Won Kyung Cha
Honors in Berlin, summer 2008
06 October 2008
Honors in Berlin, summer 2008
06 October 2008
Public Art and its Relation to People
Attending the Berlin preparation seminar in spring quarter, I had a broad idea of what I wanted to research in Berlin. I was very interested in public art works. At first I thought about the graffiti displayed in the subway stations and street walls. Then when I got to Berlin in the summer later on, I made some changes and decided to research on this public art piece that was in Golitzer park at Kreuzberg; Pamukkale fountain. The fountain was built by German artist in 1998, and currently it is all destroyed so it no longer looked like what it was like before. It was completely broken down and hard to recognize what it is.
What is happening with this public art piece? What do people think about this and what is the whole issue about? I specifically wanted to research about what people in Kreuzberg think of this art piece and going into depth with what the government is involved in this issue at all.
Being an art major, I’ve always been interested what people think about art pieces whether it is paintings displayed in art museums or galleries, sculptures or any other art forms that are in public spaces. Once I was in Austria and they had summer festival in downtown, my parents and I were walking by and I saw this sculpture standing on the side and I stepped closer to take a look at it carefully, I figured that it was not a sculpture but it actually was a person. I thought it was very interesting and it was amazing how the person didn’t move at all and just stood like a sculpture. Other people reacted like me also. A person standing still as a form of sculpture, I think it is considered as an interesting public art that is alive. Art is for everybody. Anyone can enjoy art. At Gorlitzer park, there was a Pamukkale fountain. It was built with beautiful white stones that are imported from Portugal and they are also real stones. It was made by a German artist named Wigand Witting. He is also an actor in Germany as well as an artist who knows a lot about stones. He was always interested working with stones and he was well known for an expert of stones. The Pamukkale fountain resembles this one region from Turkey. Since Kreuzberg is a big Turkish community area, the artist decided to make a place for people to feel welcomed and spend some time there relaxing. Why this one specific region in Turkey?
There was one lady who suggested the idea of building fountain at the park. Her name was Jrmgard Klette. She came from Turkey to Germany long time ago, and when she came to Kreuzberg, went for a walk to the park and saw an empty space and she thought it might be a good place to build some art piece there.
The whole area around the Golitzer park used to be a train station which belonged to east Germany. It was called ‘Golitzer Station’ back in the old days. When I went there to research, I could still see the reminiscences of the train station. Nowadays, the station building was still in use by youth and there were lots of graffittis.
When it was first built, it looked just like the region in Turkey, there were many people who come by and enjoy the fountain. The water was running and it was absolutely beautiful. It didn’t take too long to build the fountain; it took about one year to finish it. The artist had to go through approval of the stones he was going to use because the stones came from three or more different regions in Portugal. Then he gave the stone to the lab to get permission and he passed. But there was a major problem because he didn’t give all different kinds of stones that he was going to use but just one particular kind. Witting didn’t really care, he actually believed that other stones would be fine too, and also because he thought he knew everything about stones, it would not cause any problem to work with other stones that weren’t approved.
It was finished 6weeks before winter came. There were beautiful lights around the fountain and water was running. Pamukkale fountain was well-known art as symbol of Germans and Turkish who lived in Kreuzberg. It cost about 3.8 million German marks in the past, which equals to 1.9 million Euros now. After 6 weeks has been gone, winter came and the weather caused a major problem. First of all, the stone kept too much water. Winter in Berlin is very cold and it rains a lot. Rain came down, and since the stones kept too much water, the fountain slowly started to break. Second, because of low temperature in Berlin compared to the places where the stones were imported, the stones could not survive through the winter.
As I was doing my research, the biggest struggle I had was to find the actual public art piece with interesting aspects within the art. At first, just with the broad idea of finding public art, I went around randomly to find the art. Then one day at the group dinner, Manuela suggested me the Pamukkale fountain in Golitzer park. She gave me the flyer for its 10th year anniversary event. The flyer had two different pictures; one was the picture of Pamukkale
fountain when it was just built in 1998 and the other picture was after its distortion in 2008. Also it was a big challenge for me to find people who actually knew well enough to explain the whole history of this public art and not only the history but also what is going on right now. I was in a good luck of finding a blog of Pamukkale fountain and even though it was all in German, I was able to find out a group of people who are involved in this project; how to make the destroyed Pamukkale fountain better. I emailed the group of people hoping for an email back. After a couple of days passed, I received an email from a man named Rainer Voss saying that he was able to help me and was willing to participate in the interview for the research. Lastly, Going to the park by myself was scary for me because I’ve never been in Berlin before and I was just getting used to the area and Kreuzberg was not very safe part of Berlin.
