city culture: abandoned spaces
TRANSCRIPT
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Tacheles and the transformation of space.
How a ruin turns into a landmark for capitalist
purposes?
SILVIA ROMANO REDONDOs. Number: s44002752963 words.
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Tacheles and the transformation of space.
How a ruin turns into a landmark for capitalist purposes.
INTRODUCTION
Tacheles is an emblematic building in Berlin well known all around the world.
After twenty-two years of continuous art movement, this ruin is going to be
converted in business and apartments, curiously ending similar to its building
one century ago, considering that it emerged as a big mall. In this essay Im
trying to analyse how a space can change gradually taking shape of different
places. Im going to explain how a ruin could achieve much popularity with
social practices and how capitalism takes advantage of this new conceived
space.
Introduction to the history about Tacheles
Tacheles Kunsthalle or art-house, is a large space destined for art
where many artists not only showed and sold their artworks, also worked in,
becoming that a collective studio for the past 22 years. The building where they
were located was an abandoned wreck of a shopping centre situated on the
Oranienburger Strasse.
The history of the building started with the ruin of the mall when it was
abandoned for first time. After being used by the Free German Trade UnionFederation (FDGB) it returned of being uninhabited over the course of the next
several years. And because of this deterioration the building was partially
demolished until the arrival of the group Knstlerinitative Tacheles, on February
13, 1990, when they occupied the building in order to save it as a historic
landmark.
After some disagreements the artists achieved to stay legally from 1998
to 2009 thanks of the purchase of the developer Fundus Group that gave the
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artists a lease in at a nominal rent of 50 cents. However with the end of this
contract they became squatters of the building, only the half of the space was
used the last years and little by little some artists were abandoning the building
until 2012, when they were expelled from the building.
In the XXI century the building was known everywhere, most of the magazines
related with tourism, art, fashion, architecture or even newspapers had an
article destined to this house making it known and talking positively about it. It
was consecrated as a landmark for the bohemian atmosphere of the city and
the social and aesthetic German activism.
After this summary of the history of the building you will be able to understand
some of the reasons why this space turned into a political and controversial
space.
TACHELES AS A SPACE vs. PLACE
Tacheles became popular as a cultural and artistic place but nowadays it is
seen dominated for the capitalist forces. With the domination of this space the
place is destroyed. Thinking about that I ask how this has happened and how a
space comes of interesting for capitalism. In order to discover that, first Ill try to
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analyse how emerges a place and what shape it and after how capitalism
affects this construction of space.
First of all I want to clarify that in this case study the forces of the capitalism are
represented by the old and the new owner of the building and the Bank which
was given the loan to the artists.
The fact that capitalism controls a space is decisive for the change of a place.
However in this case is more determiner being Tacheles a place which worked
out of the rules of the capitalist social space. Capitalism symbolizes the
opposite of freedom and equality, exactly what the artists looked for in
Tacheles. These are some of the ideals which converted this in a landmark
where people felt in a utopic place for those who looked for freedom of thought
and expression.
However a place is not establish only with the ideals and the imaginary, it is
constructed based in a dynamic process of continuous change and periods of
stability. Every artist was offering his paintings, his music or the artwork they
wanted to create, being each graffiti, every sculpture or song a small decisive
part for the gradually whole it was. In a place anything is there by chance even
talking of a place where everything could seem as accidentally fallen there.
Each small movement, appearance or object is thought for staying there and
take part of the whole experience. Nevertheless not all the components of a
place have to represent a specific meaning but everything unconsciously
symbolize something for the internal world of human perceptions. Everyone
creates in their mental space a representation of the spaces they are, emerging
this duality between subjective and objective world, which depends directly of
our perception of the space. Without going out of our case study we could
exemplify this idea saying that for instance graffiti could have some different
connotations from underground, artistic expression to dirt, or vulgarity.
Lefebvre was one of the authors who have analysed this subjectivity in the
realm of space, differentiating between place and space and three kinds of
spaces: conceived, lived and perceived space. I want to use these terms
applying them in the analysis of Tacheles as a special place where we canshape this imaginary spaces through real cases.
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The idea of Tacheles and what does it mean has converted into a place without
space. Now that the artists are out of their studios they will look for space. But
without this specific space where the place was born, this never could be the
same. However I think about if itspossible to reproduce a place with the same
meanings and connotations like it was before but in a different space. I dont
think is only the building what have been determining for the establishment of
this place, however what is clear is that the location and the building itself have
influenced the way artists converged and found the link for creating this
characteristic area. And even after their demolition for building apartments, the
meanings of the old ruin will continue inherent of the space with nostalgia of the
old structure.
