Dream City
Nowhere else is discussion about the relationship between the public and art so intense as in German speaking countries. In various urban centres, projects have been initiated which not only enliven local art production, but which are also meant to enhance the attractiveness of the area's economy. In Munich, three resident art institutions (Kunstraum, Kunstverein and Museum Villa Stück) joined forces with a heavyweight financial partner, the Siemens cultural program, to mount the large-scale project 'Dream City'. Siemens' involvement inevitably generated discussion about cultural sponsorship, business funding of art and the more or less justifiable compromises implied.
One of the most curious of these was artistic duo Dejanov/Heger's contribution Der Ganz normale Luxus (Totally normal Luxury, 1999). They handed over their pages in the exhibition catalogue to BMW as advertisement space, while in the Kunstverein, they erected an 'Info Booth' from the Munich company complete with advertising material. Out on the street they parked an expensive sports car which they are allowed to keep in return for their work. Director of the Kunstverein, Dirk Snauwaert officially distanced himself from their 'Info Booth' by way of a written statement displayed at the exhibition.
Nevertheless, 'Dream City' positively differentiates itself from other public art projects by not treating the city as a neutral playground, but rather as a social formation replete with disputed territories and mechanisms of exclusion. Art is meant to be anything but a cosmetic for botched urban development. Accordingly, the most interesting among the contributions of the 30 international artists were those who managed to insinuate something rather unusual into Munich's notorious image as a beer drinker's paradise and pronounced traditional self-confidence - the city, headquarters of Siemens and BMW, is the hi-tech centre of Germany.
Gülsün Karamustafa placed traffic signs (Verkehrszeichen, 1999) in three city locations, but instead of regulating traffic, they indicated cultural difference - on each pole, two similar images appeared to originate from different countries. For example, Bavarian King Ludwig II sits above an Arabic prophet. Images one immediately interprets as either Turkish or German turn out to to be a little more complicated - Karamustafa found all of the pictures in Munich tourist guides or on postcards bought in local Turkish shops. An impression of cultural difference becomes a discussion about immigration. Michaela Melián deals with this theme from a German perspective. In collaboration with the migrant help organisation Kein Mensch ist Illegal (No one is illegal), her pneumatic sculpture Festung (Fortress, 1999) is similar in size and colour to the containers in which asylum seeking refugees are often accommodated, and was shown in twelve prominent city squares.
60s bus happenings and 90s urban and Feminist discourses are brought together in Pia Lanzinger's Die Stadt und ihr Geschlecht - eine Führung durch München (The City and its Gender - a tour through Munich, 1999). The covered windows of a bus blocked the passengers' view on an ordinary city tour, and the journey became a multi-media travelling environment which visited rigidly gender separated locations, including a club for train drivers, (an almost exclusively male profession), whose pride and joy is a giant model train set, and the city's telephone centre, an almost all female workplace.
Stefan Römer's installation Vergeßt die Liebe nicht (Don't forget Love, 1999) comprised wall sized diagrams, photographs and text quotations. It attempted to critique recent developments in art spaces by examining private business' annexation of public space, while Gustav Metzger takes a more historical perspective. As a twelve year old German Jew in Nurenberg he was forced to emigrate to London. Reflecting on this experience, he poured deep black asphalt on the entrance stairs to the Haus der Kunst, which was opened by the National Socialists in 1937. The title of the work, Traventin/Judenpech (Traventine/Tar, 1999) refers both to the Nazis' favourite building stone (preferred because it was a German resource) and the old fashioned word for tar, Judenpech: 'Jew's pitch', which contains a pun - Pech also means misfortune.
Olaf Metzel's remake of his work Türkenwohnung (Turkish House, 1999) has lost none of its power since its creation in 1982. Its departure point is a Berlin newspaper advertisement in which a so-called Turkish apartment is offered for rent.
The one room apartment was worked on by Metzel using brutish sculptural means, until its walls seemed to grow a big black swastika - revealing the innate racism of the advertisement.
