The Art of Pe@ce: The Battle for Berlin

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was an age of productivity, it was an age of complacency; it was the epoch of creativity, it was the epoch of spectacle; it was the season of Peace, it was the season of War; it was the spring of profit, it was the winter of poverty; we had vision, we had nothing but shortsightedness; we were all following the same path, we were all alone in our journey.

This is the tale of two Berlinsone city perpetually divided in twoby day and night, by war and peace. After decades of rebuilding the city after WWII, the streets of Berlin remain riddled with conflict, but a conflict of a different nature with unusual actors and unorthodox ammunition. It is a never-ending struggle; one that does not sleep, and one that neither side fights simultaneously. There is no fascist leader; there are no casualties. There are no more explosions of bombs; rather, commercial billboards, memorials of atonement, and sanctioned mosaics are blowing up the streets of Potsdam and Alexanderplatz. These images that have changed the citys landscape are commissioned to illustrate Berlins return to greatness while expressing humility for their past war crimes. It is crusade engaging innovators and architects, capitalists and historians to combat against the judgment of the rest of the world to protect the historical integrity of a city once divided by walls and ravaged by wara city that created a Hitler and set out to exterminate humanity. To them, this is peace and peace is the absence of war (Polat, 2010, pg. 318). War is easily replaced by the culture of consumption, the dazzle and glitz of a global city, resulting in the decision to transform public space, tear down the Berlin Wall and replace it with marble malls and glass ceilings, Sony Centers and O2 Worlds, and cumbersome concrete slabs erected in memoriam. The new Berlin is strategically constructed so that prior to purging wallets in malls, passers-by cleanse their guilt at a memorial to those who lost their lives in order for this generation of Berliners to live a life without such horrific oppression. It is a memory that is omnipresent and haunting the streets each day as the sun rises and the hustle and bustle of progress continues.

Once the day dims and the night obscures the city, Berlin becomes a blank canvass primed for an ambush by colorful crusaders from Berlins underground. The rebels grab their paint brushes, spray cans and stencils and prepare for battle. Concrete walls constructed by day are transformed in the darkness with messages of dissent, of change, and of pe@ce. The lone marauders in the night creep out into the shadows from gutters and back alleys to indiscriminately anoint the city with an alternate perspective. Revealed to the community by the mornings sunrise, it is their attempt to guide the actions of those during the day through the darkness of their denial as they pass the once sanitized gray walls of their workplaces and shopping malls now splattered with a multitude of artistic vision for the new Berlin. Their opponent is not the people, but the structure in place that denies war exists because of the absence of violence. Building structures and monuments to evoke memory of wars past blocks the serenity of peace from existing and makes the threat of war omnipresent. The tale of two Berlins is a story of a very real conflict over creative visions for a new Berlin. It is a war that exists in the streets among the artists, sculptors, and architects with diverging methods on remembering the past havoc that war fashioned so that future generations will be dissuaded from creating another war, another Hitler. For if we have learned anything from WWII it is that the responsibility for sustaining peace is a burden the entire world bears. And if pe@ce is to exist it will exist in these streets on the periphery of war, pasted and spraypainted on building tops and street corners through the imaginations of street artists. Through analyzing the implications of art on the streets, from billboards to graffiti, the battle for Berlin is playing out to be one of discourse and nonviolence. For this reason, it is important to investigate how the battle was set in motion and removed from the hands of militants and placed in the fingertips of artists in order to deliver the promise of peace through street art. Pe@ce is the one memory that must cease to be forgotten. The Art on the Streets Structural Street ArtMonuments and Memorials The art of pe@ce in Berlin began before the rise of the Third Reich and defines a category of street art labeled, for the purposes of this paper, as structural street art. Structural street art is comprised of two categories: monuments and/or memorials and propaganda or its modern-day counterpart, a form of art branded capitalist surrealism. Monuments have always played a crucial role in Berlin history. The Brandenburg Gate (See Figure 1, originally not a monument but made so by history) in the eighteenth-century is the first monument confiscated by the art of war as Napoleon defeated the Prussian army and victoriously marched through the Gate claiming his territory by shipping the goddess, her horses and chariot to France, removing the Gate of Peace and replacing it with the Gate of Victory (Ladd, 1997, pg. 73-75). Hitler adopted the symbol of victory and even took measures to protect the sculptures from attacks by using a plaster cast to replicate his victory.