The first step of the research connecting the Lefebvre ideas with this landmark
could be analysing it throughout the representations of the space. Tacheles was
conceptualized by the artists sometime after their settlement in the building
when they realised of what they had built with their everyday practices. What
happened in this case is that a lived space turned into a conceive space with
the efforts of the artists of maintaining the original appearance of the building. In
the moment they perceived that the spatial practices accomplished in a space
with his corresponding meanings around the symbols and images were
establishing and taking fame becoming be known all around the world, they
could have been planning the conservation of this space and convert it a
conceived space constructed by the own artists who wanted to take advantage
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of what had emerged as something unorganized. They could have cleaned
every square of the building or taken care of the appearance of the walls,
however the fact of neglecting this cares forms part of this constructed space.
The building is conceived as a ruin because they planned to be like this.
We can divide the life of Tacheles in two phases. In its first period the artists
behaved as free users of the space, adapting their practices of what they need
and what they wanted to express in that moment. The way they occupied and
lived in the space answer to the patterns of some models of urbanism as the
ones achieved by some pioneers anarchists like Howard, Geddes or The
Regional Planning Association of Americai. They defended a society based in
the voluntary cooperation throughout small communities governed by theparticipants belonging to them. Tacheles could work as one of these
communities kept out of the capitalist forces but with a slight incoherence: the
importance of the Bank and their initial tenancy agreement necessary for their
survival there.
In this stage the building represented a space for the unproductive members of
the society, who fought to keep them out the movement happened in Berlin
which tried to renew the city. Berlin was in a period of continuous capitalist
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movement and it was assuming the standards ways of living and making strong
efforts for cleaning the old city. Berlin was one the cities which has undergone
much urban changes with the restructuration after the fall of the Wall and
consequently many spaces were abandoned and re-appropriated by the socially
and economically marginalized. The artists used this space because it needed
be used, because a space without social practices, without inhabitants and
users finish disappearing, and they wanted to conserve it. They were fighting for
the survival of the space making what they knew: art. They occupation
represented a revolution in the distribution of public space. However the space
converted into an emblematic creative place for the city and the people who
discovered the place in his first period state that was his fame what destroyed
their original meanings.
After their artistic period when their purposes were directed to express with
art, the artists become constructers of space seekers of a benefit. They started
to give more importance to the production and the sales of their artworks than
the creative process. It is obvious that this change didnt take place
spontaneously, but after a gradual evolution and the force of different factors
that even the inhabitants of the building ignore. The fact is that they were tryingto seem out of the purposeful labour production, but finished succumbing to
work under the rules of the production for consumption process and at the
service of the market. This is the materialization of what Lefebvre stated about
the conceived space, which has a primacy over the lived and the perceived
space. Social and cultural practices conformed the lived space and graffiti,
paintings and the smell of an old building are part of the symbols of Tacheles,
which were changed for a constructed space in the benefit of tourism and
capitalism.
The increase of art movement and the arrival of tourism searching of art
experiences as spatial practices changed the urban reality around Tacheles and
created a spatial structure out of the borders of the building. This dispersion
achieved that a limited space grew providing the surroundings of the meaning
given to Tacheles. This produced the insertion of new art museums close to the
building and the improvement of the social status of the neighbourhood taking
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more relevance in the city. This is how capitalism reorganizes urbanism
adapting to the new necessities emerged in the city.
We have seen how capitalism abandons his material capital and public spaces
when they are not profitable for them. Also something interesting of research is
how the capitalism takes advantage of what people create and build only with
the purpose of obtaining a benefit. In our case we see it reflected in the fact that
the artists werent evicted of the building immediately after the end of their
contract. The owner waited on purpose for some more years because of some
reasons: The first one was in order to get the squatters decline their resistance
for going out.
Another fact was that the end of the tenancy coincided with the financial crisis,
which means the building couldnt be sold or only for a low amount of money.
For the artists the crisis represented an opportunity to challenge the gentrifying
forces and a won battle for the good of the use of public space. It has signified
the beginning of a new movement of reoccupation of bourgeois spaces for
social purposes.
