ROADS NOT TAKEN

The 1000 m² exhi­bi­tion space of the Pei build­ing with its irreg­u­lar­ly placed columns and angles was trans­formed by chezweitz into a sur­pris­ing spa­tial cas­cade: vis­i­tors walk through a ring-shaped enfilade of rooms, along which the 14 cura­to­ri­al­ly select­ed ​“tip­ping points of his­to­ry” grad­u­al­ly fan out chrono­log­i­cal­ly back­wards from 1989 to 1848. From the lin­ear spa­tial con­tin­u­um of his­to­ry, the spaces of pos­si­bil­i­ty open up radi­al­ly, three-dimen­sion­al­ly, col­or­ful­ly and illu­sion­is­ti­cal­ly. While these become increas­ing­ly dis­tort­ed or evap­o­rate with the move­ment of the view­er, the his­tor­i­cal facts — objec­tive­ly kept in black and white in the clear­ly struc­tured spa­tial con­tin­u­um — remain con­sis­tent­ly leg­i­ble. In the dia­logue between spaces of real­i­ty and spaces of pos­si­bil­i­ty, very dif­fer­ent com­po­si­tions emerge. Fur­ni­ture, pedestals, media graph­ics and exhibits emerge from the per­spec­tive murals and impres­sive­ly reveal their con­struc­tion with the move­ment of the viewer.

In order to bring the atmos­phere of the dif­fer­ent peri­ods to life, chezweitz uses tech­niques and media from the respec­tive era. The fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) becomes an ambigu­ous­ly read­able cor­ru­gat­ed image that is also rem­i­nis­cent of the aes­thet­ics of Drehvi­sion’s adver­tis­ing boards of the 1980s. In the Gov­ern­ment Bunker (1961), the cen­tral per­spec­tive and a back­drop-like lay­er­ing are used to sug­gest the seem­ing­ly end­less spa­tial depth of the bunker’s exten­sive tun­nel sys­tem. Mat­te green and bright orange tones cre­ate a shim­mer­ing 1960s ambi­ence. The focal point in the first part of the tour is to con­vey to vis­i­tors the per­ma­nent feel­ing of threat in post-war Ger­many: the motif of the atom bomb hov­ers impres­sive­ly in the room — an instal­la­tion made of sev­er­al thou­sand cords, pho­to­graph­i­cal­ly print­ed and stag­gered in lay­ers and lengths, which cre­ates an imma­te­r­i­al but at the same time pow­er­ful image.

Wall paint­ings with a trompe l’oeuil effect form the sec­ond focal point of the tour (1848) — a paint­ed train inte­ri­or with media fade-in. The tour ends with a street in the look of a graph­ic nov­el and picks up where it began: vis­i­tors can sit down here and inter­ac­tive­ly par­tic­i­pate in the events of autumn 1989 in the (seri­ous) game ​“Autumn 89 — On the Streets of Leipzig”.