Detail page - Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz

We cordially invite you to the

press conference

• on Thursday, 26 August 2021 at 11 am
• in the central entrance hall of the Kulturforum
• Matthäikirchplatz, 10785 Berlin

The following people will be available to talk to you:

• Andrea Zietzschmann, Artistic Director of the Berliner Philharmoniker
• Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
• Pastor Hannes Langbein, Director of St Matthew's Cultural Foundation of the Protestant Church Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia
• Joachim Brand, Deputy Director of the Art Library of the National Museums in Berlin

Registration until 24 August 2021 at pressestelle@hv.spk-berlin.de. Please observe the mask requirement and have a current corona test or proof of vaccination or recovery ready.

The Berlin Cultural Forum is a product of utopian thinking. Rising from the ruins, it has not only produced some of Berlin's most important cultural institutions in the form of architectural icons of modernism, but also hundreds of unrealised designs that ignited on the empty site of a post-war wasteland. Even its prehistory tells an ambivalent utopian story: from Prussia's early yearning for Italy in the old Tiergarten district to the Nazis' fantasies of great power ("Welthauptstadt Germania") and the dreams of a West Berlin museum island, a cultural campus of the free world just a few metres from the Wall.

The institutions gathered at the Kulturforum are exploring this utopian history together for the first time: on the initiative of the St. Matthäus, the cultural foundation of the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (EKBO) and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK) and with the support of the Capital Cultural Fund, the Art Library, the Museum of Decorative Arts and the New National Gallery of the National Museums in Berlin as well as the Berlin State Library have joined forces, the Ibero-American Institute and the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation have joined forces to explore the utopian potential of their own institutions and the Kulturforum as a whole, past and present, in exhibitions, artistic interventions and city talks.

Individual aspects of this history come to light in the surrounding buildings: St Matthew's Church as a memorial to a vanished district, Hans Scharoun's vision of a non-hierarchical music and reading landscape in the Philharmonie and Staatsbibliothek, Mies van der Rohe's visionary combination of art and city in the Nationalgalerie and Rolf Gutbrod's unfinished attempt at a forum with connections across the Landwehr Canal and to the Tiergarten. The historical perspectives become springboards into the present in the artistic interventions and urban dialogues of the individual buildings.

The project takes its starting point from the overview exhibition "Utopia Kulturforum" in the exhibition space of the Berlin Art Library: there the history of the utopias of the Kulturforum can be traced from their beginnings in the old Tiergarten district to the designs for the new museum of the 20th century by Herzog & de Meuron. The curators show a contested area that, even after sixty years of development of numerous urban planning initiatives and competitions, is still perceived as an unfinished wasteland without identity and quality of stay, as a non-place. The exhibition spans the arc from the old Tiergarten neighbourhood's longing for Italy to the dawn of modernism with the Kemperplatz competition in 1921, in which innovative architects such as Peter Behrens, the Taut brothers, Hugo Häring and Erich Mendelsohn took part, to the "Gemania dystopia" with Albert Speer's gigantomaniac plans. After the war and destruction, a new start was made in 1960 on an area freed of all relics, memories and ideologies. The Philharmonie and Neue Nationalgalerie were built, later the State Library. Hans Scharoun and his cityscape, the unsuccessful competition for the State Museums in 1965/66 and later the hapless Rolf Gutbrod were all looking for connections. In 1983, Hans Hollein took on the site with its colonnades, city monastery, bible tower and water-bearing piazzetta, but he did not build. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, a masterplan was drawn up and not pursued further. It was not until 2016 that the competition for the new Museum of the 20th Century finally brought movement to the neighbourhood. The exhibition, curated by Joachim Brand, uses photos, plans, drawings and models to show the various architectural and urban planning attempts for the Kulturforum for the first time, including a large number of rarely shown designs. In a film by Knut Klaßen and Carsten Krohn, the architects Hans Hollein, Max Dudler, Wilfried Wang, Gerd Neumann and others will talk about their designs and the Kulturforum. As an introduction, unrealised architectural designs and plans will be shown.

In St Matthew's Church - after the overview exhibition in the Museum of Decorative Arts - the different perspectives of the individual buildings on the history of the Kulturforum will begin in chronological order. The history of St Matthew's Church is an example of an ambivalent utopian history, starting with the early longing for a unity of state and church in the 19th century and its dystopian abysses in the National Socialists' longing for great power ("Germania"). The reconstruction of the war-destroyed church before the Kulturforum was built is associated with dreams of a resurrected city in a dialogue between religion and culture. St Matthew's Church is a utopian place in many ways: As the oldest building on the site, the church is reminiscent of a city that no longer exists (the old Tiergarten district). As a spiritual centre, it is reminiscent of a world that does not yet exist. As a place for contemporary art, it is a resonance chamber for the utopian questions of existence.

When it opened in 1963, the Philharmonie Berlin was considered a "utopian concert hall". Hans Scharoun's concept of "music at the centre" and the terraced arrangement of the seating blocks, reminiscent of a vineyard, became models for various new buildings - from the Leipzig Gewandhaus and the Suntory Hall in Tokyo to the Koncerthuset Copenhagen or the spectacular Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. This is how the Philharmonie Berlin became a concert hall of the future. Numerous illustrations and photos in the main foyer of the Philharmonie illustrate the history of Hans Scharoun's masterpiece and sensitise visitors to the exhibition to its unique architectural design and aesthetics.

