Palasttransfer
Fred Rubin, artist*
Berlin, 2003 - 2005
While a large Palace disappears, a small Palace will emerge! Instead of: ‘Let’s move, we need to go backwards?’ We are in possession of the insignia of a state that has vomited its intestines onto the street in large chunks. What can we do? We can either drop it and accept its destruction or, like a jeweller, create a new mould for the surviving remains – one might say, to form pleasant and sophisticated signs so that old fragments will become new structures.
If a society abandons objects, they can be reassessed and re-valued. Previously accepted scales and criteria themselves will undergo a process of questioning and shifting.
*The Berlin sculptor Fred Rubin has dealt with the Palace of the Republic in previous works. In the year of the planned demolition, Rubin plans to reassemble a transferred and transformed Palace in the southern French city of Bandol: a pavilion that makes use of found bronze-glass elements that had originally been manufactured to replace broken glass of the building.
