A Norwegian artist has an installation up in the Alex U-Bahn station. His work, says the website's description,
questions the manners of change that the DDR is going through. From the wide range of possible answers he chose a drastic perspective: values and demands of the DDR are dissolved. What's left are the 5 new federal countries that submitted to the mechanisms of marketing and commercialization.
[...]
The billboards lead to an analysis of the DDR - transformation process without promoting a particular approach. They rather confront the viewer with his/her own ideas. They might be distinctive or superficial, clear or distorted by Ostalgia, rational or emotional - a tension is created that leads to an analysis of the subject.
What this amounts to, it seems, is a range of logos made out of the letters DDR and plastered into the poster spaces along the U-Bahn tunnel walls. It's an empty gesture, if you ask me. There's neither critique nor playfulness in the project, and rather than "confronting the viewer with his own ideas" these logos as a whole offer only one approach: commercialization of the memory of the GDR. Which is fine, in itself; in so many iterations, though, it's just boring. On the other hand, in the individual designs there are barely discernable traces of well-known product logos, which makes for an interesting viewing experience; but again, it's at best just puzzle-like and gets old fast.
Of course, I might have a different interpretation if I saw the things in person. Maybe. The installation is up until March.
Posted by Heather at December 12, 2003 11:05 AM
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