 We're all ready. Good afternoon. As I was saying, let's proceed with the fourth round table Today it's the 85th anniversary that my uncle Manel survived an explosion of a truck full of explosives in Flat in Balmes street 11 number 11. So for me, it's a very important day And we're gonna talk about The memory which is in construction memory and citizens and to talk about that we have forest speakers Experts on the topic that will provide us with their vision. I'm gonna introduce them As you can see them But they are gonna move in order to be next to the computer and be able to go through their Presentation they will have 20 minutes for their initial presentation And let's see if we have time in the end for a Q&A session Probably the audience will have questions or remarks first of all we have Kay Hain He is a tourist operation manager at Berlin on the world's Association It is an Association preserving the memory of underground Berlin they organize guided tours to the underground Berlin since They and they have been doing that for decades so they have a long experience Peppa Pasquale She's an archaeologist at the archaeology section of valentia city council She has participated in all processes of Preservation and some time posting sign posting of memory places in the city So she's gonna tell about this initiative just a Maria Contel Journalist historian probably most of you know him as he has been Person working on memory issues particularly in the Gracia neighborhood and shelters he Was one of the persons that discovered the shelter at the Generalitat palace in the government of Catalonia, and he's the author of several publications and Next to me. We have a Daniela Maruca. He's Italian, but he lives in Berlin And he is the director of the wordly collection It's an art center located in an old telecommunications bunker in Berlin And he's gonna tell us about the different uses we can give to memory places We will follow the order you have in the program. So okay, we'll have the floor first This is why he's sitting by the computers. Okay, the floor is yours for this nice and so the action Before I start a few words, I'm very happy to be here. There's the last two days have been very informative Educated for me and so therefore I'm a little bit nervous because I speak of so much experts here Yeah, but let's come to the Berlin under Welton, which I'm standing here for Berlin Underworlds I guess you see that we try to play a little bit with the myth of underworld and what's come with the theme even from the Antique times. Yeah But before we go to the underworld Let's speak a little bit about Berlin, which is my theme our theme we've heard a lot about Barcelona and The shelters have been built here If I'm doing my speech Mixing up the words bunker and sheltered me the thing is in German bunker is an enforced building Doesn't have to have a weapon on that every other thing we called house Luftschutz Keller Luftschutz deckungsgraben something like that, but not a bunker therefore, I'm sorry, okay, and so Those who have listened to V-Land yesterday. He told you that Pre-war they have been not nearly nothing built as shelters and then after the first air raids Over Berlin there was this order from Hitler Everybody's in a dictatorship. Everybody's waiting for the big boss to make decisions And so the furas of thought program for the Reichstag I'm sorry for this nice German words. It's Yeah, the leaders Immediately programmed to build bunkers in Berlin and it was especially for Berlin and about 1,000 Bunkers Reinforced concrete buildings have been planned As far as we know about 628 we have proved that they have been built And We expect that not more than 800 has been built in this program And this program was heavily forced to build very fast and Therefore they tried to use existing structures like one I will talk about later or they built whole new bunkers First they started under the ground and then they noticed under the ground digging is very difficult and it's cheaper to build over the ground and There's one thing about you have to know about Berlin Berlin. It's Standing on sand and water So if you go to the Brandenburg gate, which you have at least seen all of you and then dig a hole after two and a half meters You're standing in the ground water even today with this bad Climate situation and the lack of rain Anyway, you can't dig a hole there because of the American embassy, but that's another thing So That's the thing we talk about and we and Germany and so they try to build this as efficient as possible So what they did is they try to use underground structures selects Existing at this moment or they built type bunkers So they had architects have nothing else to do then to invent types of bunkers. There's a special Ideas with smaller or bigger rooms with one two four five levels Bunkers especially for the for the for the railroad passengers bunkers for Companies and so on and so on Yeah, that's oh we had even operation surgery bunkers we have 25 have been planned in Berlin for 15 have been built And if you look today for these bunkers you will notice that many many of them are not existing and more Because about 80% of them have been destroyed Because Berlin like I guess, you know was after the war Occupied by four alleys and then later than divided in East and West and In Potsdam, they made the decision Germany must be D militarized and If you have a bunker you have the ability to protect yourself against an air raid So you can't come to the conclusion or can drop bombs on my neighbor and so I said, okay We destroyed the bunker so the Germans won't drop bombs on the neighbors anymore And that's the reason about 80% of the bunkers in Berlin have been destroyed But Berlin was the only city which they did that in other German cities. They're still accessing