I remember how in the mid 90's, me

and friends would walk around Berlin’s

wastelands, the empty lots and gaps that

often appeared just in between buildings.

 

 

Sometimes I went to the flea market

next to Tacheles to trade Super Nintendo and

later, Playstation games.

 

 

It was the time when they just began to build

the new Potsdamer Platz. The city was still full

of wastelands then.

 

 

Now the last wastelands are disappearing one

by one and a commercial, non-consensual and

new oppressive architecture is taking their place.

 

 

Maybe it started when the German government

relocated from Bonn to Berlin.

 

 

Lützowplatz, which during the summer used to

turn into an amusement park, now belongs to

the conservative party and other political

institutions have their headquarters there, too.

 

 

In Mitte, in Prenzlauer Berg and so on, a lot of the

smaller empty lots are fenced already, while others

are still used by alternative initiatives, car-salesmen,

garages and so on.

 

 

It's difficult to still find a

wasteland without a fence or function attached.

 

 

This is a document of the current state of the

wastelands which will soon pass.

 

 

As for now, they still evoke a level of

that old emptiness.

 

 

But all those gaps I knew will

fade soon. And the city will become

hermetical.

 

 

It used to be these 'anti-spaces' where we learned to think

outside the box.

 

 

To navigate a city is to move through straight canals.

The wasteland used to be a moment of irritation within the

city, like a pause, a blink or a cut.

 

 

The wasteland is the liberation from prescribed

and defined spaces. Located in between an 'after'

and a 'before', the wasteland talks about

beginnings and ends, void and matter.

 

Die Installation Zeit der letzten Brachen von Lars Preisser basiert auf seinem persönlichen Archiv von Berliner Brachflächen, das er auf 16mm Filmmaterial festgehalten hat.