Economic and social restructuring in the former East Germany has rendered entire neighborhoods and cities superfluous. A whole way of life created in the sixties, seventies and eighties has been called into question and dismantled piece by piece. After several slab buildings in Hoyerswerda’s Wohnkomplex 8 (Residential Complex 8) had already disappeared, Stadt im Regal became involved in the demolition of one of the complex’s Type P2 buildings, located at Merzdorfer Str. 14–18, Hoyerswerda Neustadt.

A Federal Cultural Foundation project about the deconstruction of modernity, Hoyerswerda Neustadt.

www.stadtimregal.de/wk8p2abbau
www.stadtimregal.de/superumbau-review

Heike Klussmann is Visiting Professor at Art Center College of Design Pasadena, CA, USA, Dept. of Fine Art, 1999 – 2000, Dept. of Environmental Design, 2003

www.artcenter.edu

Various pavement chunks used in wear tests conducted at the Brandenburg University of Technology in Cottbus. Prototype showing how construction materials left over from the demolition of WK8P2 might be reused as a base layer in road construction.

Stadt im Regal put up a construction in front of the WK8P2 building at Merzdorfer Str. 14–18, Hoyerswerda Neustadt. It portrays the deconstruction as a construction project: “Green Space Coming Soon.”

Site clearance and closeout, topsoil preparation, seeding, designation of playing fields and lawn areas, irrigation.

She was here at a good time and she had a good time when she was here at the Friedrichsbau in Bühl.
Original facade sections from the twelfth and thirteenth stories of the Haus des Lehrers (Alexanderplatz, Berlin), one piece of floor, one piece of ceiling, vertical video projection.

The installation She was here at a good time and she had a good time when she was here, at the Friedrichsbau in Bühl, makes use of fragments of a now historical structure: windowpanes from the Haus des Lehrers on Berlin’s Alexanderplatz. The installation uses original components from the building’s upper stories to reconstruct facade, floor and ceiling. These are rotated ninety degrees within the space, turning the windows into a horizontal surface that precisely reproduces the rhythm of the panes in their various sizes and colors. Two videos are projected onto the panes, passing through them and reflecting on the glass. One camera, mounted on the tip of a demolition excavator, captures whirling images of crumbling walls, tumbling and bouncing chunks of masonry—the slow disintegration of a building. The rotating camera angle erases the precise distinction between up and down, a distinction that has already vanished in the exhibition space reflected in the windowpanes. The second video projection shows the intent face of the excavator operator as he both observes and controls the machine doing the demolition, his gaze mirroring the building’s destruction.

Scarface – Surface Reconstruction and Anti-Aging Systems. An exhibition at the Altes Dampfbad in Baden-Baden on time, impermanence, the aging and maintenance of bodies and architecture, and the presentation of their surfaces.

Special Guest: Dorothy Iannone

www.gfjk.de
www.kunstaspekte.de/scarface

Scarface – Surface Reconstruction and Anti-Aging Systems. Stadt im Regal. Leaflet, 59.4 x 42 cm, published by the Gesellschaft der Freunde junger Kunst, 2003

www.gfjk.de
www.kunstaspekte.de/scarface

In 2003 Heike Klussmann dismantled and stored the facade of the Haus des Lehrers on the Alexanderplatz (built 1962–64. It will be reused, in the tradition of architectural spoils, in a new structure, together with the facades of the Forum Hotel, the Kaufhof and the Palast der Republik.

The deconstruction of the WK8P2 building was made public in the Lausitzer Rundschau newspaper. In an advertisement published daily, photos and text documented the gradual disappearance of the building and the creation of a green space.