till today So and the city of Bremerhaven actually today they have these old World War two bunkers They're still there and they could about shelter about 25% of the people with these old bunkers but anyway That's the reason why don't find so much of them anymore and Then there was a time of writing the city Especially the western part used these bunkers we land had to show you one of those uses I like to use them as a storage facility for the Berlin Senate reserve And then came the 1900s the year 1989 the wall was falling down 1990 Berlin and Germany was reunited and then a lot of spaces which have been prohibited to go there were open and I can assure you I have lived there in this time when it was 14 when the unification was there It was a time of great freedom. It's like a little bit of anarchy If you look back today, so you could do a lot of things which you couldn't do anymore today Mostly thanks to the police and So one thing I forgot sorry Once they're back doing the war everybody who had a house Was Forced to have a house lift its killer Shelter in the house. This picture actually is from the anti-war museum in Berlin. I take this from my colleagues there They have a very good and very powerful exhibition about not to go to the war in Berlin Nobody knows exactly how many of these bunk shelters. Sorry. This is a shelter Had been existing We calculate more than hundred thousand have been there in the houses But because of the gentrification and the remodernization of houses, they're not existing anymore Perhaps you find one or two actually in my house in Neukönig's still the door at least is there Okay, good. So let's come to the association in the early night. Sorry. Yes to make a microphone in the early 90s A few guys and girls even girls have been there at this moment They're researching underground structures not only from the Nazi time but even from the times before for from the Weimar Republic time or from the Kaiser Weichter and a lot of cellars basements I don't know if you heard about this Techno club treasure Okay Was one of the famous clubs in the city Actually, the room was smaller than this one the ceiling was slight and slow Deeper than this one here and about 250 lock 300 people dancing inside was a nice time this was the old resort from the from the Kaufa's Wehrtime and it was next to the wall. So nobody was going inside between 1960 run in 1989 and so this was this was a time when these kind of places where we discovered and my colleagues have been there and They always see each other or see traces of each other And so then they connect together and then they made an association in 1997 to research and to protect because in the middle of the 90s Berlin became the capital and Parliament seat of Germany and then they start to build especially in the city areas and now all these old stuff should be gone away because it's in the way for new buildings and There is something about Berlin. Unfortunately, it's still to till today. We try to not use our memory In Berlin some White sometimes at one point says Berlin is the city who is doomed to always to will be but not to be and So we try always to be something But we don't look back and see okay. That's where we are and so that's was the main reason for my colleagues to found a station to Change the mind of the city and to hold the memory Something that we learned even do to on his ways The nearly the first reaction from the government of Berlin was oh, they're just a bunch of bunker kissing and concrete loving Criminals who try to enter Hitler's bunker? Hitler's bunkers not existing anymore. Anyway so It took us about 25 years But now at least parts of the government see that we try that we really do in a hopefully a good job And many many things we do in the underground especially the research and the protecting Services is a volunteer work So it's people who like to do this and who are craving to hold our memory intact Doing our research we had visit members that's They do see that you do you see the last lines in 2020 22 Okay, so that's a number of our members So about 500 people more or less in the last years doing many many of the work But we do even work in that in the association because we're making We're making Experts making Speeches about certain themes and since the pandemic we even streamed that so you can find us on YouTube on this point and that's what we do and The main part and thing we do and that's what I do since more than 20 years now Is we're doing tourists tourists for tourists for Berliners everybody would like to come to us and So what do you see here is a number of visitors who have come to us in the last 25 years in a background in the background you see the tunnel of one of these Subways should have been built under the Under the tear garden for the Germania plan for Hitler and spare. That's another thing We can talk about one and a half hour So you see the pandemic hits us a little bit At this point, but now we are back to a point where we can work secure safe and where we can get Cash money for our projects. So we don't do that for a pocket We do that to yeah to bring it back to the bunkers and to the shelters and to the tunnels everything we have Doing this work, we even discover sometimes interesting things some things Long forgotten for many people in Berlin or you see here These drawers you see a so-called adrema draws adrema is a German short We have long words with nice abbreviations address adresier machine address machine and on these cards as a zinc metal plates where the names and addresses of the employees from a company as in this case a telefunken in temple of next to the temple of harbour not not to mix with the temple of airport and About 15,000 cards about three and a half thousand had the names of the slave laborers who were forced to