DAGMARA GENDA

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PALAST DER REPUBLIK

International Public Art Competition, Berlin 2017, Shortlist

Description: Because the Humboldt Forum is supposed to act as a site of preservation, as a Museum of the World, I propose to re-insert that which has been erased, not as a literal representation, but as an unactualized plan. A cross-section of der Palast der Republik, sourced from original documents in the Bundesarchiv, will be vectorized and printed large-scale onto banner material. This plan will then be cut out from this material, rendering it distorted and flimsy like lacework. The resulting undulations are intended to propose new readings of old plans, and an alternative to linear historical representation. The plan was supposed to hang from the ceiling of one of the Humboldt Forum's staircases.

Concept:The war-damaged Prussian Berliner Schloss was demolished in 1950 and replaced by the Palast der Republik, the parliament of the German Democratic Republic. In the mid 2010s, the controversial decision was made to rebuild the Berliner Schloss and transform it into an ethnographic museum. In other words, a symbol of Prussian imperialism was to be reconstructed to house colonial artefacts, among them, pillaged cultural objects. Later in the early 2020s, it became clear that the reconstruction was partly sponsored by right-wing donors, who seemingly yearned for a new "Erinnerungspolitik" (remebrance politic).

My proposal was to bring the past that was forcibly erased back into the new/old building via a floor plan. In doing so I wanted to remind future audiences that history is not fixed, but accumulates as affect—as symptoms, impressions, scents, colours, nostalgia and unrealized futures. In order to posit one narrative as truth, another must be discarded and it is in fact the role of culture producers and keepers to foster a radical plurality of time without synthesizing it into a deterministic history.