Nostalgia for Babylon
All culture is a struggle with oblivion.
(Jan Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory, 2006)
(Jan Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory, 2006)
Definitions:
Nostalgia
- More than just selective memory, but rather critical engagement with the past (Sprengler, Boym, Todorova), or desire-driven mobilizations of the past
- Different than Ostalgie (nostalgia for the former East) and Westalgie (nostalgia for the former West)
- Scholarship on nostalgia: Janet Ward is one of the few Berlin-scholars who acknowledge a different type of nostalgia that goes beyond Ostalgie and Westalgie, but her discussion of it is limited to one documentary film reference:
"[There is] nostalgia for the unformed spaces left behind by the dismantled Wall and before that, the war: for example, in Samira Gloor-Fadel’s documentary film of 1998, Berlin-Cinema (an overt homage to Wenders’ vision of Berlin) we are shown immediate Wende footage of children playing along the spaces of the voided Mauerstreifen, the ruined landscape where the Wall used to be" (Janet Ward. Post-Wall Berlin: Borders, Space and Identity, 2011, p.134). - To be nostalgic for Babylon is an interesting paradox (which can be traced in all the films I selected as case studies). But I believe it is a helpful paradox - it allows us to unpack and understand the complexity of the forces of destruction and creativity in post-Wall Berlin.
Babylon
- Ancient city in Mesopotamia (now Iraq), famous for its Hanging Gardens, the Tower of Babel, and the Ishtar Gates
- The Ishtar Gate of Babylon from 575 BC, excavated between 1899 and 1917 and installed in Berlin’s Pergamon Museum by 1930
- References to Berlin as the modern Babylon in Weimar culture (connotation of hedonism, decadence, questionable morality)
- Hubertus Siegert gave “Berlin Babylon” a whole new meaning in the context of post-reunification Berlin’s gradual filling of its voids and no-man’s-lands in the aftermath of the Cold War.
- Building on Siegert’s metaphor of “Berlin Babylon” as a contested place of demolition and (re)construction, architectural and historical debates, as well as identity debates, my project re-examines Hubertus Siegert’s film in relation to five other Berlin documentaries that also engage with questions of contested spaces and identity, and have either literal, aesthetic, or thematic references to Siegert’s film.
- "Berlin Bablyon" - metaphor for pre-gentrified Berlin of the 1990s, city of voids (Huyssen), and Baustelle (construction site) as referenced in films such as Das Leben ist eine Baustelle (1997) and the ad-campaign "Schaustelle Berlin"
Argument:
The significance of Babylon in Berlin connotes both the ephemerality of time and historical epochs, as well as the vibrancy of cultural heritage, made even more luminous when viewed through the lens of nostalgia. What becomes apparent in my analysis of contemporary Berlin documentary films, is that a different type of nostalgic expression has emerged within Berlin culture, a nostalgia that transcends Ostalgie and Westalgie; nostalgia not for a unity, or community, or a search for “Mitte” that was so significant throughout the 1990s, but a nostalgia for “Berlin Babylon,” i.e. a different kind of projected nostalgia for the yet-unclaimed voids of un-gentrified post-reunification Berlin that Siegert made a point of documenting in the late 1990s. In a way, it is nostalgia for emptiness that once upon a time was problematic in itself.
Case Studies:
- Berlin Babylon. Dir. Siegert, Hubertus. Philip-Gröning-Filmproduktion, 2001.
- In Berlin. Dir. Michael Ballhaus and Ciro Cappellari. ARTE, Cine Plus RBB, 2009.
- Cycling the Frame (1988) and The Invisible Frame. Dir. Cynthia Beatt, Icarus Films, 2009.
- Der Weg, den wir nicht zusammen gehen, (The path we do not walk together) shortfilm in Deutschland 09: 13 kurze Filme zur Lage der Nation. Dir. Fatih Akin, Wolfgang Becker, etc. Herbstfilm Producktion, 2009.
- Mauerpark. Dir. Dennis Karsten. Filmblut Productions, 2011.
Theoretical Frameworks:
Film Theory
Christian Keathley describes “cinephiliac moments” (borrowed from Paul Willemen) as a lingering on filmic moments for the sake of the pleasure it provides, but also to arrest, to freeze the fleeting moment on the screen (especially before the digitalization of the medium) against the unyielding passage of time. These moments result in what he terms the “auratic quality” (21) and have the "ability to function like an archive of reflexive history, and to carry the past into the future” (129-132).
