Enter Laughing: Transforming Berlin with Thorsten Goldberg
By Molly Kleiman
I first came across Thorsten Goldberg’s Rock Paper Scissors by accident. I was in Berlin, crossing the Oberbaum Bridge with a friend late one night. We stopped. Mounted on the steel supports of the bridge–this brick, graceful connector of East and West Berlin, straddler of the River Spree–were two giant neon signs. Traffic signals? An advertisement? A late night vision? There was no one else walking along the bridge. We watched as the two signs scrolled randomly through three hand symbols, "rock," "paper" and "scissors," perpetually playing a game with one another. For an hour we played along, making bets, asking questions and letting the game’s outcome decide our fate. We soon learned that no side ever wins as the arbitrary blinking ends each night at 1am to resume at dusk the following evening. Goldberg has referred to the Oberbaum Bridge as "exemplifying Berlin’s history:" a 19c symbol of metropolitan modernism; a Cold War barricade between East and West; a present day conduit for pedestrians, cars, U-Bahn and S-Bahn.
Molly Kleiman: Many of your works are situated in Berlin, a city in transition, and installed on historically significant sites. This is a large responsibility. How does a public art piece alter the space in which it is situated?
Thorsten Goldberg: Berlin is being totally rebuilt–it is extremely changed and in the process of changing. For me, as a public artist, rather than adding form or changing the architecture, I play with the existing function of a place and somehow sharpen the situation. Normally, we walk through town and don’t realize the places we pass or the ways we pass. We don’t necessarily realize them as public places; we realize them as our places. We go around this corner to the left and then until the red house and at the traffic light we cross the street. This is what I am trying to give to somebody who walks past my piece: The opportunity to discover it for himself and have his own personal experience. Not necessarily to be shared with two thousand people. Art is not a rock concert or a political speech.
MK: How did this philosophy inform your creation of Rock Paper Scissors?
TG: The Senate of Construction, Living and Traffic of Berlin had sent out a large call for artists to take part in a competition called "Transitions." The intention was to mark the six urban crossing points [on the boundary dividing East and West Berlin]. For each of these transition points they chose a different artist to mark the spot. You know, Rock Paper Scissors is the only piece of public art in Berlin that has been insured. Meaning, I was rather afraid that it might offend people. And it is a good size and height to throw stones against. So far, there has been no trouble.
MK: You write, the quality of "simplicity or playfulness does not mean that a work is irrelevant. The fact that it uses simple symbols makes it universally comprehensible." You draw upon childhood archetypes as the basis of many of your works: games (Rock Paper Scissors), German nursery rhymes (Hunger, Hunger, Hunger), and toys (SeeSaw). Why these entry points?
TG: I feel that art has to have different levels. And the first level, or introduction, should, at least in my work, always have this atmosphere of playfulness, of harmlessness. I don’t want my art to be somehow awe-inspiring. I don’t want anyone to come look at the pieces and say "this is by Thorsten Goldberg" and "this must be art."
MK: And in the case of Rock Paper Scissors?
TG: People are taking the Oberbaum bridge as a way to their work or an evening way somewhere. All are passengers. My wish is that somebody comes to this bridge and comes to the middle of the water, the middle of the Spree, and sees the game, understands the game and immediately knows that he is standing at a point, in a situation in the city where decisions were being made, are being made. Maybe decisions on him.
MK: Your current project, Milk and Honey, involves a fictional history, a fictional landscape, and a fictional transition point. It will be housed in a "bus shelter" for an imaginary bus, leading to imaginary destinations outlined on a map of a utopian world. Do I have this correct?
TG: Yes (laughs). I will install a fictive journey to Schlaraffenland [which translates loosely to "German Fool’s Paradise"] in Heidenheim, located in a plodding region in the south of Germany where the map of the utopian country comes from. The map is from 1720, drawn by Johann Baptist Homann. I had to buy the rights on it, of course. And I researched all the mountains, cities, lakes and so on, which number almost 2,000: The El Dorado, Mount Lascivious, Titty River, Department of Salaciousness. You cannot translate these names. Since there is no S-Bahn Station in Heidenheim, I had to install some kind of stop or landing place there. There will be an electronic display of the destinations where one can go to and they change everyday, randomly.
MK: Why this imaginary waiting space, where one waits for a vehicle that will never come? What type of experience might this engender in a viewer?
TG: Ah. Maybe it means Milk and Honey is far, far away (laughs). Or, maybe it means Milk and Honey has finally returned. We will see.
MK: And in, let’s say, a utopian situation, where logistical and financial concerns did not matter, on what spot on the earth would you like to create an art installation?
TG: (Long Pause) I would like to do something on the sea.
MK: The sea? The public artist wants to create an installation in a space without architecture, without human life?
TG: Yes, well, I would like to meet myself there. Just to see.