In the exhibitions in the basement of the Neue Nationalgalerie, the utopian potential of the collection and architecture can also be explored. Some of the works in the current collection presentation "The Art of Society" bear witness to the visionary spirit of the first half of the 20th century. The work of the architect Mies van der Rohe, which is highlighted in a separate presentation, also has visionary traits.

The Berlin State Library looks back on its eternally young building. Even 55 years after the foundation stone was laid, Hans Scharoun's realised vision of a library has lost none of its radical modernity. The spatial impression of an unlimited, directionless reading landscape intended by Scharoun was perceived from the outset as a challenge, if not an imposition - and by no means only beyond the Berlin Wall, in whose immediate neighbourhood the gold-clad building was to shine as a beacon of democracy visible from afar. The station shows impressions from the construction period of the building, takes an excursion into the earlier development of the area and illuminates Hans Scharoun's reading landscape as a heterotopia, co-working space and never-ending source of inspiration.

The Kunstgewerbemuseum takes a closer look at the work of Rolf Gutbrod with an intervention curated by Claudia Banz. The Stuttgart architect envisioned his cultural forum as "a lively cultural centre, walked through by people all day long", with flats on the museum roofs, restaurants and connecting pedestrian bridges to the Tiergarten and across the Landwehr Canal. His first design, submitted in 1966, was described as a "burst hand grenade" and had to be revised. The centrepiece of the proposal was an ascending square and a horseshoe enclosing it, to which the various museums were attached. The Museum of Decorative Arts was the only museum to be realised and only opened in 1985. It started out as a utopian vision of an open-plan structure from the 1960s, but the political process of building real architecture has honed the utopian nature of the original design over the years. The Berlin artist duo prjktr takes this first draft as the starting point for their intervention in the prominent stairwell of the Kunstgewerbemuseum and stages the building in the field of tension of the architectural and urban utopias of the 1960s, which had already turned into their own dystopias by the end of the decade. Video mapping projections transform the elements of brutalist architecture into thematic collages of rolling cities, desert-like superstructures, post-futuristic walk-throughs and post-anthropocene abysses.

The Berlin writer Peter Schneider will open"Utopie Kulturforum" on 26 August 2021 at 7.30 pm in the Piazzetta at the Kulturforum with a speech. Philharmonic Orchestra Director Andrea Zietzschman, SPK President Hermann Parzinger and the Director of the St. Matthäus Foundation, Hannes Langbein, will give welcoming addresses. The "museum4punkt0" project will present the "Future Walk" app, which allows visitors to experience the Kulturforum from the perspective of the future. Afterwards, the ARTE summer cinema will show the film "Der Himmel über Berlin" by Wim Wenders, which was shot at the Kulturforum. Media artist Mischa Kuball 's mobile light installation "Dys(u)topia" will be on display in Berlin's urban space until 26 August.

On the opening weekend , Michael Schindhelm and Claudio Bucher will transform the Kulturforum into a soundscape with historical voices from the old Tiergarten neighbourhood and contemporary voices on the utopian Kulturforum (WIE ES WAR WIRD - Stimmen in Kulturforum). The opening weekend will conclude with a pulpit speech by Berlin author Jens Bisky as part of an evening service in St Matthew's Church.

Artistic interventions and city talks will follow in the further course of the project: Among the artistic interventions, the performance "Skin and Bones" by Alvaro Urbano, which connects the architecture of the Neue Nationalgalerie with the Kulturforum (12 September), the opening of the installation "(un)finished" by light and media artist Mischa Kuball in St. Matthew's Church (19 September), a concert by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra with music by the Bauhaus in the Neue Nationalgalerie (31 October). City Talks will be held on topics such as "Utopia.Art.Society - Paths to Change", "An Atlantis of Modernity - Remembrance of the Tiergarten Quarter", "Utopia Kulturforum. International Perspectives" and "Shared Knowledge and Multiperspectivity - The Ibero-American Institute as a Utopian Place of Understanding with Latin America".

Further information about the "Utopia Cultural Forum" project can be found on the homepage: www.utopie-kulturforum.berlin.

Press photos: https://www.preussischer-kulturbesitz.de/newsroom/presse/pressebilder.html

Contacts:

St Matthew's Foundation:
Pastor Hannes Langbein; info@stiftung-stmatthaeus.de
Press contact: Katrin Geuther; geuther@stiftung-stmatthaeus.de
www.stiftung-stmatthaeus.de

Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation:
Oliver Hilmes; o.hilmes@berliner-philharmoniker.de
Press contact: Elisabeth Hilsdorf; e.hilsdorf@berliner-philharmoniker.de
www.berliner-philharmoniker.de

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin:
Kunstbibliothek: Joachim Brand; j.brand@smb.spk-berlin.de
Kunstgewerbemuseum: Claudia Banz; c.banz@smb.spk-berlin.de
Neue Nationalgalerie: Fiona Geuß (Press); f.geuss@smb.spk-berlin.de
www.smb.museum

Berlin State Library:
Specialist contact: gudrun.nelson-busch@sbb.spk-berlin.de
Press contact: jeanette.lamble@sbb.spk-berlin.de
www.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de

Ibero-American Institute
Specialist contact: roemer@iai.spk-berlin.de
Press contact: presse@iai.spk-berlin.de
www.iai.spk-berlin.de