The structure was an engineering measure targeted towards controlling the unpredictability of Berlin’s soil, to able to predict the subsidence of future buildings. Basically, it was a test examining how much Berlin’s ground can take in terms of pressure, without significantly being deformed, which gave the engineers the possibility to draw conclusions about planned monumental buildings, which exceeded anything that human culture had ever attempted before, in terms of weight. The data collected at the site of the ‘heavy load-bearing cylinder’ contaminates the modern metropolis until today, as it is still being used for large constructions. In this particular location, a gigantic triumphal arch was supposed to be built (three times the size of the Parisian, approximately). Despite this ‘regressive’ goal of the engineering measure, the data was used ‘progressively,’ informing the construction of dams, train stations, high rises, and other heavy infrastructural nodal points necessary to handle the urban space. Thus, this technology, inspired by fascist fantasies of world domination, sparked substantial technological ‘progress,’ that is internationally applicable. It shows us how complicated it is to draw the line between culture and barbarity, and how dialectically the concept of progress proceeds. Or, does this even suggest, that progress is a fictional narrative soaked with teleological concepts of time? Doesn’t the cylinder show, that antiquity can be a moment infused with the present, and the other way round?
From time to time, the heavy load-bearing cylinder blasts out of the urban unconscious into public awareness in the form of a, mostly local, newspaper article. Usually, the aesthetic monstrosity is pointed out by the journalist, as a springboard to undermine the existence of the structure, with the goal to suggest its erasure. Numerous variations of this same article have been published over the last decades, undermining the ruin value of this edifice that reminds the people of Berlin of their shared history with Naziism, with the fact that their parents, and/-or grandparents, were collaborators, victims, tag-alongs, etc. As the structure that embodies the toxicity of the human nature, in a sense that it reminds us that our grandparents turned from civilized people into mass murderers ‘in an instance,’ the collective repression mechanism projects this self-toxicity onto the ‘ugly’ aesthetics of the cylinder, often called ‘fungus’. Interesting enough, there are no such calls for erasure in reaction to the numerous other fascist buildings located all over Berlin, and still used by the government. Most prolific example is probably Goebbel’s notorious propaganda ministry, nowadays federal ministry of work and social issues (Bundesministeriums für Arbeit und Soziales).
In this montage, I juxtapose a photograph taken at the time when the construction had just been finished by forced laborers in Berlin 1941, with the current shot used in the ‘official’ wikipedia entry. It shows, in a clean-cut, but layering, way the difference of these two historical moments, but also suggests their simultaneity, and that the past echoes in the present. Therefore, it is an emblem for the dialectics of the past/present, culture/barbarity.
Decay
Fragment
Fungus ("Pilz")
Guilt
Heaviness
Naziism
Megalomania
Ruin
Trauma
Waste
Montage
The structure was an engineering measure targeted towards controlling the unpredictability of Berlin’s soil, to able to predict the subsidence of future buildings. Basically, it was a test examining how much Berlin’s ground can take in terms of pressure, without significantly being deformed, which gave the engineers the possibility to draw conclusions about planned monumental buildings, which exceeded anything that human culture had ever attempted before, in terms of weight. The data collected at the site of the ‘heavy load-bearing cylinder’ contaminates the modern metropolis until today, as it is still being used for large constructions. In this particular location, a gigantic triumphal arch was supposed to be built (three times the size of the Parisian, approximately). Despite this ‘regressive’ goal of the engineering measure, the data was used ‘progressively,’ informing the construction of dams, train stations, high rises, and other heavy infrastructural nodal points necessary to handle the urban space. Thus, this technology, inspired by fascist fantasies of world domination, sparked substantial technological ‘progress,’ that is internationally applicable. It shows us how complicated it is to draw the line between culture and barbarity, and how dialectically the concept of progress proceeds. Or, does this even suggest, that progress is a fictional narrative soaked with teleological concepts of time? Doesn’t the cylinder show, that antiquity can be a moment infused with the present, and the other way round?
From time to time, the heavy load-bearing cylinder blasts out of the urban unconscious into public awareness in the form of a, mostly local, newspaper article. Usually, the aesthetic monstrosity is pointed out by the journalist, as a springboard to undermine the existence of the structure, with the goal to suggest its erasure. Numerous variations of this same article have been published over the last decades, undermining the ruin value of this edifice that reminds the people of Berlin of their shared history with Naziism, with the fact that their parents, and/-or grandparents, were collaborators, victims, tag-alongs, etc. As the structure that embodies the toxicity of the human nature, in a sense that it reminds us that our grandparents turned from civilized people into mass murderers ‘in an instance,’ the collective repression mechanism projects this self-toxicity onto the ‘ugly’ aesthetics of the cylinder, often called ‘fungus’. Interesting enough, there are no such calls for erasure in reaction to the numerous other fascist buildings located all over Berlin, and still used by the government. Most prolific example is probably Goebbel’s notorious propaganda ministry, nowadays federal ministry of work and social issues (Bundesministeriums für Arbeit und Soziales).
In this montage, I juxtapose a photograph taken at the time when the construction had just been finished by forced laborers in Berlin 1941, with the current shot used in the ‘official’ wikipedia entry. It shows, in a clean-cut, but layering, way the difference of these two historical moments, but also suggests their simultaneity, and that the past echoes in the present. Therefore, it is an emblem for the dialectics of the past/present, culture/barbarity.