Figure 1: Brandenburg Gate Gate of Victory

Since the war, monuments in Berlin represent not victory, but great loss and have become memorials of remembrance and atonement, such as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and the Topography of Terror. Part monument, part museum, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (See Figure 2) embodied both history lesson and work of art. On the surface, the memorial rests on 19,000 square meters of public space uniquely positioned near Potsdamer Platz and the American Embassy and is composed of 2,700 concrete slabs in various heights so that people can walk by and through the abstract experience of remembering. The experience can be incredibly isolating as patrons begin walking through the pillars with each other, each taking a different direction, losing sight of those people they know only to catch a glimpse of them as they move through the memorial, only to end up alone with no one else in sight. Beneath the memorial in the museum are letters from those murdered to loved ones, recorded phone messages, and personal accounts of individual experiences during the Holocaust. It is a gripping recount of history and a symbolic interpretation of the emotional journey made by the murdered Jewsbecoming a living structure, forever engrained in Berlins landscape, sink*ing+ into it like a memory (Till, 2005, pg. 176).

Figure 2: Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

The Topography of Terror represents the structural history of the rise of a fascist regime and its terror apparatus (Till, 2005, pg. 137) with a rational, factual approach to remembering. Constructed in the remnants of Gestapo headquarters, located in the cells where executions took place, the Topography uses articles and pieces of history to negate the emotional tension of the environment to exhibit a pragmatic approach to the rise of the Third Reich. It was labeled the open wound of the city and as a place for commemoration and reflection about the origins and consequences of National Socialist domination, yet illustrates a very subjective experience of academics who have actively chosen what facts to include and exclude, what pictures to depict, and what stories to tell (Till, 2005, pg. 97). This sheds light on a claim made by Ladd (1997) in that Monuments are nothing if not selective aids to memory; they encourage us to remember some things and to forget others (pg. 11). In this sense, monuments like the Brandenburg Gate, Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, and the Topography of Terror act as reminders of a war-torn past. There is no object in the memorials that call visitors to remember peace , but instead the memorials represent organized guilt and ultimately commodify the fears and fantasies of national haunting by imposing order on time (often to discipline ghosts) and package a palatable and profitable identity through place (Till, 2005, pgs. 177, 196). Supposing that these memorials are intended to deter future generations from falling victim to a new Hitler and perpetrating another world war and mass genocide, the architects remind visitors of the harrowing accounts of war, giving claim to a structural definition of peacepeace is the absence of

violence as long as war never leaves our memory. They construct these memorials to remember and not commit the same crimes, without ever educating the community on how to see and move beyond war. Propaganda and the Emergence of Capitalist Surrealism The Topography of Terror, a monumental work of art in and of itself, exposes and explores an insidious form of structural art, as it highlights the indoctrination of the German people through the use of Nazi propaganda. The Topography states, The Nazis used propaganda and economic and social policy to win the populations commitment to the community. After the turbulent years of the Weimar Republic many people saw Hitler as the guarantor of strength, security and a better future (Topography of Terror, 2011). This form of street art plagued the streets of Berlin during the rise of the Third Reich and manipulated public opinion throughout WWII. One highlighted in the monument, a propaganda poster from 1936 (See Figure 3), displayed a picture of falling unemployment figures stating, The Nazis claimed credit for falling unemployment figuresbut the previous government had already introduced decisive measures to reduce joblessness (Topography of Terror, 2011).

Figure 3: Propaganda poster stating Unemployment fell in three years of National Socialist rule.

The National Socialist Party flooded the streets with these posters praising Hitler and his rule, to posters demonizing Jews, even radio shows and movies portraying concentration camps full of Jews happy to work and livemanipulating the perception of injustice in order to justify the measures taken by the Third Reich.

