we occasionally fully believe in "other people's mistaken recollections of the past" (Fernyhough, 2012). In a study conducted at the universities of Hull and Windsor showed that "non-believed memories" (beliefs we no longer think are true but keep experiencing as memories) are reported by more than 20% of adults, showing that we constantly edit our memories, rely on others while "sometimes rejecting their veracity altogether".  Memories are shaped and reconstructed by the self who is doing the remembering, and the stories change when the person's beliefs and emotions change (Fernyhough, 2012).

"Collective memory has an extraordinary power, and it stems from the collaborative, reconstructive nature of memory itself." (Fernyhough, 2012)

We are engaging in "collective remembering" when we mark Remembrance days or anniversaries and there are other less formal ways of "publicly remembering the past". Social remembering, or "memory collaborations" can "diminish the accuracy of our memories, and groups of people sometimes remember things less effectively" than the individuals' remembering. How communal memories and its relation to personal memories or how collaboration helps and hinders memory" are still unresolved.

Fernyhough, Charles (2012) Shared memories and the problems they cause. [Online]

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/14/shared-memories-problems-they-cause [15/01/2012]

Collective and public memories

"Memory has always been a social activity... and our appetite for collective nostalgia is undiminished." (Bell, 2012)

Memory has long been stored "outside of our own individual bodies" and has been social, claims Bell (2012). The changes we are seeing today shifts where the information is stored, from a note on a shelf or a camera to "behind small screens". Bell argues that "our appetite for collective nostalgia" has always been aided by social events, memorial days and monuments such as statues and plaques. The web has become an accessible and very public "repository for our lives: a place to store memories, to be reminded, and to find other people's memories too".

Collective memory can connect and reconnect "us to things we need or want and would otherwise be without," Bell claims, and further argues that we might become more open and honest about our personal and complex histories as we get used to digitised memories.

"After all, memories aren't just about recalling singular facts, but making connections within a complex network. Why not use technology to help extend and enrich this network?" (Bell, 2012)

Bell, Alice (2012) Memory in the Digital Age. [Online]
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/14/memories-in-the-digital-age [14/01/2012]

Your present vs. future self

Daniel Goldstein claims that "there's two heads inside one person" - cool and hot - or the present self and the future self, and they are engaged in "an unequal battle". The present self is tempted by various present desires and is in control, whereas the future pursue higher reasoning although it is absent and weak (Goldstein, 2011). He also talks about commitment devices, which are ways individuals try to commit to the future good, how we pursue something we can't see or feel and try to diverge ourselves from temptations: over-spending, or eating donuts.

Goldstein, Daniel (2011) Daniel Goldstein: The battle between your present and future self. [Online] 
 http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_goldstein_the_battle_between_your_present_and_future_self.html
 [08/01/2012]

GDR lost generation

Lothar de Maizière, the last GDR prime minister, attending the Korean-German Consultation Committee on Reunification, says the South Koreans are uninterested in what the North wants.

"They say: 'It's up to us in the South to solve the unity problem. We have the money.' Well, it was no different with us. That was, of course, the German problem. Afterwards there can be a very pronounced feeling of colonization... Historical ruptures always leave behind a lost generation." (De Maizière in Gutsch, 2012a)

De Maizière also notes that "the Koreans basically don't want unity to cost too much, and I tell them it will cost much more than you can imagine."

The last GDR defense minister Rainer Eppelmann, another German delegate, says "I've realized that the South Koreans are trying to figure out a way for the North Koreans to remain in the North after unification... The South Koreans were talking about border controls. I'll be damned! They seriously intend to close the border after the wall has fallen!" Kim Chun Sig, South Korea's deputy unification minister, says "that is also a very sensitive question. Let's put it this way: Perhaps the North Koreans could remain in their homeland, yes? And we will help them" (Gutsch, 2012a).

Kim doesn't seem to know whether the North Koreans want reunification, as he claims "we have no information about this... we don't know. We only have the defectors who tell us that the conditions in the country are very poor" (Gutsch, 2012b). According to Kim, around 35% of the 19 to 40-year-olds see Korean unification as an important political issue.

"The desire to unite is continuously ebbing. South Korea's older generation has long since lost touch with friends and relatives north of the border. The younger generation has never had a chance to meet. Viewed from the South, North Korea is a distant, uninhabitable planet. It's not even possible to hop across the border for a quick look, as West German schoolchildren used to do on field trips to East Berlin." (Gutsch, 2012b)

Gutsch, Jochen-Martin (2012a) Seoul Searching: Germans Give Pep Talks on Korean Unification. [Online]

 http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,807123,00.html [06/01/2012]
Gutsch, Jochen-Martin (2012b) Part 2: 'I Will Live To See Korean Unifiaction [Online]
 http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,807123-2,00.html [06/01/2012]