To start I want to give you a very brief history into this exhibit space from the perspective of the different uses it has taken on. It was originally built during the Second World War as a part of a 61 city wide bunker selection program made by the Nazi party. It could house 2,400 guests on any given evening and was used to show that Hitler could protect the inhabitants of the city when war struck. After the war it was a part of Eastern Berlin controlled by the GDR. During this time it was used as a P.O.W. Camp and a secure site to hold meetings where the Allies could not interfere, later it was used to store food, specifically fruits from Cuba during the Cold War, where it got its name the Banana Bunker. When the wall fell it was semi abandoned and used for rave culture and paintball fights. In 2003 the current owners bought it. The renovations took five years, which means it has only been a gallery for the past eight years. The two owners of the bunker live in a house constructed on the top of this building where they have 130 pieces from 23 different artists that they support to varying degrees. This is a treasure trove of intellectual art supported by elite ideals. It was both hard to swallow and awe inspiring all at once.

With this idea in mind I want to do some, quite possibly grotesque, surgery here and deposit a couple quotes from Georges Didi-Huberman’s piece entitled Images in Spite of All: Four Photographs From Auschwitz and just let them sit in relation to the image of a surviving Nazi bunker being used as a modern art exhibit and home.

“Images in spite of all: in spite of our own inability to look at them as they deserve; in spite of our own world, full, almost choked, with imaginary commodities.” P3

“It is troubling that a desire to snatch an image should materialize at the most indescribable moment, as it is often characterized, of the massacre of the Jews: the moment when those who assisted, stupefied, had room left for neither thought nor imagination. Time, space, gaze, thought, pathos – everything was obfuscated by the machinelike enormity of the violence produced.” P7

The pieces at this exhibit have no names, no plaques, no words to show what they are at all… Except for the guide that gives you information and a personalized interpretation on how to experience the work. The only way we know anything about these works is through our own contact and the stories of those who know better. You must not take images of any of the pieces… But you can buy books full of them at the front desk. There lingers a sense that one has gone beyond Hitler and the GDR, but that beyond only stands because of the view it looks out from which lies inside this reign. The walls look different now.