As the methods of investigation, I did interviews at the park, I observed people who were at the park hanging out near the Pamukkale fountain and I also looked through the website to research. As deciding what methods to use for my research I was not sure whether it would work out well or not. I assumed that people will not be very willing to participate in interviews and especially because of the language barrier; English is not their first language, I knew it was not going to be easy. I was also worried about interview because I’m not a talkative person and when I step up to them and ask some random questions about the fountain, people might think that I’m a weird person or at least I assumed that they won’t be nice to me. However, I thought interview was the best way to do my research because what I was really interested was people’s reaction to this art. I wanted to figure out what people in Kreuzberg thought about in general; do they want the fountain to be rebuilt? Or do they want to leave it as it is; if not what do they want to do with the broken fountain?
I was completely mistaken because my assumption was wrong. Most of Germans I interviewed spoke English. They had hard time expressing their thoughts in English but it was good enough to understand. When I went up to people and asked them whether or not they spoke English and most people were happy to participate in the interview. I’ve met lots of people at the park whom I interview. I tried to interview as many people as possible; I also tried to find people at different ages and genders. I met some great people while I was doing the interview. I didn’t set up a time with people, but I just went to the park, talked to some people I
saw there and it was amazing how half of people I interviewed were artists. They were sculptors, architecture students in Berlin, video art students, business women and some fine art students. People had different thoughts about the Pamukkale fountain.
Case 1. Ben and Denis. They were architecture students in Berlin and when I asked about their thoughts on the fountain, the first sentence they said was “I hate it.” They hated the place now because it looked so ugly and dirty. However they also mentioned that people in Kreuzberg are so used to seeing the broken stones all over the fountain because it’s been broken for so long that it is not awkward to look at. Ben said it just feels like part of his life and people who live in Kreuzberg will think the same. I was excited because they were both architecture students, I wanted to ask them about the Pamukkale fountain as an architecture form and what they would do if they had a chance to rebuild the fountain. The students said that they definitely want to demolish it completely and rebuilding it with different materials. However, at the end they mentioned that the only reason why they don’t mind leaving it as it is was because the scene of the destroyed fountain fits well in Kreuzberg area.
Case 2. A sculptor who currently works near Kreuzberg. I met his friend before I met him. It was interesting to interview him because he was personally interested in stones using them as his medium for sculptures. He comes to the park very often and he was seriously thinking about stealing some stones from the broken fountain. He has been living in Kreuzberg for more than five years and even before he came to Berlin, the fountain was already destroyed. He had no idea of what the Pamukkale fountain used to look like before it was destroyed. I showed the picture that I had, and he was amazed because he thought it looked so clean. I asked his opinion about all the graffiti works on the stones and he nodded his head. As an artist, he is not a big fan of graffiti art although he sometimes enjoys looking at them; he said he thinks it looks very ugly.
Case 3. Video art students. They were females; Sarah and Anja. It was surprising to me because they didn’t even know about the Pamukkale fountain. Both of them did not know it used to have water running at the fountain. They thought it was some random stones that had graffiti arts done by youth in Berlin. When I explained the whole history and the current issue about the fountain, they thought it was very interesting. Even though they didn’t know what it
was, they never cared about what it is. Like Ben and Denise, they considered the destroyed fountain as part of their life.
Case 4. A Business woman. She was not so friendly when I asked her if I could interview her at first. She said that her English was not good enough and she didn’t know much about the fountain. As the interview went along, she told me a lot about her own opinion. She had a strong idea of removing the whole fountain and making the area green with grass and trees. She also said people have two controversy idea; one side is arguing to remove the fountain and spend some more money in education for young students and the other side is taking side of leaving it as it is now. She is definitely wants to support education. She also thinks that it is dangerous because lots of youth come to play in the park especially around the fountain.
As the methods of investigation, I also did some observations. I just sat in the park, observed people coming and going and it was interesting to see young boys riding skate board near the fountain. There were fence around the fountain area and people would ride their bikes as well.
