Berlin is a majestic art city. Whether one prefers old masters or avant garde radicals, there’s simply too much of everything. But too much in the good sense of the term. There is always a need to return and partake of more in this ever fluctuating city.
On a recent visit with a dear friend, we crammed Hans Holbein and other oldies at the Bode Museum, a Günther Brus retrospective at Martin Gropius, Lee Miller at the same space, Cindy Sherman at Olbricht, the always necessary devotional visit to the Helmut Newton Foundation, as well as plenty of minerals, fossils, taxidermies and jarred specimen at the Museum für Naturkunde. Then, there was another strange space: the Designpanoptikum on Torstrasse.
This is neither museum nor gallery but a private space filled to the brim with reconstructed machinery. At first sight, it appears like a Dada nightmare, where chaotic forces have shattered the order and then put everything together again meticulously – in new places.
This struck me at first as a bit strained, like an ironic Duchampian twist of “readymades”. Gather up a lot of weird machines, dismount them and then re-assemble in a jumble. But then it hit me that this entire place contains most of all what could be called a proto-German attitude. A “Geist”. Although created and run by someone I believe is Russian (perfectly introducing his place in fluent German, English and Russian), the entire mentality is ultimately German: a manic, empiric, ruthlessly curious mind-frame dismantling engineered utilitarian items, examining the pieces intelligently, and then equally meticulously putting the bits together again to create new life forms. The mania is what counts here. Ever onwards with tools in hand, no matter what. With superior engineering skills. And a sublime aestheticised art brut sensitivity on top.
It’s far too easy to delve heavily into Currywursts, excremental pornography, collective Lutheran submission, National Socialism, Fassbinder and Wirtschaftswunder when addressing the German psyche (or one’s own prejudices). In the midst of the Designpanoptikum, I’m struck by how extremely constructive the German mind is. Mania, skill and a very modern approach, yes. But at the same time it’s built on the remains of either chaotic destruction or conscious upheaval. It’s as if a peaceful harmony is simply not desired. If you can’t create something entirely new out of nothing, then just break something old so that it can be immediately reconstructed.
Our guide enthusiastically tells the story of a woman who remained in the displayed mechanical lung for 60 years, towards the end of her life also connected to a computer. He stressed that she was always happy. On the other side of the room a military bed has been morphed with a wooden tub of sorts, which has now taken the form of a torture instrument, with a female mannequin in bondage. Other mannequins have earth globes as heads, or hang from clothes hangers in the ceiling without heads. The Frankenstein attitude is clean, sterile, “sauber”, meticulous, walled in by symmetric displays of power tools and telephones from various ages. “Who you gonna call? Lebens-busters!”
The guide stresses, unceasingly enthusiastically, how everything was once normal, utilitarian objects but now they’re works of art. One room contains his own photographs. In an old school, Joel-Peter Witkin style, human bodies are naked to varying degrees, but always interacting with forms and shapes stemming from machinery. A strong element of fetischism for polished surfaces and strong leather rules supreme in the entire panoptikum, evoking traces of aestheticised brutality but also of contemporary examples like the fact that in normal German kiosks, there are often entire sections of shelves filled with magazines about trains and railroads. You buy a Currywurst, have a beer, and look through your magazine about trains and railroads. And fantasise about what, exactly?
An ambience of swift and easy interchange between mechanics/engineering and surgery is predominant in most rooms. Human bodies (in the form of the mannequins) have been reassembled in exactly the same way as the machines have. The surgeon becomes an engineer becomes a surgeon. Body parts find new meanings/functions, as does the integration of machine parts in mannequins. But it’s not so much allopathic altruism that rules supreme here, but rather Professor Rotwang from Metropolis (perhaps one of the most German films ever made) gone absolutely berserk.
The Designpanoptikum is considerably more than a weird little off-beat attraction briefly mentioned in Berlin tourist guides. I dare claim it’s a major piece of art, albeit a very dark one. Not in part, but as an entirety: a homogenous collection of details that all tell basically the same story. It’s a stripped insight into the German psyche, which can be both the most brilliant and most terrifying of all. Quite often at the same time.
Designpanoptikum, Torstraße 201, 10115 Berlin
