The Leipziger Platz 16 and 18
Here at Postdamer-Platz reality meets jpeg, and one confronts image dependent culture first hand.
The construction of the fake architecture also reveals the moments in which the buildings are confronted by their impossibility to replace their ideal representation, such as the stitched cornered seams, the flapping of the wind creating creases onto the material, flat shadows of real light posts casted onto the material, and folds where the scaffolding’s structure conflicts with the image wrap, revealing the metal supports.
Www.potsdamertor.de describes the building as an “Office and apartment buildings with a spectacular view located directly on Leipziger Platz, currently in construction”. The project started as far back as 2001 and their printed version has existed since 2004, but by the looks of it the projects realization has lasted much longer than expected. The Leipziger Plats 16 and 18 facades have been up for more than 8 years now, and their lifespan begin to represent much more as time passes.
Through the years, Google street-view’s documentation of these structures have captured the vulnerable times when the workers themselves are masking the image onto the scaffold and have yet to mount the ads. The over-documentation of a building that never existed! In a blog post in 2006, media artist, Aram Bathroll exposed the structures as “it is a double fake; a fake building with a fake banner”, yet the ads are real, advertising current movies and products. Bathroll also points out the collaborative balance between the city of Berlin and the advertising company, “they are probably only allowed to take 60% of the scaffolding as advertisement since anymore would too much.”
They are Images of buildings that exist before the buildings themselves. This is not the beginning of a post-modern philosophy chapter on mimesis, simulation, or hyper-reality. This is also not a commission from an artist like Victor Burgin or Urs Fischer commenting on illusion/reality, but a fact and physical manifestation of what these theories and artist have been dealing with for years.
Victor Burgin – Photopath (inkjet prints on vinyl)
The buildings become great examples of transmediale’s 2k+12 theme; “in/compatible” and the uneasy tensions of technology. How “in/compatible” are these buildings with tourist, locals? At what point does consumerism, and capitalism’s demand for faster, cheaper, and easy ways of creating the image of a healthy economy and culture, manipulate our reality too the point where we should act against those demands? As said previously, maybe the fact that these structures have remained part of Berlin’s landscape for more than 8 years attest to the harmony achieved. It might be the perfect balance between the real and second life, uniting Potsdamer Platz; a plaza which 20 years ago was in complete ruins. As we like to believe here at Art 404, fake it till you make it.
