OST: Architecture Conflict Occupation
Introduction
Ian Cale was born in North Yorkshire in 1970. He studied painting at the Norwich School of Art and graduated in 1991. His has had numerous solo and group exhibitions and has maintained a balance between his role as a Tutor in Fine Art and that of his own practice as a Visual Artist. His work has often explored the role of memory and its links to interior spaces.
For the past two decades his creative output has focused on documenting the visible signs of conflict in what was East Germany. This has led to a huge archive of photographs, paintings, large scale observational drawings and the collection and classification of found objects. OST: Architecture Conflict Occupation is an ongoing project that documents abandoned civilian and military locations in what was the DDR. It has become an important social document recording how individuals, the State and Germany as a whole choses to acknowledge architecture that has direct links to conflict and occupation.
Statement
Our perception of Berlin has for decades been influenced by mass media and propaganda. The city has become synonymous with the word conflict. Trashy war films continue to trivialise and glamourise war, rarely exploring the true consequences and aftermath of conflict.
Over the past decade Berlin has gone through a dramatic process of gentrification and has all but swept away the visible signs of past conflict and post war Soviet occupation. The impact of regeneration within Berlin has meant that the boundaries between East and West have become blurred and sanitised to the extent that events which occurred in the 20th century are fast becoming the stuff of history books.
However, beyond the city the ageing population and high unemployment within the regional towns and villages of what was East Germany (Deutsche Democratic Republik) has led to a slower rate of change and development. The architecture still displays scars in the form of bullet holes and extensive bomb damage. There remains an air of decay and loss, areas of wasteland punctuate the landscape. Monolithic apartment blocks with their damaged and aged facades stand opposite deserted factories overrun with fauna and foliage. Abandoned military bases lost within deep forests are slowly becoming reclaimed by nature. The evidence of their former occupants found in the form of discarded uniforms, scraps of wallpaper and photos of a loved one’s abandoned yet still pinned to the back of a door.
Ian Cale was born in North Yorkshire in 1970. He studied painting at the Norwich School of Art and graduated in 1991. His has had numerous solo and group exhibitions and has maintained a balance between his role as a Tutor in Fine Art and that of his own practice as a Visual Artist. His work has often explored the role of memory and its links to interior spaces.
For the past two decades his creative output has focused on documenting the visible signs of conflict in what was East Germany. This has led to a huge archive of photographs, paintings, large scale observational drawings and the collection and classification of found objects. OST: Architecture Conflict Occupation is an ongoing project that documents abandoned civilian and military locations in what was the DDR. It has become an important social document recording how individuals, the State and Germany as a whole choses to acknowledge architecture that has direct links to conflict and occupation.
Statement
Our perception of Berlin has for decades been influenced by mass media and propaganda. The city has become synonymous with the word conflict. Trashy war films continue to trivialise and glamourise war, rarely exploring the true consequences and aftermath of conflict.
Over the past decade Berlin has gone through a dramatic process of gentrification and has all but swept away the visible signs of past conflict and post war Soviet occupation. The impact of regeneration within Berlin has meant that the boundaries between East and West have become blurred and sanitised to the extent that events which occurred in the 20th century are fast becoming the stuff of history books.
However, beyond the city the ageing population and high unemployment within the regional towns and villages of what was East Germany (Deutsche Democratic Republik) has led to a slower rate of change and development. The architecture still displays scars in the form of bullet holes and extensive bomb damage. There remains an air of decay and loss, areas of wasteland punctuate the landscape. Monolithic apartment blocks with their damaged and aged facades stand opposite deserted factories overrun with fauna and foliage. Abandoned military bases lost within deep forests are slowly becoming reclaimed by nature. The evidence of their former occupants found in the form of discarded uniforms, scraps of wallpaper and photos of a loved one’s abandoned yet still pinned to the back of a door.