I am happy to share this excerpt with the author's consent and my Turkish translation.<\/p>\n
Cover visual: Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin, 1971-95, Foto\u011fraf<\/span>: Wolfgang Volz \u00a9 1995 Christo<\/p>\n * The Reichstag is a historic edifice in Berlin, constructed to house the Imperial Diet (German: Reichstag) of the German Empire.<\/p>\n All our works are works of art. And they are totally useless.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Christo, from \"Walking on Water\"<\/a> (Suda Y\u00fcr\u00fcmek) Belgeseli\u2019nden<\/p>\n Christo, Wrapped Reichstag (Project for West Berlin – “Der Deutsche Reichstag”) Collage 1972. Pencil, charcoal, pastel, wax crayon, fabric, staples, photographs, map and tape. 22 x 28″ (56 x 71 cm). Private collection. Photo: Archive \u00a9 1972 Christo<\/p><\/div>\n In the Hissens\u2019 1996 film<\/a>, about Christo and Jeanne-Claude\u2019s Wrapped Reichstag project, there is an archive scene early on which is shot in the snow-covered environs of the building.<\/p>\n It is the time of the Cold War, presumably during their first visit to Berlin in 1976, and the artists are being accompanied round the site of the Reichstag by Michael Cullen. The latter was an American living in Berlin, who takes the credit for first suggesting the project to the artist team in 1971. All of a sudden Cullen points to an S-Bahn commuter train trundling its way across the divide towards Friedrich Strasse station in the eastern sector. His excitement, not only at the everyday act of \u2018transgression\u2019 itself but also at being able to demonstrate to his guests this piece of Berlin exotica, is palpable. The film captures the kind of emotional response which, as testament to what was moving about an era, easily becomes erased once circumstances change.<\/p>\n Christo. Wrapped Reichstag (Project for Der Deutsche Reichstag – Berlin). Collage 1977. Pencil, fabric, twine, pastel, charcoal and wax crayon. 22 x 28″ (56 x 71 cm). Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany Photo: Archive \u00a9 1977 Christo<\/p><\/div>\n Cullen\u2019s animated state in the shadow of the sorry hulk of a d\u00e9class\u00e9 Reichstag \u2013 about which he was to produce several historical studies \u2013 celebrates the ordinary-but-extraordinary occurrence of movement (ultimately of people) within grid-locked conditions. As such it seems to epitomise the principle of Christo\u2019s project, astonishingly set in train nearly a quarter of a century before its actual realisation in 1995.<\/p>\n Where the wrapping of the whole Reichstag building in silvery polypropylene material began as the idea for a spectacular intervention into the situation of the Cold War, it reached completion in the transitional hiatus produced by the breaking of that particular stalemate. In one respect, then, Christo\u2019s work remains fixed in its form.<\/p>\n ** J\u00f6rg Daniel Hissen<\/span><\/a> and Wolfram Hissen<\/span><\/a>, are the co-directors ofDem Deutschen Volke<\/a>\u201d (Alman Halk\u0131) filmi.<\/p>\n *** Otomotiv sanayinde kullan\u0131lan par\u00e7alardan, tekstil ve yiyecek paketlemesine kadar \u00e7ok geni\u015f kullan\u0131m alan\u0131 olan termoplastik bir maddedir.<\/p>\n Christo. Wrapped Reichstag (Project for Berlin). Drawing 1979 in two parts. Pencil, charcoal, pastel, wax crayon and map 15 x 96″ and 42 x 96″ (38 x 244 cm and 106.6 x 244 cm). Photo: Andr\u00e9 Grossmann \u00a9 1979 Christo<\/p><\/div>\n For much of his practice is in fact related to the unexpected wrapping of familiar objects, large and small, anywhere in the world.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The Reichstag veiling in itself would have been broadly the same whether it had taken place in 1971 or 1995. What emerges as significant resides, first, at the interface between the formal functioning of the work; second, what it actually takes to bring it about; and, lastly, how it mobilises its viewing constituency in the contextual circumstances \u2013 historical, political, topographical \u2013 in which it ultimately occurs. Each one of these aspects is premised on generating movement.<\/p>\n Bureaucratic authorities are moved to negotiate, debate and legislate in what Christo refers to as the software stage (in Hissen\/Hissen 1996). Spectators are moved to participate in the event physically \u2013 by being there and responding to it \u2013 and imaginatively, by speculating creatively over the broader significance of its impact. The formal act itself, finally, occurs as both a time and motion-based event. Lasting a fortnight and incorporating a three-phase process \u2013 the hardware stage \u2013 of becoming, then being, wrapped, as well as becoming unwrapped again, the estranged building also reproduces the remarkable sense of a breathing movement as the tied fabric envelops it and the wind gets under its skirts.<\/p>\n The machinery of \u2018wrapping\u2019 corresponds formally in fact to the Brechtian sense of a \u2018staging of a veiling\u2019 in which a familiar object or circumstance is not just made strange but shown to be made so.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Christo. Wrapped Reichstag (Project for Berlin). Scale model 1981 (Detail). Fabric, twine, wood and paint. 