Tacheles, one
of the most important alternative art places in Berlin, is closed. It has a
long story and has often had a new face. Today is the end for the 22 years-old
squat of artists.
During the
cold war, this house was in the eastern part of Berlin, and because they hadn’t
enough funds to maintain it, they left it empty. In 1989, when the wall fell
down, some artists – brought together in a collective – said that this building
is important for the city as it was opened in 1909 as a mall occupied by a Jewish
family. Then, during the war, it became a Nazi office and it is obvious that
nobody wanted to get it back afterwards because of the heavy symbolic burden.
But it is one
more empty house in the former eastern Berlin… That is why the city agreed to
leave it to the artists: they occupy the place and do something here, and the
city doesn’t have to maintain the building. During more than 20 years, artists
from all over the world came to Tacheles, painted, exhibited their works, sold
paintings or other works of art, organized concerts, etc. It was a live-box for
alternative ways of expression, and it became one of the sightseeing points of
Berlin.
The problem
is that the building is becoming a kind of ruin in the middle of Berlin, and
the city cannot pay for it ; the bank in charge of the place requested its
demolition, which means the end of this refuge for homeless, anarchist and
misunderstood artists.
The Fundus
investment company plans to break Tacheles down in order to build a new
building of glass with modern flats. After many petitions and demonstrations,
the supporters of the squat are less and less… it is obvious that nobody can do
anything more for it, capitalism wan.
It may mean
that those artists have to find another place in the big empty city and develop
their art away. But the building was symbolic. It is maybe a new era in Berlin:
the one of economic development for one of the poorest capital in Europe, in
spite of its abundance in terms of creativity.
(366 words)
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