Memoria, Identidade, Acção - Arte Pública em Berlim

Abstract

This paper focuses on the subject of public art in Berlin, developing an analysis based on three conceptual dimensions: Memory, Identity and Action. The choice of the subject follows the concern for a multidisciplinary approach of architecture in order to understand the meaning of intervening in public space, by searching in art it's essential character. The option to develop Berlin as a case study relates to the specific circumstances that resulted from its historical course. For its troubled past - and the consequences that it caused in its present - the public space in Berlin is still today a highly symbolic backdrop for artistic events in public space, potentiating unique poetic approaches. The analysis begins by addressing the broader issues raised by the subject. In this sense, the Prologue can be seen as a "chapter zero", a first act introducing the - not necessarily initiated - reader, to the issues raised afterwards. The Prologue is divided into three parts. The first part introduces some of the broader questions concerning public art. Their meanings and ambiguities, some aesthetic theories, the sense of beauty and social responsibility, the visibility of monuments and their relationship to power, are some of the discussions initiated in Definitions and Concepts. The second part sets out the concepts of Memory, Identity, Action by comparing two monuments, one in Portugal, the Monument to António de Oliveira Salazar, in Santa Comba Dão, and the other one in Berlin,the Marx-Engels-Forum dedicated to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Besides explaining the concepts on which this paper is developed, this text also discloses the limitations of categorization and the overlapping that it allows. The third part of the Prologue develops a Historical Review of Public Art in Berlin, from the construction of the Brandenburg Gate until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. This section plays an important role in the full understanding of many of the works mentioned throughout this dissertation. Here, although the dissertative tone gives room to a prevalence of historical facts, the text tries to expose a critical position so that the reading can also result as productive to the reader already initiated on the subject. The remaining of the paper is carried out in a tripartite scheme, analysing the three conceptual dimensions of public art in Berlin in three distinct chapters: Memory, Identity and Action. Each chapter begins with two short texts deepening the topic, by making use of theoretical and cinematographic references, and also by the analysis of interventions in Berlin and other cities. Each of the three chapters is concluded with the analysis of some of the case studies in Berlin that more conspicuously illustrate the expression potential of the three dimensions examined, as well as their specificities, disclosing the complexity of the poetic and symbolic interventions in the public space of this city. The work ends with a critical approach in order to highlight the relevance of the theoretical study of public art to architecture.