Kunstraum KORN: NEULAND - Wandel, Abriss, Neubesinnung

In 2021, the shop window, curated by Dirk Teschner, will feature the exhibition series NEULAND - Wandel, Abriss, Neubesinnung (in English translated by "NEW LAND" - Change, Demolition, Reconsideration). KORN is part of the Heinrich Böll Library, Greifswalder Straße 87, 10409 Berlin - Prenzlauer Berg.

German unification is over thirty years ago - still a vivid memory for many, but no longer present. Not only the time before, but also the first years of the profound upheaval in the new "East Germany" remove themselves from life, attitudes, moods and become archaeological layers of the collective unconscious. Here lie the forgotten imprints of vanished experiences, crises, ruptures, and struggles over the return of market relations, the transformation of legal relations, the demolition of social institutions, the closure of industrial plants, and the transformation of entire urban landscapes of the East.

The speed and depth of the transformation has eliminated not only the obsolete but also the serviceable, and has produced not only productive renewal but also strangely old-fashioned replacements - not least in housing and urban development. Well-known examples include the Palace of the Republic, replaced by a copy of a Hohenzollern palace, the Maple Leaf, replaced by faceless yield architecture, and the careful restoration of many tenement facades in the style of the Wilhelmine Empire.

At the same time, parts of GDR architecture and its design are attracting growing interest.

In the exhibition series NEULAND, artists* will deal with "GDR modernism" in architecture and design and its supporting collective dreams, utopias and deceptions in installations, collages and photographs, and present their views on the ongoing process of "gentrification" and its urban consequences.