But what is interesting for this research is the fact that capitalism, being
conscious of what fame was achieving the building and the neighbourhood
around wanted this time in order to increase the value of the building. In fact,
this was what happened because the building was sold for the amount of $269
Million. This figure was unthinkable twenty years ago, when nobody knew what
a hotspot that area would become. The owner of the building had a property
which was going to be demolished because it hadnt any price and now he finds
with a hot property longed for the main investors and fund-management
companies of the country, which is going to be converted in apartments.The
sale would help speed up the gentrification of Berlins central Mittedistrict,
where luxury boutiques and modern condominiums have replaced rundown
squats and abandoned land. A former post office building on the same street is
due to be converted into apartments.This represents the power of capitalism of
owning and transforming spaces, always converting spaces as machines for
production of richness.
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TACHELES AS A RUIN
Tacheles as a ruin has an interesting meaning worthy of being analysed. It has
represented a period of fight in the conservation of the urban memories. It is a
physical example which was saved because of the nostalgia of a prior time of
success and peak.
Tacheles has suffered many changes since the occupation of the space, but
something which consolidated the space was the Musealisationiiit lived. The
building was conceived as a space to visit only to go back to the times when
emerged all the social revolution around Berlin. A building or monument with a
hundred years of history could recall different moments of this century, however
normally it takes only the strongest image it has been remember, the image of
what was most decisive for society in the context of the city. For this reason
Tacheles is not going to be remembered as an old mall like it emerged, it will be
a memory of a period of social struggle and like a space of freedom and art.
The artists created the concept of occupying a ruin for artistic and social
purposes. And it became a trendy activity. In Budapest also we can find the ruin
bars where this idea is set-up. They improve the image of the space taking
advantage of the connotations of the ruin. In this stage they turned into liars
wanting to sell their space as the poor but sexy slogan characteristic of the city
of Berlin. However this space wasnt poor anymore, because the poverty is
socially related with the trash of the society, and it is ethically disapproved
completely different of the connotations given to our case. Nevertheless, the hip
of the current days is still selling ruins or second-hand objects as the vintage
fashionable, seeking to recover previous memories.
The conservation of this building signified also the maintenance of a social
group, a social identity created around Berlin in the 90s. Tacheles represented
an identity of the city, an identity which has changed in the last years and it has
modernized. In the moment Tacheles had life, it portrayed a visual contradiction
between the old and the current modern urbanism. But now with the new owner
and the reconstruction everything is going to change. The loss of a building in
semiotic terms could be the lack of a signifier and inherently the absence of thissignified (or the lived space in the awarded terms of Lefebvre) joined to it. This
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demolition could be the loss of the typology of the shapes and forms which go
directly related with the memories and the pass images associated to them.
Nevertheless the physic building is not the only signifier for Tacheles; some
people have created the virtual Tachelesiiiin order to maintain alive the lived
space, and many artists embodied the space in their artworks.
The memory of Tacheles is preserved for instance in the film 'Good Bye, Lenin',
which was inspired by the place. In one scene the protagonist appears in the
building with a woman, drinking beer and smoking shaping here the atmosphere
and the soul of the space. Other way of give shape of a memory is throughout
the music and his lyrics. In the background of the scene sounded the
soundtrack of the film composed by Yann Tiersen, with these words:
Winds of change blowing in the ruins of our republic. Summer came and Berlin
was the nicest place on the layer of the earth. We had the feeling of being the
centre of the world, where finally something moved and we moved with his
rhythm."
CONCLUSION
After these arguments the main point I want to obtain is how spaces like this
gain value and popularity with the pass of the time. The factors or elements that
produce value in Tacheles go around the creation of a self-identity. The spatial
practices around art, the lived space related with revolutionary and also cultural
symbols and the social context turned the space into a landmark in the city.
Nevertheless, the end of this building symbolise the beginning of a crisis of
memory and the reject of the beauty and signified of the old city. This loss
shows as the success of capitalism in the occupation and the planning of space.
I could state that every space worthwhile for capitalism, could become be
controlled and taken up by it, in order to reconstruct profitable spaces at the
service of his economic purposes always searchers of benefits.
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iHall, P, (1996 )`Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planningand Design in the Twentieth Century,3rd Edition 2002, Wiley-Blackwell , p.206-213iiCrinson, M, Urban Memory- an introduction. P. 11-20iii
Tacheles 3D online:https://www.cloudparty.com/#8.1,-29,-44,-0.8_2267
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