I also wanted to know the situation with the government as well as people in general. When I interviewed Rainer Voss, he said the government doesn’t care at all since they have so many things to take care of besides the Pamukkale fountain. Including Rainer, there were a few other people and they tried to convince people to take an action regarding the Pamukkale fountain. The group used to have meeting every Thursday evening but it no longer exist since the issue is too complicated. After interviewing random people at the park, I had my last interview with Rainer before I left Berlin. He not only talked about his thoughts but also brief history and the whole situation up till now.
People in Kreuzberg was happy to see the finished fountain in 1998. After the six weeks it has been built, it slowly broke little by little. It was noticeable that it was falling apart. It has been 10 years now and 4 years ago, the artist of the fountain was sued by people. People argued that the artist should pay the money to re-build the fountain and even though the water was not running anymore people had to pay money to the government to maintain the broken fountain. It still costs lots of money. However, the artist refused and said that it was not his fault because he has gone through the approval of the stone that he was using. The artist also argued that he has no money so there is nothing he could do about it. The artist moved to France long time ago, and
he still hasn’t come back yet. Even though he was sued 4 years ago, it took about two years to go through the first judgment and currently it is going through the second judgment and the court will say something this coming November 8th. The artist should be present at the court and other people will be there as well. The artist has two sons and the older son is an artist as well. The son actually came to the park and just to make it look better, he created sculptures with the fence around the fountain.
The compositions and collaborative act of presenting characters in specific situations stretched my thinking for sure. As working on the compositions, it gave me some ideas on how to approach people in various ways. It also helped me interacting with other people.
If I took this research further, I would for sure see what the judges say at the second judgment. As I left Berlin, I didn’t get any clear end result. Since the issue is still going through process of being settled. Nothing is clear at this point. People want to see it either re-built or just demolish all since it still costs lots of money to maintain the fountain even though it is broken and the water is not running. I would love to go back and find out what happens at the end. Personally I would like the fountain to be turned into something else because the same kind of stone won’t work and I highly doubt that the artist wants to rebuild exactly what it looked like before. I don’t think it would be the same even if the fountain is rebuild with different kind of stones. I also think it is very dangerous to leave it like as it is now because nobody knows when the stone will break and fall. It could fall down anytime as people I interviewed said. The fence around the fountain looks dirty and I felt that the graffiti on the broken stones made the scene look worse. Perhaps, I could do some more interviews and observations at the park.
Attending the Berlin preparation seminar in spring quarter, I had a broad idea of what I wanted to research in Berlin. I was very interested in public art works. At first I thought about the graffiti displayed in the subway stations and street walls. Then when I got to Berlin in the summer later on, I made some changes and decided to research on this public art piece that was in Golitzer park at Kreuzberg; Pamukkale fountain. The fountain was built by German artist in 1998, and currently it is all destroyed so it no longer looked like what it was like before. It was completely broken down and hard to recognize what it is.
What is happening with this public art piece? What do people think about this and what is the whole issue about? I specifically wanted to research about what people in Kreuzberg think of this art piece and going into depth with what the government is involved in this issue at all.
Being an art major, I’ve always been interested what people think about art pieces whether it is paintings displayed in art museums or galleries, sculptures or any other art forms that are in public spaces. Once I was in Austria and they had summer festival in downtown, my parents and I were walking by and I saw this sculpture standing on the side and I stepped closer to take a look at it carefully, I figured that it was not a sculpture but it actually was a person. I thought it was very interesting and it was amazing how the person didn’t move at all and just stood like a sculpture. Other people reacted like me also. A person standing still as a form of sculpture, I think it is considered as an interesting public art that is alive. Art is for everybody. Anyone can enjoy art. At Gorlitzer park, there was a Pamukkale fountain. It was built with beautiful white stones that are imported from Portugal and they are also real stones. It was made by a German artist named Wigand Witting. He is also an actor in Germany as well as an artist who knows a lot about stones. He was always interested working with stones and he was well known for an expert of stones. The Pamukkale fountain resembles this one region from Turkey. Since Kreuzberg is a big Turkish community area, the artist decided to make a place for people to feel welcomed and spend some time there relaxing. Why this one specific region in Turkey?
There was one lady who suggested the idea of building fountain at the park. Her name was Jrmgard Klette. She came from Turkey to Germany long time ago, and when she came to Kreuzberg, went for a walk to the park and saw an empty space and she thought it might be a good place to build some art piece there.
