[deutsch]
Poles.Rooms.Points of Resonance
Some dreams are literally suffocated by their own realisation. The idealistic
flights in the scope of overall urban draft plans are typical characteristics
of the modern age. It is surely not going too far, if one takes the idea of
"New Urbanism" of the past twenty years and the disappearance of utopian models
as the two sides of the coin that characterise present town planning pragmatism
both in the USA and in Europe. Artists have again and again interfered in the
discussions regarding town and architectural models - with provoking political
arguments, own experiments, self-help campaigns, ironic re-definitions and proposals
for re-design and re-dedication. Artists have established diverse vehicles for
the socially weak or even entire self-provider camps for fringe groups and minorities
world-wide. There are the most varied connecting points between alternative
cultures and social utopian dreams, numerous points to prove the collaboration
of artists with the house squatter scenery and even designs for "Nomad furniture".
It is slowly becoming really stylish again to couple design to the relation
of social contexts. Where the huge construction sites in the growth regions
of the western world are booming and the enclaves of the minorities are becoming
rare - as particularly in New York and Berlin - artists are taking up the junction
of utopia, models and politics as methodological touch to their artistic practice.
If a random city marketing enterprise successfully stage-manages a sparkling
course for tourism marketing using art, the artistic interest in architectural
urban correlation is, however, of the superficial kind. The format of the artistic
model is doubtlessly decided by the degree of utopian thought contained and
the amount of civil discontent.
The work of Valeska Peschke contains many a stimulating idea and cross-link
to this topic. The artist has looked, with more thought and intensity than others,
into experiencing cities and the idea of today's old new city (seen on the example
Berlin), the city in its function as provider and waste manager, its residues,
rejects and sediments. "My room is the idea that I go through as on a trip",
the artist writes. "For me the city consists of places at which flows of thought,
time and material can be experienced. My work deals with the development of
conceptional worlds and instructions for action that offer the possibility to
experience these or to enter them. Prototypes of buildings or houses and of
cartographic and topological examinations arise from observing how the model
worlds behave towards the environment. A trip begins through this room whereby
a traveller and model can change constantly." (1) Valeska Peschke has been living
in Berlin for over ten years, however has put her reactions to the cultural
change in factual forms at other places too, for instance within Germany and
the USA. It cannot be overlooked that: Over the dispute on urban density in
the city centre, there is the threat that public attention may be drawn away
from the outside development. However, the danger of a too high density in the
centre is faced with the danger of over-development of the outskirts, one as
unreal as the other. Despite all efforts to define strict fringes, the periphery
of the cities is always the beginning of the end of the country. This is where
cutting into the countryside is the sad re-designing of the surroundings into
a traffic scenery, the apparently unlimited exploitation of commercial functions
and the diffuse scattering of parts of life correlation, the urbanisation of
the country without the constraint and the power of increasing density. This
proliferation dictates an insatiable network of routes on the landscape - always
connecting, without ever really joining -.
These projects of Valeska Peschke are to be interpreted from this background.
At the beginning of a series of experimental arrangements are finding, observing,
documenting and experimenting with "Volcanoes in Berlin". At first sight the
idea appears to be exotic. If you think of the "Metaphor Volcanoes" (Beatrice
Stammer) in connection with the political and urban constructional transformation
in Berlin, the solution of the of the puzzle is quit clear: "On 2nd November
1989 the meeting of West and East Berlin is like the collision of two continental
shelves. Eruptions and quakes have their say, particularly in East Berlin. The
topography changes. Fallow land is immediately turned into deposits of soils.
Spaces between buildings become craters. A mountain chain of volcanoes manifests
itself and spreads out. ... The volcano demonstrates the substance of the transformation
in the city, in thought, in action, in domesticity." (2) Valeska Peschke assumes
there is a gigantic magma bubble under the city and is sure of her maxim: "Without
volcanoes no life".(3)
She simulates and constructs, takes photographs, makes sketches, draws maps,
numbers and archives. She even attends an "Explosives course" to practise the
correct handling of gunpowder and to be able to carry out blasting herself.
Only experts can design an adventure that is a breathtaking sight even for hard-boiled
art fans but at the same time does not overtax the psyche of the standard citizen.
With campaigns in the city area, on bus tours "through the volcanic areas with
a reconnaissance of the sites and collection of stone samples, ejects and items
found"(4), with slide lectures, TV news spots, a travel book and a "Volcano
Set" she lures new Berliners and the old-established ones into the city zones
of transformation and works on remembering just as skilfully and with a lot
of intuition as on the stabilisation of marginal conditions at the neuralgic
points in the mentality background of Germans from the East and the West. At
that time there were many pompous collections of representative art in the public
sector of the city of Berlin that were to have set their mark on the "blooming
countryside" of the East as visualised by the Federal Chancellor of that time.