33 1\/2 x 167 3\/4 x 191 1\/4″ (85 x 426 x 486 cm) Photo: Wolfgang Volz \u00a9 1981 Christo<\/p><\/div>\n The machinery of \u2018wrapping\u2019 corresponds formally in fact to the Brechtian sense of a \u2018staging of a veiling\u2019 in which a familiar object or circumstance is not just made strange but shown to be made so. The phenomenon in question both is and is not itself, resembling the Brechtian actor\u2019s demonstration of a character or situation and pointing to that character\/situation\u2019s capacity to \u2018be otherwise\u2019.<\/p>\n Here a \u2018sick\u2019 building \u2013 one that is \u2018not quite itself\u2019 \u2013 is bandaged (or mummified), undergoing a two-week period of healing and convalescence in which it is \u201cwrapped as the Reichstag and unwrapped as the Bundestag\u201d (Large 2002, 612).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Effectively it has had \u2018the gift of life\u2019 breathed back into it, a repackaged present (or swaddled rebirthing) to the city from the artists. What you witness at each individual stage and as a whole is the ritualised performance of democracy in action.<\/p>\n **** Yabanc\u0131la\u015ft\u0131rma efekti, Bertolt Brecht\u2019in do\u011frudan Marksizm-Leninizm etkilenimiyle olu\u015fturdu\u011fu ve seslendi\u011fi seyirci kitlesini de emek\u00e7i s\u0131n\u0131f olarak belirlemi\u015f olan tiyatro kuram\u0131n\u0131n (Epik tiyatro) en \u00f6nemli ara\u00e7lar\u0131ndan biridir.<\/p>\n Christo. Wrapped Reichstag (Project for Berlin). Drawing 1995 in two parts. Pencil, pastel, charcoal, wax crayon, technical data, aerial map and fabric sample. 15 x 96″ and 42 x 96″ (38 x 244 cm and 106.6 x 244 cm). Photo: Wolfgang Volz \u00a9 1995 Christo<\/p><\/div>\n In its software phase there was considerable right-wing opposition to Christo\u2019s project, which viewed it variously as unsuitably experimental and irreverent, ambiguous in a way that would polarise rather than unify the populace, and unprecedented in other comparably respectable democracies (see Ladd 1998, 93-4 and Large 2002, 612). The important thing for the project, though, was that it provoked a parliamentary debate at all, one which resulted in a fairly narrow majority in favour. This was, on the one hand, over the writing of German history and, on the other, over the future of both the Reichstag as the refunctioned site of parliament and the nation as a whole: what would this act of wrapping suggest about the state of German unity and democracy if it were permitted to take place?<\/p>\n Also remarkable about Christo and Jeanne-Claude\u2019s 24-year struggle \u2013 as a crucial element in the functioning of the eventual piece itself \u2013 was the way its fluctuations had become indicative of the health of German-German relations. The birth of the \u2018big idea\u2019 just as a possibility in 1971 coincided with the tentative beginnings of East-West d\u00e9tente, as the more co-operative Brandt-Honecker years set in. Typically, though, the conservative parliamentary president Carstens was unwilling to run with the project in 1977 because the Reichstag was supposedly a symbol of German unity with which one should not tamper (in Baal-Teschuva 1995, 31). Choosing to view Christo\u2019s proposed intervention as a trivialisation rather than facilitation of unification, then, the Reichstag is paradoxically preserved in this reactionary reading as the rigid embodiment of a past ideal of nationhood, one with which a reconnection will be made once the \u2018aberration\u2019 that is the GDR has run its course. Finally, at the project\u2019s culmination in the 1990s, the parliamentary decision to take the risk and allow such a radical act to occur correlated with its own sense of being on the cusp of a new but undefined era of democratic unity.<\/p>\n Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin, 1971-95. Photo: Roland Bauer \u00a9 1995 Christo<\/p><\/div>\n Whilst the materialisation of that unity remains a vexed question, there is no doubting that its possibility contributed to the extraordinary response to the Reichstag\u2019s wrapping in the summer of 1995. The veiling, originally scheduled \u2013 naturally \u2013 to occur on 17th June, was delayed slightly, but that did not prevent an estimated five million visitors from attending in the fortnight of its duration. Effectively the site, surrounded by vast, \u2018re-opened\u2019 space, became the focal point for spontaneous gathering and festivities. The troubled colossus had been turned momentarily into a people\u2019s fun palace, its gloomy threat spirited away, presaging its recasting as the locus of democracy.<\/p>\n Everybody could have their piece of it, a fact that was encapsulated literally by the distribution of millions of little pieces of the shiny fabric used. Now people could create their own personal installations by wrapping up their fragments of Wall chipped off six years earlier. As Willy Brandt had predicted in the early days of the project, it was something in which all German people would find themselves reflected.