40x40

Drip-Wiggle-Stitch, Kulturforum Berlin, 2010 (Sketch; Exhibition at BDA Gallery, Berlin) Invited by the Berlin chapter of the Union of German Architects (Der Bund der Deutsche Architekten, BDA), the sketch was made for an exhibition at the BDA Gallery. The exhibition called for idea sketches on how to make the Cultural Forum area – composed of notable buildings and institutions such as Mies’s Neue National Galerie and Scharoun’s Philharmonie and Staatsbibliothek – of the city fit in with the 1990s development around Potsdamer Platz.

Statement: Kulturforum Berlin stands testament to the turbulent modalities of Berlin. It is not supposed to, and should not, fit in. It underscores a history’s disjunction and the resistance to it. Why do we feel the need to fuse it into the city’s frame as if there were any? There is neither the need nor the necessity. Instead, any attempt to mold Kulturforum according to the city’s unfounded image of Einheit would be nothing but yet another meaningless revision that we have already seen enough. Or, for that matter, we could actively interlace our gestures as an intrinsic part of the turbulence that surrounds the place. We simply DRIP, WIGGLE and STITCH through and around it, engraving our gestures that at once contaminate and release the bind against further erasure of the city’s memories. Then again, our gestures will pass and all that is left will be only the traces that once were... .

Sang Lee and Stefanie Holzheu, Berlin, 2010