Dellbrügge & de Moll

Following the collapse of the Third Reich, why did the Berlin magistrate provide its east wing to Breker’s master students of all people, even indefinitely? Was his dissociation of his professor and sponsor, as well as his turn towards Modernism career-motivated? Why had he inscribed himself under Breker in 1938 particularly? Was the remodelling of the Nazi building into eight individual ateliers in the 1970s an anti-monumental gesture? Was the assignment of its interior for the use of a number of international artists an attempt at political decontamination? Why was the context of the building’s genesis forgotten? And why did Berlin end the atelier program in 2011?

The widow of the master student started a foundation in 1996. Following her initiative and against the protest of artists, Breker’s state atelier was remodelled into an exhibition space for the works of his master student. In June 2015, it was thus reopened as „Kunsthaus Dahlem“ in the style of a monumental studio. This process motivated Dellbrügge & Moll to investigate the Nazi roots of the building.

Behind Alexander Silveri’s memorial for the victims of both world wars by Graz's medieval ramparts opens a narrow room which cannot seen into from the location of the park. There, facing the back of the memorial, the artists document their investigations. The memorial functions as a tension-filled frame of reference. Its 2013 translocation from the historic crown of the city at the Karmeliterplatz to its new home outside of the ramparts represents how history can be overwritten in the present: History is a perpetually incomplete construct. Art in public space visualizes conflicts surrounding the sovereignty of interpretation.

Actors will take the words of Breker, Hitler, Goebbels and other ideologues and enable listeners to experience the art discourse of the Nazi period. What kind of political dimension was then ascribed to art? Acting out the texts and hearing them spoken aloud allows for a careful critical approach.