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin, 1971-95. Photo: Wolfgang Volz \u00a9 1995 Christo<\/p><\/div>\n Whilst Brandt doubtless meant what he said, and was warmly quoted by Jeanne-Claude in this spirit, there were certainly no idealistic sentiments on the part of the artists, no empty rhetoric claiming they were \u2018doing it for the people\u2019 (in Hissen\/Hissen 1996). On the contrary, one of the more thought-provoking responses to the launch of the event was when the artists categorically stated at the press conference that they had done it only for themselves: to see if they could, to see what it would be like.Sitting alongside a visibly twitchy Rita S\u00fcssmuth, the parliamentary president at the time, who, as one of a minority of conservatives voting in favour of the project, had heroically championed the artists\u2019 cause, it was a poignant moment. After all, this was a project that had really been premised on the exhaustive task of persuading politicians of its relevance to the broader populace. Importantly the artists added that if it attracted the interest of others, the public, then all the better, but that was not the starting point. It was a controversial declaration from an artist team that refuses any form of commercial or public sponsorship, that pays for everything itself, and therefore has arguably earned the right to make the kind of direct, independent-minded pronouncement which for a politician \u2013 or, indeed, a subsidised artist \u2013 might be professional suicide.<\/p>\n Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin, 1971-95. Photo: Wolfgang Volz \u00a9 1995 Christo<\/p><\/div>\n Where politicians purport to serve the people and spend a considerable part of their time \u2018proving\u2019 that this is what they are doing, Christo and Jeanne-Claude simply allow their actions to speak their own significance to the public. It is an act of galvanisation. An idea is set in train; how people react to that idea is ultimately what makes the work, but that is not something that can be predicted or determined in advance. The situation determines the work\u2019s importance.<\/p>\n Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin, 1971-95. Photo: Wolfgang Volz \u00a9 1995 Christo<\/p><\/div>\n Works cited<\/b><\/p>\n Baal-Teshuva (1995) Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Der Reichstag und Urbane Projkete, M\u00fcnchen: Prestel Verlag.<\/p>\n Hissen, J\u00f6rg Daniel and Wolfram Hissen (dirs.) (1996) Dem Deutschen Volke \u2013 Verh\u00fcllter Reichstag (film), 1971-1995 (Germany\/France).<\/p>\n Ladd, Brian (1998) The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Landscape, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.<\/p>\n Large, David Clay (2002) Berlin: a Modern History, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.<\/p>\n Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin, 1971-95. Photo: Wolfgang Volz \u00a9 1995 Christo<\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bulgaristan do\u011fumlu kavramsal sanat\u00e7\u0131 Christo, bir ay \u00f6nce, May\u0131s sonunda vefat etti. Bu haber \u00fczerine, Berlin\u2019deki Reichstag* binas\u0131n\u0131 paketlemesini, hem Christo\u2019nun i\u015fleriyle ilgili bilgi verecek bi\u00e7imde, hem de o d\u00f6nemde Berlin\u2019de ya\u015fayanlar i\u00e7in ne anlama geldi\u011fini istanbulberlin\u2019e ta\u015f\u0131yacak bir yol ar\u0131yordum. Kentsel performans \u00e7al\u0131\u015fmalar\u0131 alan\u0131nda \u00e7al\u0131\u015fan akademisyen Nicolas Whybrow\u2019un \u201cStreet Scenes: Brecht Benjamin ve Berlin\u201d (Sokak Manzaralar\u0131: Brecht Benjamin ve Berlin) kitab\u0131ndan, \u201cChristo\u2019s Wrapped Reichstag\u201d (Christo\u2019nun Paketli Reichstag\u2019\u0131) b\u00f6l\u00fcm\u00fc imdad\u0131ma yeti\u015fti. Yazar\u0131n\u0131n izni ve kendi T\u00fcrk\u00e7e \u00e7evirimle sizlere sunmaktan mutluyum. Kapak g\u00f6rseli: Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin, 1971-95, Foto\u011fraf: Wolfgang Volz \u00a9 1995 Christo * Reichstag, 1871’den 1918’e Parlamentosu\u2019nun […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[356,4],"tags":[352,349,347,354,350,351,348,343,344,346,353,345,355],"class_list":["post-1659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christo-ve-jeanne-claude","category-zamanin-icinden","tag-berlin-reichstag","tag-berlin-a-modern-history","tag-brian-ladd","tag-bundestag","tag-christo","tag-cristo-and-jean-claude","tag-david-clay-large","tag-dem-deutschen-volke","tag-jorg-daniel","tag-the-ghosts-of-berlin","tag-willy-brandt","tag-wolfram-hissen","tag-wrapped-reichstag"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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Christo\u2019s Wrapped Reichstag<\/h5>\n
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\u201cWrapped as the Reichstag and unwrapped as the Bundestag.\u201d<\/h6>\n
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Without a stitch of the fabric even having been woven, the project had already produced intense discussion<\/h6>\n
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Something in which all German people would find themselves reflected<\/h6>\n
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