Valeska Peschke proved to be more realistic and to have a particularly ironic
approach, which did not view the past of the Bonn Republic, but was oriented
wholly at the explosive mixture and cultural supplement of East and West. On
her way to the professional volcano worker she determined six types of traditional
volcano (sociological-moral blind) spots and with the participation of the public
called a spade a spade in reference to the craters and flash points. In order
to diagnose the feelings of the nation in these days of unifying 'Bockwurst
and Banana', she structured the claims of the global victory of the western
democracies in the categories: "constant volcano danger", "sleeping volcano",
"bursting volcano"", "fire spewing volcano", "eruptive volcano" and "explosive
volcano". Corresponding models on political hygiene can, if they are put up
again today, give a warning against feelings of resentment and possible tactlessness.
Valeska Peschke even thought of a set of rules "Self-help in case of a volcano
eruption" (5). The outlines for catastrophe protection in the course of the
German "Nation's (re)-structure" (6) go all the way from the protection of the
head over protection for the neck to whole body protection.
With "Fuzzy Camp" (1997) the artist created a collection of tent constructions
of variable heights that can be seen as "Special models '97 for a city in transit".
"The point of a tent is that it is pulled up, hides you or something to then
be folded up again", writes the artist and she emphasises: "It is just the temporary
that is continuously proving to be the lasting in the city." (7) "Fuzzy Camp",
this interim housing made of transparent PVC and heavy, colourfully striped
canvas for those escaping from the city forms several rather private room and
retreat like situations in the public room. Because you can look into the tents
and tent fragments (some are only disturbance factors held by tensioning ropes,
tent symbols resp.) outside and self-perception also overlap.
In 1997 the artist begins a comical stroll which leads her over the wooden
floor of a 12 m2 room for a whole month. At the end there is an exact cartography
of the claustrophobic daily routine with the paths from the armchair to the
hi-fi, to the standard lamp, to the book shelf, to the TV, to the desk, to
the chair, to the telephone, to the occasional table. Her yearning for arenas,
for distant shores, for the world, culminates before it becomes an adventure
to the insider artist's question as to the state of seeing and happening. Fairly
dry one could suppose. At the end of strolling into oneself there is a type
of atlas that shows neither positive nor negative intensities, simply makes
a circulation between limiting points vivid. Valeska Peschke has perhaps tried
to define centres of power and event zones - a tangible fantasy ..., she has
found what has already been established in herself as vibration between her
desire and her own inside fields of energy. For centuries artists have been
searching for a way out of the many a time thought about problem of the relation
between world and image. Valeska Peschke's travel description goes beyond the
romantic transcendence or the real as intensive magnitude and concentrates
on the act of strolling around.
The artist is excitedly looking for such territories which one cannot stroll
along on foot but can feel all the more. Guy Debord called this the "psycho-geographic
floor profiles". All objects and actions of Valeska Peschke are "Room detectors"
with which she aims at contemplative areas. This does not mean (and all her
work so far proves this) that Valeska Peschke would refrain from physical outwardness.
On the contrary, her project "Plug in - Plug out: Instant Home" (1998/99) lays
an emphatic claim on pronounced accentuated body, almost sportive leisure time.
This "Instant Home" in beige Vinyl with which Valeska Peschke toured the USA
is a huge inflatable feel-well furnished living-room incl. fireplace and excitable
standard lamp that can be seen as persiflage on the dream of total independence,
but is also monopolised spontaneously as trampoline by children. Seldom has
anyone vented the popism of the softies in the style of Claes Oldenburg so
cheerfully and yet so cleverly.
Christoph Tannert (18.01.2000)
(1) Valeska Peschke,unpublished concept description, Berlin 2000
(2) Valeska Peschke. Volcanoes in Berlin. A travel book (catalogue), published
by Goldrausch Frauennetzwerk Berlin, reg. Ass., Artists project "Without Compromise",
on the occasion of the exhibition in the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, June 1996,
page 2 (3) as above, page 3 (4) as above, page 28 (5) as above, page 38/39 (6)
Christian Meier, The nation that doesn't want to be one, Munich 1991 (7) Valeska
Peschke, unpublished concept description, s.a. plutonics//boxes, catalogue to
exhibition, sponsored by Dresdner Bank, Frankfurt/Main, Germany