Propaganda was so critical to Hitlers movement, that he appointed Josef Goebbels as the Minister of Propaganda (Kallis, 2006). Determined to indoctrinate and saturate the community with propaganda, Goebbels used poster art, cartoons, movies, and radio to spread the National Socialist worldview. Kallis (2006) writes, *P+ropaganda constitutes a willful distortion of truth; that artistic freedom is an institutional and legal condition, not a cultural conjuncture (pg. 7). Kallis labels this type of propaganda as positive censorship, meaning that the ugly truth is concealed by a beautifully illustrated liea lie in which people choose to believe in because they ultimately want to believe the best and ignore the worst (Kallis, 2006, pg. 7). Although Hitlers propaganda is a sinister version of street art, the manipulation still exists today in the form of a new art movement entitled capitalist surrealism. This category of artwork is a form of advertising called subvertising as it converts, diverts, and inverts advertising proper to promote noncommercial consumption in an attempt to revitalize *advertisers+ own commercial efficacy (Borghini, Visconti, Anderson, Sherry, 2010, pg. 113). Since advertising shapes contemporary consumer culture, the rational and emotional experience and moods of consumers, billboard advertisements offer an alternative to war through consumption and spending. This type of street art perverts the definition of peace and distracts people from the truth as art mirrors the shared truths, ideals, and metaphors of a given society, misleading consumers to believe that peace is something one can easily purchase in the absence of war (Borghini, et. al, 2010, pg. 113). Till (2005) acknowledges that the images that now adorn city billboards to promote the New Berlin as a cosmopolitan beauty queen, surrounded by corporate power and wealth and bejeweled by cultural icons, are haunted by former hopes for the future of Weimar, National Socialist, and Cold War Berlins (pg. 6). These images are hauntedemploying the same tactics of the Nazi party by portraying false utopian realities in mosaics depicting a tranquil and joyful welcoming of Turkish immigrants plastered on the sides of shopping malls along Alexanderplatz (See Figure 4). They are haunted by the false perceptions of happiness depicted in the billboard that compel passers-by to dine at a particular restaurant or consume an advertised beer because of the joyous patron illustrated in the ad (See Figure 5)implying that ones path to peace in the new Berlin requires eating and consuming a path of least resistance. Structural art, functioning under the discussed definitions, is a form of street art that is created privately and strictly for capitalist production. Structural art has become structurally violent in the sense that structural violence is perceived in everyday life almost as natural as the air around us. This invisible violence is formed by a broad configuration of forces in society responsible for generating myriad forms of inequality (Polat, 2010), which is represented on the streets by monuments and commercial billboards. The images of capitalist surrealism evoke emotions and compel consumers to purchase their peace in the absence of war, which is in direct opposition to the memorials of atonement that are intended to remind passers-by of how quickly a Hitler can dominate and indoctrinate using the same subvertising tactics of commercial advertising. These subliminal messages are strung up and on display in broad daylight, yet they remain shortsighted in terms of waging peace. They remain artifacts of war and are so depressing that consumers can walk by them every day and forget they exist. Contemporary street art of this kind serves no purpose in our memories if the memory is fleeting or merely short-term. And if monuments were erected for every appalling act of crime against humanity, there would be no more public space. Committing war to memory limits ones vision of peace and defines it in terms of war.

Figure 4: Image of an ad for a steak. Depicts an attractive, female chef making a Bon Apptit gesture, exuding confidence that the customer will leave satiated and pleased.

Figure 5: Mosaic of peaceful Turkish immigrants, welcomed into the Berlin community.

Devi@nt Street Art The Berlin Wall was created to protect East German citizens from the fruits of capitalism (Ladd, 1997, pg. 19-20). Ladd (1997) writes, The Wall held back the seductive bustle and mobility that accompanied free trade and bourgeois society (pg. 22). They posted Cold War propaganda to deter citizens from leaving; they executed and imprisoned those who tried to escape. But in reality, it was the Wall alone that preserved the illusion that the Wall was the only thing separating the Germans (Ladd, 1997, pg. 30). Berlin was divided by conflicting ideologies in a battle to define a symbol, in which both the East and the West attempted to make the Berlin Wall comprehensible in ways that would justify its causekeeping capitalism out and communism contained behind a well-armed and militarized barricade (Ladd, 1997, pg. 22). In response to this ridiculous display of political gridlock, a movement began on the Western side of the Wall. Staring at the blank canvass before them opened up the dialogue towards peace and reconciliation. Artists began speaking out against the division, painting images of people climbing, jumping, and breaking through the Wall (See Figure 6) in an attempt to call attention to the injustice, anomaly, or artificiality of the barrier (Ladd, 1997, pg. 27). The art along the Wall was so profound that it drew global attention. By making the Wall visible, Ladd (2005) writes,

the colorful graffiti (or art) also counteracted West Berliners inclinations to ignore it (pg. 26). Although the end of the Cold War claims credit over the fall of the Berlin Wall, the nonviolent discourse illustrated in the artwork of West Berlin deviants started a relationship and conversation in Berlin between the structure and street artists, which remains in a healthy symbiosis today.

Figure 6: Image of a car breaking through to East Berlin.

Street artists today are not confined to one Wall, but hold the structure accountable by painting images of dissent, change, and pe@ce on all walls throughout the city. These images range from rhetoric to ironic, as well as detailed cartoons addressing political issues arguing an end to nuclear energy (See Figure 7), all the while still remembering the lessons of WWII (See Figure 8), reminding the public not to become too distracted by the new Berlin and forget the meaning of pe@ce. Even though commercial and other structural art is visible on the streets, it does not make it street art. One definition of this modern movement explains, an artwork is street art only if it uses the street as an artistic resource and that the street is intentionally used in the creation of the work while falling subject to the threats of the street including being stolen, defaced, destroyed, moved, altered, or appropriated. [Artists] relinquish any claim on the works integrity, or on the integrity of the part of the work that contributes to its being street art (Riggle, 2010, pg. 245). Street art is created cheaply and intended for everyone to experience free of charge, and owned by no one. Museums, Riggle argues, often contain art that is extremely expensive (to make and own), costly to experience, and overseen by an elite few (pg. 249). To put this into perspective, Riggle articulates that street art is no longer street art once removed from the streets. Yet street art is deeply antithetical to the art world; therefore, pulling them from the streets the curator eliminates their material use of the street, thereby destroying

their meaning and status as street art (248). On the other hand, when a commercial billboard is removed from the streets, or when a public sculpture is on display in a private gallery the meaning of the art remains the same.