The whole area around the Golitzer park used to be a train station which belonged to east Germany. It was called ‘Golitzer Station’ back in the old days. When I went there to research, I could still see the reminiscences of the train station. Nowadays, the station building was still in use by youth and there were lots of graffittis.
When it was first built, it looked just like the region in Turkey, there were many people who come by and enjoy the fountain. The water was running and it was absolutely beautiful. It didn’t take too long to build the fountain; it took about one year to finish it. The artist had to go through approval of the stones he was going to use because the stones came from three or more different regions in Portugal. Then he gave the stone to the lab to get permission and he passed. But there was a major problem because he didn’t give all different kinds of stones that he was going to use but just one particular kind. Witting didn’t really care, he actually believed that other stones would be fine too, and also because he thought he knew everything about stones, it would not cause any problem to work with other stones that weren’t approved.
It was finished 6weeks before winter came. There were beautiful lights around the fountain and water was running. Pamukkale fountain was well-known art as symbol of Germans and Turkish who lived in Kreuzberg. It cost about 3.8 million German marks in the past, which equals to 1.9 million Euros now. After 6 weeks has been gone, winter came and the weather caused a major problem. First of all, the stone kept too much water. Winter in Berlin is very cold and it rains a lot. Rain came down, and since the stones kept too much water, the fountain slowly started to break. Second, because of low temperature in Berlin compared to the places where the stones were imported, the stones could not survive through the winter.
As I was doing my research, the biggest struggle I had was to find the actual public art piece with interesting aspects within the art. At first, just with the broad idea of finding public art, I went around randomly to find the art. Then one day at the group dinner, Manuela suggested me the Pamukkale fountain in Golitzer park. She gave me the flyer for its 10th year anniversary event. The flyer had two different pictures; one was the picture of Pamukkale
fountain when it was just built in 1998 and the other picture was after its distortion in 2008. Also it was a big challenge for me to find people who actually knew well enough to explain the whole history of this public art and not only the history but also what is going on right now. I was in a good luck of finding a blog of Pamukkale fountain and even though it was all in German, I was able to find out a group of people who are involved in this project; how to make the destroyed Pamukkale fountain better. I emailed the group of people hoping for an email back. After a couple of days passed, I received an email from a man named Rainer Voss saying that he was able to help me and was willing to participate in the interview for the research. Lastly, Going to the park by myself was scary for me because I’ve never been in Berlin before and I was just getting used to the area and Kreuzberg was not very safe part of Berlin.
As the methods of investigation, I did interviews at the park, I observed people who were at the park hanging out near the Pamukkale fountain and I also looked through the website to research. As deciding what methods to use for my research I was not sure whether it would work out well or not. I assumed that people will not be very willing to participate in interviews and especially because of the language barrier; English is not their first language, I knew it was not going to be easy. I was also worried about interview because I’m not a talkative person and when I step up to them and ask some random questions about the fountain, people might think that I’m a weird person or at least I assumed that they won’t be nice to me. However, I thought interview was the best way to do my research because what I was really interested was people’s reaction to this art. I wanted to figure out what people in Kreuzberg thought about in general; do they want the fountain to be rebuilt? Or do they want to leave it as it is; if not what do they want to do with the broken fountain?
I was completely mistaken because my assumption was wrong. Most of Germans I interviewed spoke English. They had hard time expressing their thoughts in English but it was good enough to understand. When I went up to people and asked them whether or not they spoke English and most people were happy to participate in the interview. I’ve met lots of people at the park whom I interview. I tried to interview as many people as possible; I also tried to find people at different ages and genders. I met some great people while I was doing the interview. I didn’t set up a time with people, but I just went to the park, talked to some people I
saw there and it was amazing how half of people I interviewed were artists. They were sculptors, architecture students in Berlin, video art students, business women and some fine art students. People had different thoughts about the Pamukkale fountain.
Case 1. Ben and Denis. They were architecture students in Berlin and when I asked about their thoughts on the fountain, the first sentence they said was “I hate it.” They hated the place now because it looked so ugly and dirty. However they also mentioned that people in Kreuzberg are so used to seeing the broken stones all over the fountain because it’s been broken for so long that it is not awkward to look at. Ben said it just feels like part of his life and people who live in Kreuzberg will think the same. I was excited because they were both architecture students, I wanted to ask them about the Pamukkale fountain as an architecture form and what they would do if they had a chance to rebuild the fountain. The students said that they definitely want to demolish it completely and rebuilding it with different materials. However, at the end they mentioned that the only reason why they don’t mind leaving it as it is was because the scene of the destroyed fountain fits well in Kreuzberg area.
