„Name a place, that meant something to you and that doesn’t exist as this anymore!“ asks Rebecca and my first answer is: „There are so many! Almost the whole city consists of places that don’t exist anymore and most of the places that meant something to me belong to them.“ Not just because as most of the berliners I moved countless times and I left such a meaningful place with every flat I gave up. But first of all because it seems as if  the only constant of the last 2 decades in this city was its changing.
Ongoing change is a beautiful thing about living in a big city and for a long time contrary to the naggers and nostalgists I’ve been secretly happy and curious when houses were restored or built anew and when businesses opened. I like to watch the alteration and to marvel at how much constructional change affects the impact of a place. I’ve been enthusiastic when shops opened where there hadn’t been any before. I always found the impulse of conserving old things suspicious and particularly boring.
Maybe this is due to my childhood. The first decade of my life nothing ever changed in the cityscape, apart from the permanent flaking of color of the facades that turned grey a long time before. There was Nothing that I wished for more than for the complete cleansing of the grey facades, especially the one our flat laid behind. Today this wish seems more than odd to me and it can be explained just this way: One can have too much of everything. Today I drool over every grey facade and I appreciate the beauty of this materialized history and decay just as once I’ve been beset by the inevitable impression of time at work and the depressing mood generated by the architectural standstill. And today I am bored by the predictability of the alteration and by the attempt to conserve those parts of the cityscape which have been labeled as worth it. The facades are long spick and span, almost all gaps between buildings are filled. But the meanings of these places keep changing, their accessibility changes with their functions and with the audiences that are addressed. They haven’t ceased to exist for me with their restoration but with their new-occupation. Bars become lounges, clubs become fashion boutiques, rented flats become freehold flats and gaps become hotels.
Will anybody believe me in ten years’ time that during the nineties Kollwitz-Platz in Prenzlauer Berg has been the place where the riots of the first of may used to start or that Mitte has been crawled with occupied houses and illegal bars and clubs, and none of them except Tacheles had been discovered by tourists yet?

„Ask me for places that mean something to me and that are still existing!“ I ask Rebecca and I immediately catch one: The tv-tower still exists.

text by Anita Burchardt

other places that don’t exist any longer

installation view, 159 postcards, 15 x 10,5 cm each,

Artopia Gallery, Milan, 2010.

page 2

This is a list of those who have contributed to the project with their drawings:

Chiara Agnello, Lorenzo Agnes, Marisa Agnes, Alex, Kristine Alksne, Anonimo, Juan Pablo Araya de la Taille, Alessia Armeni, Elena Arzuffi, Davide Asselta, Lisa Baumgartner, Marco Belfiore, Catherine Bertolotti, Roberto Bertolotti, Cecilia Bertoni, Alice Bescapè, Fatima Bianchi, Francesca Boffini, Laura Bòlon, Katia Bottegal, Bubbapuppibubba Creations, Benedikt Buellingen, Anita Burchardt, Helga Burchardt, Rajko Burchardt, Silvia Caglio, Camilo, Mariella Casile, Carsten, Antonio Cataldo, Lucio Cerdà, Viviana Checchia, Mercedes Coello, Giuliana Marzia Coretti, Ylenia Curotti, Donata, Daniela Ddm Di Maro, Mascia del Grande, Davide D’Elia, Luca Deni, Elise, Giulio Esposito, Neal Fellenbaum, Claudia Fellenbaum Omodei Zorini, Luca Figino, Chiara Fumai, Armida Gandini, Ettore Garlati, Gigi Garlati, Silvia Giambrone, Sabina Grasso, Patricia Grove, Alice Guareschi, Piotr Hanzelewicz, Lucy Harrison, Maria Jose Ibarrola Rivas, Philippe Jaquelet, JK, Jorge, Claudia Jung, Sara Justo Fernandez, Sylvia K, Boris Kienel, Suse Krieger, Gabriele Omar Lakhal, Leas, Lilia, Kerstin Linnartz, Federico Lupo, Bruno Luverà, Emma Luverà, Melissa Luverà, Marc Abdo Miguel, Mariavittoria, Rory Macbeth, Omar Macchiavelli, Marko Mäetamm, Fiorenza Magrotti, Matilde Martinetti, Elisabetta Matti, Alessandra Mattiazzi, Sophia Mayr, Griselda Melmann, Alfredo Meogrossi, Giovanni Mesiani Mazzacuva, Stefania Migliorati, Milena, Cristina Modolin, Armin Monsorno, Simone Morelli, Mafe Moscoso, Sotiris Nanos, Marco Navas Alvear, Ivonne Noboa, Paola Noè, Giancarlo Norese, Mariagiovanna Nuzzi, Magda Omodei Zorini, Ana Pajares Bausà, Giorgos Papadatos, Nikos Papadimitriou, Tania Patritti, Andrea Penzo, Pep, Iris Plaitakis, Matilde Pinzan, Matteo Pinzan, Laura Pidatella, Artemis Potamianou, Queen, Anteo Radovan, Diego Rosero, Roberta Rovesi, Felicia Santilli, Pelin Santilli, Claudi Schlaier, Konstanze Schmitt, Sonja Schulz, Anton Scönfeld, Vera Scönfeld, Donatella Spaziani, Natascha Stephan, Studio:Akrilico, Swantje I., Bettina Theil, Verena Theil, Ilaria Tomassoni, Gian Maria Tosatti, U.L.I., Lucia Veronesi, Koji Yamaguchi, Lisa Wade, Heidi Widmann, Sebastiàn Zabronski, Wolfgang Zandt, Catrina Zanirato, Carmen Zuleta Ferrari