work for telephone doing the war between the 41 and 45 and Doing the war more than 300,000 people have been forced to work in Berlin and every imaginable way from Building bunkers to being the nanny for some SS men and More than thousand camps for these people had been existing in the city and if you go today You find nearly no traces and so in between 2003 and 2012 we even had a theater group playing a project playing in our bunker in one of our bunkers and trying to We imagine and to relive these the faith of these people and The most who are played there were young people most of them was my In Germany called them migrations from the ground as so people who are migrating or their parents have been migrating or grandparents in this case To Berlin so it was part of our you can say community work in that and even to yet to hold the memory Today, there's actually a memorial for these people in Schöneweide. That's even that's Partly, I hope because of our work Because of publicity we're being in that Another thing is that we lose our heritage since the beginning Sometimes the only thing that my colleagues could do is go in these bunkers go in the shelters Making at least pictures making the research like you do as an archology Sorry, that's a word and can't kind of spell in English like Archologous and And then these are gun this example here at the Alexanderplatz, which is it's an interesting thing It can do in half an hour to about that It's still existing but it won't be existing in three years because then they will build a new apartment block It's correct me, but it's 55 meters. No 50 50 levels high about that No, not 50 34 34 35 levels But anyway in high really high building at the Alexanderplatz everything will be Build up, so that's what he's an interesting thing is what you see you have different layers just on these five pictures You have different layers of history The first on the on the left side is coming from in a cellar from the Nazi time Then level down is and the door you see coming from World War two from 1940 1941 when the bunker was Should have shelter three and a half thousand people We have about 10 to 15 thousand inside at the end of the war and then you see the upper right picture This is our the preparation of the GDR in the 1960s when you try to reuse the bunker Which should then stop they didn't know because all the materials are gone All deductive men so we only have the structures and we will lose the structures And this is just one an example of what we're trying to do in the meantime the 3d technology is so well that we Have a company here in Berlin in Berlin This making laser scans of all the structures. We have at least access to so at least we can save this data for future users and we Actually, we are trying to develop and small exhibition about lost places in Berlin And yeah, let's come at the end to our news project Which we really started last year and Dresden a Strasse in Billen Mitte and So it was originally designed at which I'll show you some sketches and in a second it was originally designed to be a subway tunnel It started they started to build that in 1930. They finished it in 1913. They started 1930. They finished First at here at the moment you see okay, do you need really 17 years to build one small tunnel about for 500 meters long No, but you're in Berlin Some do you have our airport? Always the same Then in 1941-43 we're most part of that was made in a shelter After the war Berlin was divided and this tunnel goes from Berlin Mitte to Berlin-Kreuzberg Kreuzberg was American sector West Berlin Mitte East Berlin Soviet sector so it was became part of the Berlin Wall and Then the station we lost the station in 2015 And I will tell you in a second why which is in very odd reason and then 2022 so last year we got a chance to enlist the building as an heritage and to get an Contract to use the building because it's still and it's it's part of this governmental owned buildings under the ground under the streets Come on. Oh, yeah, so now we have here the plan of that Could talk for hours about that, but just for short you see the blue lines That's the part which we lost now. But this was originally designed to be a station This was not built because the big Wehrtime Calf house Shopping shopping say it's shopping center and spend a lot of money to get the The station from the blue point to the cross you see in the middle the Moritz plots So they just to change the plan for the calf house The red lines you see are the the border between East and West Berlin just to give an orientation and and the green lines showing this part of the structure which was a little at a Built to shelter in a second place. Okay. Yeah, okay. I'll try to And I don't know if you see that but there's an on the on the lower part. There is a small Lilac line. Did you see that? Yeah, remember that for later So that's the building we lost the station Oranian Straße Oranian Platz This was built and you see even then by Alfred Grenander. He was no by Peter Birans The main architect of the AG which was a big company in Berlin which even built this line or the first part of the line Because it was not used as a station. It was then used as an electric supply from the public Electric company and then in 2015 it was destroyed and filled with concrete and the reason is or they calculated the roof Could not take any more two trucks with 30 tons each of them So it means what the government wanted is that a tank a German tank could go over this bunker Don't know if that's really needed today But that's the reason why they destroy that and even when we ask them not to do We will try to get the money to reinforce the building. They said no, we want to get rip of that and That's the thinking we have to work on that in Berlin Okay, and then Yeah, just a few