The City as Theater of Memory: Palimpsest in Shimon Attie’s Berlin Project
Institution: | Savannah College of Art and Design |
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Department: | Art History |
Degree: | MA |
Year: | 2015 |
Keywords: | Thesis (M.A.) – Art History; Savannah College of Art and Design – Department of Art History |
Record ID: | 2057873 |
Full text PDF: | http://ecollections.scad.edu/iii/cpro/DigitalItemViewPage.external?sp=1002749 |
This thesis explores the notion of the city as a text in constant revision both in terms of its physical and psychological constructions. I elaborate this theory by looking at Berlin in the twentieth century through Shimon Attie’s project The Writing on the Wall: Projections in Berlin’s Jewish Quarter (1991–1993). Attie’s project occurred in Berlin’s central district, Mitte only a few years after the wall came down in 1989. The early nineties provided a unique setting for a growing art scene with a fresh abundance of foreign influence. Divisions and reunifications punctuate Berlin’s twentieth-century history, the time of Attie’s installation marking another period of cultural re-integration. Keywords: Berlin, Mitte, Scheunenviertel, German Democratic Republic, architecture, construction, identity, World War II, archive, the void, temporality, the city, Jewish culture