Figure 7: Image of an anti-nuclear energy art.

Figure 8: Image of boy sitting on bomb.

Street artists looming in the shadows of the night chip away at perceptions that the environment is something out there and that cities are not as deeply connected to other ecosystems as they are to global trade networks (Visconti, et. al. 2011). Street artists fight against commercialism, not because they are at war, but because structural art and capitalist realism slow down the progress towards peace: Street artists proclaim urban buildings covered by ads and other commercial stimuli violate the spirit of the law by imposing the market ideology upon city dwellers (Visconti, 2011). Furthermore, the steps towards nonviolent resolution in this conflict are paved by the local color of street art through promoting street democracy. In cities all throughout the world artists are emerging to defend the cities from a rapid commercialization of the streets. In the words of the world-renowned street artist, BanksyIts not vandalism, its brandalism, a reclaiming of public space from capitalist surrealism in order to short-circuit the one-way communication of established brands and declaim the independence of the individual voice (Visconti, et. al, pg. 120) In the battle over public space, all art has its own individual significance to the collective good of the community. Riggle writes, These are shared spaces, ignored spaces, practical spaces, conflicted

spaces, and political spaces; however the devi@nt street artists do not have a limited canvass and are not confined to one approved or commissioned area (pg. 249). These artists speak freely in opposition to the transactions of everyday life because their motivation is not the product, but the experience of creating (Exit Through the Gift Shop, 2010). Devi@nt street artists in Berlin swing from scaffolds to articulate their messages to the world. The experience of creating art is individual, but the impact is collective. As a result, most pieces need not be placed in a gallery, reviewed by a critic or blessed by the art world to be appreciated as art (Riggle, pg. 246). And as a pe@ceful reminder that it is not the absence of war that defines peace, but the illusion of division, in the words of one deviant artist: The limit does not extend between the top and bottom, but between you and me. Deviant streets artists have established an important dialogue responding to the actions of structure and commercialism. As a result, street artists have the capacity to foster community and getting parties in conflict to talk and work with one another is a good starting point for any peace maker (Vogl, 2007, pg. 46).

Figure 9: The limit does not extend between the top and bottom but between you and me.

Shall it be the Art of War, or shall it be the art of Pe@ce? Berlin has seen the best and the worst. It has been divided by Walls and by political ideologies, conflicted with confusing definitions of war and pe@ce. It is not the actors in this battle, those who emerge in the day and those who scurry about at night, who are in opposition with each other; rather, it is about the competing definitions for peace: peace as the absence of war and pe@ce as a term of presence (Polat, 2010). How could it be that Many of the buildings that survived the war didnt survive the peace (Ladd, 1997, pg. 37) if peace was the real and not surreal objective? For even Ralph Waldo Emerson predicted the events of the Berlin Wall by claiming that murder will speak out of stone walls and arguing that pe@ce will never be brought about by passive actors and cowards (Harvard Divinity School, 1838). The objective of devi@nt artists is to continue the conversation started on the West side of the Wall by any means necessary, promoting images of pe@ce from the highest buildings to the marble walls of business districts.

To these artists, the memory that even in the absence of physical violence of war if Walls, barriers, and limits exist within a given community war is still present. The more devi@nt street art challenges the structure, the more pressure the community places on the structure to change along with the growing trend. The fact of the matter is that getting from todays violence to tomorrows serenity requires creativity, imagination, collaboration, and understandingabstract qualities that the arts are so good at developing and nurturing (Vogl, 2007, pg. 47). The first step in the art of pe@ce, as depicted by one street artist, is bringing the very term into the conversation: Peace, mo money, Amen (See Figure 10).

Figure 10: Peace, mo money, Amen.

Bibliography Borghini, S., Visconti, L., Anderson, L., and Sherry, J. (2010). Symbiotic Postures of Commercial Advertising and Street Art. Journal of Advertising. Ladd, B. (1997). The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago.

Polat, N. (2010). Peace as War. Alternatives. Riggle, N. (2010). Street Art: The Transfiguration of the Commonplaces. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Till, K. (2005). The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place. University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis. Visconti, L., Sherry, J., Borghini, S., Anderson, L. (2011). Street Art, Sweet Art? Reclaiming the Public in Public Place. The University of Chicago Press and Journal of Consumer Research Inc. Exit Through the Gift Shop. (2010).