Case 2. A sculptor who currently works near Kreuzberg. I met his friend before I met him. It was interesting to interview him because he was personally interested in stones using them as his medium for sculptures. He comes to the park very often and he was seriously thinking about stealing some stones from the broken fountain. He has been living in Kreuzberg for more than five years and even before he came to Berlin, the fountain was already destroyed. He had no idea of what the Pamukkale fountain used to look like before it was destroyed. I showed the picture that I had, and he was amazed because he thought it looked so clean. I asked his opinion about all the graffiti works on the stones and he nodded his head. As an artist, he is not a big fan of graffiti art although he sometimes enjoys looking at them; he said he thinks it looks very ugly.
Case 3. Video art students. They were females; Sarah and Anja. It was surprising to me because they didn’t even know about the Pamukkale fountain. Both of them did not know it used to have water running at the fountain. They thought it was some random stones that had graffiti arts done by youth in Berlin. When I explained the whole history and the current issue about the fountain, they thought it was very interesting. Even though they didn’t know what it
was, they never cared about what it is. Like Ben and Denise, they considered the destroyed fountain as part of their life.
Case 4. A Business woman. She was not so friendly when I asked her if I could interview her at first. She said that her English was not good enough and she didn’t know much about the fountain. As the interview went along, she told me a lot about her own opinion. She had a strong idea of removing the whole fountain and making the area green with grass and trees. She also said people have two controversy idea; one side is arguing to remove the fountain and spend some more money in education for young students and the other side is taking side of leaving it as it is now. She is definitely wants to support education. She also thinks that it is dangerous because lots of youth come to play in the park especially around the fountain.
As the methods of investigation, I also did some observations. I just sat in the park, observed people coming and going and it was interesting to see young boys riding skate board near the fountain. There were fence around the fountain area and people would ride their bikes as well.
I also wanted to know the situation with the government as well as people in general. When I interviewed Rainer Voss, he said the government doesn’t care at all since they have so many things to take care of besides the Pamukkale fountain. Including Rainer, there were a few other people and they tried to convince people to take an action regarding the Pamukkale fountain. The group used to have meeting every Thursday evening but it no longer exist since the issue is too complicated. After interviewing random people at the park, I had my last interview with Rainer before I left Berlin. He not only talked about his thoughts but also brief history and the whole situation up till now.
People in Kreuzberg was happy to see the finished fountain in 1998. After the six weeks it has been built, it slowly broke little by little. It was noticeable that it was falling apart. It has been 10 years now and 4 years ago, the artist of the fountain was sued by people. People argued that the artist should pay the money to re-build the fountain and even though the water was not running anymore people had to pay money to the government to maintain the broken fountain. It still costs lots of money. However, the artist refused and said that it was not his fault because he has gone through the approval of the stone that he was using. The artist also argued that he has no money so there is nothing he could do about it. The artist moved to France long time ago, and
he still hasn’t come back yet. Even though he was sued 4 years ago, it took about two years to go through the first judgment and currently it is going through the second judgment and the court will say something this coming November 8th. The artist should be present at the court and other people will be there as well. The artist has two sons and the older son is an artist as well. The son actually came to the park and just to make it look better, he created sculptures with the fence around the fountain.
The compositions and collaborative act of presenting characters in specific situations stretched my thinking for sure. As working on the compositions, it gave me some ideas on how to approach people in various ways. It also helped me interacting with other people.
If I took this research further, I would for sure see what the judges say at the second judgment. As I left Berlin, I didn’t get any clear end result. Since the issue is still going through process of being settled. Nothing is clear at this point. People want to see it either re-built or just demolish all since it still costs lots of money to maintain the fountain even though it is broken and the water is not running. I would love to go back and find out what happens at the end. Personally I would like the fountain to be turned into something else because the same kind of stone won’t work and I highly doubt that the artist wants to rebuild exactly what it looked like before. I don’t think it would be the same even if the fountain is rebuild with different kind of stones. I also think it is very dangerous to leave it like as it is now because nobody knows when the stone will break and fall. It could fall down anytime as people I interviewed said. The fence around the fountain looks dirty and I felt that the graffiti on the broken stones made the scene look worse. Perhaps, I could do some more interviews and observations at the park.
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