RAIMAR STANGE AP SYSTEM EXTENSIONS
Andrea Pichl’s art work1 ) There are 20 music tapes on the floor, as lapidary as well
ordered. They are private ones which means: they have been recorded
by the artist and friends of her – tapes on which Punk music
by bands such as The Residents, Joy Division or Siouxsie and the
Banshees has been conserved. The tapes have been arranged in
such a manner that they could serve as an architectural model for
»Strausberger Platz« – which also was the title of a piece of work
back in 2005. This square is situated at Karl-Marx-Allee in the
former East Berlin, between the localities of Mitte and Friedrichshain.
Small 1:200 scale model figures not only put the
human being into the aesthetic play but are a commentary on the
dimensions of the thinking space which is being staged here:
Nothing less but the compatibility and at the same time incompatibility
of the real (»real-existierend«) GDR architecture and its
use inherent in the system as well as the critic and desirous hopes
of the former GDR youth in the mirror of Western pop music are
at stake. Both utopias are blending into each other, becoming
larger than life, nevertheless remaining all-too-human. Thus the
piece of work »Strausberger Platz« is typical for the artistic production
of Andrea Pichl who grew up in the GDR and lives and
works in the Eastern part of the »united« new capital Berlin.
2 ) On a photograph a drinks cash-and-carry belonging to
the »Hoffmann« chain is to be seen in front of one of the typical
GDR prefabricated buildings (»Plattenbau«). Above it there is
a painted airplane and in the foreground there are three young
boys, painted as well, in the style of the Socialist realist Alexander
Deineka. This collage »Untitled« (2007) which Andrea Pichl
has not put together with the help of Photoshop as it is standard
practice today but by using the »good old« cutter makes use of the
spatial order of the painting »The Future Pilots« (1937). But
where Deineka had shore and sea there is now the grey architectural
ensemble in the style of the (former) real socialism. The grey
dreariness gets emphasized by the black and white of the artist’s
collage, while Deineka used colours. So far, so good: Pichl shortcircuits
the (painted) utopia and the (photographed) Eastern
socialism’s reality, reading it critically due to the resulting tension.
But it doesn’t stop here: The sign saying »Getränkemarkt
Hoffmann« is alluring with promises which Western post-capiger talism seems to offer. Doris Berger is right remarking: »Thereby
an ideological and formal reinterpretation is taking place, which
is not negating or erasing the past, but putting it together under
new parameters.«
3 ) Change of location: In Potsdam, close to Platz der
Einheit (Unity Square) we find a public sculpture in the shape of
a globe and made of metal rings on which we can read the last of
Karl Marx’s Feuerbach theses: »Philosophers have hitherto only
interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.«
Andrea Pichl takes this monument as a starting point for her work
»Cause I wanna be anarchy« (2007) and deals with it on various
levels. At first she substitutes Karl Marx’s text for lyrics by the
legendary Punk band The Sex Pistols: »I am an antichrist, I am
an anarchist. Don’t know what I want, but I know where to get it
... Cause I wanna be anarchy in the city ...«. Again communist
ideology and Western pop culture enter into a dialogue which isn’t
inherent to the system at all and which emphasises a common
denominator: The world needs to be changed. In the fashion of a
palimpsest Marx’s text is still there, so that not only philosophy
and pop but also history and present as well as high and low are
mutually charging up. In a second step the artist scales down the
sculpture to the size of a room lamp. Ideological megalomania is
replaced by an enlightened unpretentiousness. Finally, in a third
step Andrea Pichl adds thin bars to the round sculpture, so that it
suddenly alludes to the satellite »Sputnik«, the East’s answer to
the USA’s space program. Real utopia and utility shake hands –
system extensions in all directions once again appear on Andrea
Pichl’s artistic master plan.