I believe there is a way of reading Keathley's cinephiliac moments as akin to nostalgic moments in film. Thus, cinephiliac moments can be found in all documentary films I selected as my case studies. In Berlin's protagonist Peter Schneider's romanticizes several abandoned spaces in the New Berlin (abandoned train tracks, former voids at Potsdamer Platz, NSA Fieldstation at Teufelsberg); Dominik Graf’s use of light as the evening sun casts a glow over a brick wall in Berlin; Cynthia Beatt’s contemplation of the cut-off train tracks ending in a void and her protagonist's contemplation about the disappearance of historical traces of the Wall; and Dennis Karsten’s morning and evening shots of Mauerpark which is threatened by over-gentrification and disappearance.
I believe there is a way of reading Keathley's cinephiliac moments as akin to nostalgic moments in film. Thus, cinephiliac moments can be found in all documentary films I selected as my case studies. In Berlin's protagonist Peter Schneider's romanticizes several abandoned spaces in the New Berlin (abandoned train tracks, former voids at Potsdamer Platz, NSA Fieldstation at Teufelsberg); Dominik Graf’s use of light as the evening sun casts a glow over a brick wall in Berlin; Cynthia Beatt’s contemplation of the cut-off train tracks ending in a void and her protagonist's contemplation about the disappearance of historical traces of the Wall; and Dennis Karsten’s morning and evening shots of Mauerpark which is threatened by over-gentrification and disappearance.
Nostalgia Theory
Some scholars have described nostalgia as “history without guilt,” but recent scholarship of nostalgia widens its signification. Svetlana Boym accurately observed that “unreflected nostalgia breeds monsters” because the danger of nostalgia lies in the “promise to rebuild the ideal home that lies at the core of many powerful ideologies of today, tempting us to relinquish critical thinking for emotional bonding” (Boym xvi). The engagement with nostalgia in contemporary Berlin is different, in that one can observe a productive relationship between critical thinking and engagement with nostalgia.
Malcolm Chase and Christopher Shaw argued that,
"Some cultural critics have identified the whole experience of postmodernity as a kind of macro-nostalgia. There is no space which we authentically occupy, and so popular culture fills the gap by manufacturing images of home and rootlessness: however persuasive, the attempt must be doomed to failure by its sheer eclecticism, for if we could be as much at home here or there or anywhere else, can the place in question really be home?" (Chase and Shaw 15).
What I call Nostalgia for Babylon is a filmic response not only to the transformation, gentrification, commemorative urban practices and projects, but also to the active branding of contemporary Berlin.
Malcolm Chase and Christopher Shaw argued that,
"Some cultural critics have identified the whole experience of postmodernity as a kind of macro-nostalgia. There is no space which we authentically occupy, and so popular culture fills the gap by manufacturing images of home and rootlessness: however persuasive, the attempt must be doomed to failure by its sheer eclecticism, for if we could be as much at home here or there or anywhere else, can the place in question really be home?" (Chase and Shaw 15).
What I call Nostalgia for Babylon is a filmic response not only to the transformation, gentrification, commemorative urban practices and projects, but also to the active branding of contemporary Berlin.
Summary:
Nostalgia for Babylon simultaneously connotes:
- projected nostalgia
- nostalgia for the future (Boym)
- a cinematic moment that provokes an emotional or critical engagement with the past (Keathley)
- a contemplation of the technological changes in the medium of story-telling and film-making
- self-reflection in narrative and identity constructions
- engagement with the constructedness of the narrative or medium
- and a self-referential branding of the constructed narrative
In contemporary Berlin, nostalgia is expressed through referents and signifiers of Berlin of the 1990s (Tacheles, Tresor, techno, no-man’s-lands, death strips, the Wall, construction sites, abandoned and dilapidated buildings, scaffolding and construction cranes), which has been replaced by the gentrified, re-branded, “(no longer so) poor, but sexy” New Berlin, conceptualized by urban marketing, advertising, and branding specialists. My interest in nostalgia as a frame of cultural analysis is ultimately linked to Berlin’s search for post-reunification identity that goes beyond oppositional identifications of Ostalgie and Westalgie. It is becoming increasingly clear that what is being constructed or renegotiated in Berlin is a collective Berlin identity (what Boyer calls “future-determination”). And there is no real way of constructing a future identity without understanding, de-constructing, and working through nostalgia.
Conclusion:
What does it mean to have this type of nostalgia manifested in Berlin culture and documentary films?
- Nostalgia emerges as a reaction to Berlin's branding project
- Nostalgia not focused on the past, but on the process
- Staging of obsolescence
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