pictures They are not so clear because we are still trying to to clean the mass inside, but here a few pictures Of the interior if you look closely you see there's a lot of water inside Or at least to be to be honest at wars. So that's what we do in the last Few months to bring out the water bring out debris bring in the archaeologists to research the whole thing You see my colleagues on working in the background You see the tunnel from the u8 and the connection and you see we're cleaning everything out What you see is even a lot of tax and graffiti on there. That's a big problem for us in this bunker We will try to Get rid of a few of them, but we can't take everything away. We will document them at least as pictures and Even that's a layer of history which is there and so therefore we will leave some of them We will leave there others we've taken away because we need the layers behind that And oh, yeah You remember the lilac line. That's the last part of Berlin Wall still standing in place intact Unfortunately, and we don't know exactly when about 2010 to 2012 somebody tried to pick a hole inside Don't come very far because there's some a steel plate behind it On the other on the left picture. Yes, perhaps you can see that There is an wooden stick and connected with that is wire Signal wires and they were put on the wall and so the the soldiers should get a signal if somebody tried to go through this wall So the iconologist had been there have been saved everything and we will try to reconstruct that in place and Later and show so that's what we do our most things we do is tourists are like tourists in the cold war bunkers Tourists in the first tunnel ever built in Berlin We even built new tunnels to show the people escape tunnels when people trying to build tunnels under the wall To escape from east to west so we even built a new tunnel You spend a lot of money from it and We even do some other things we even may pay for excavations and the home both time You see this old picture is and bull Statue of a bull which was standing there since the late 19th century In the wall in the war in the last days of the war it was destroyed and then forgotten and then one of my colleagues come to an article and then in a local newspaper and then we start the research and then we found it and now we have it and the the Some people in the in the garden ball um, so the authorities for the park don't really like the idea that we Have a statue that perhaps should be in the park again So we still have a few discussions about that, but that's what we do Yeah, thanks So hola mona tarda Moltes gracias for coming Dharma. Hello. Good afternoon, and thank you for inviting me. I like Barcelona very much My name is Daniela Maruca, and I'm very happy to be here Representing the foil a collection, which is a private museum in Berlin so you can imagine that we we zoom in from the globe into Berlin and actually the area in which the Museum of the foil a collection is located is very close to the Berlin Story bunker you heard about yesterday. It's does the area of Canal which is called land via canal, which is actually quite important as an area for in former bunkers of The rice ban of the railway system from our World War two Um But before I start I want to say something very quickly It's actually very unusual for us to talk about the building from the viewpoint of its history as a bunker because in the first place the furler collection is a museum with a very very special collection by desi refoyella and with pieces juxtaposed with each other from Khmeas sculptures from the 7th to the 13th century imperial Chinese furniture from the Han dynasty 200 BC until the early Chin dynasty early 17th century International contemporary art and actually it's a total artwork. So it's the first time that we really go deeper into The history of the building and we do it with you. I'm very happy that we can do it together in this context Which is academic and very Very multi-layered Um, so now I have I Yes, so desi refoyella and Sarah pooch founded the foyer collection in 2016 and Ever since that moment in the Berlin art landscape Something very unusual has been added And a place a museum where the art pieces are not described academically but an experience of art in the space including the space of the bunker creates a very meditative and very unique Gesamtkunstwerk total artwork and performative approach The pieces come from the collection the private collection of desi refoyella. You see him on the left and He has been working for decades on Putting together not only the single pieces but a very complex system of Emotive and aesthetic Emotional and aesthetic connections between times and regions of the world Breaking with some of the More Established rules in our history to offer a new perspective and to on on ancient and contemporary art and to offer to the people the chance to Discover their own approach to pieces which are coming from his private collection But then in the moment in which they are make it made Accessible thanks to the initiative with Sarah pooch his wife to open parts of the collection to the public Then they discover the public discovers their own approach towards the pieces without interference The building is very impressive but as I heard also from the other presentation and you as you all heard Collectively bunkers in a city like Berlin are charged with a lot of Expectations memories there's a special aura around them and In fact for the bunker of the Faire la collection this is Only partially true because many Berliners who come to us for the first time they say well We pass every day on this street, but we never saw this building So it is a bunker Because as my colleague explained before bunker in German Doesn't refer to the function of a shelter for people but to the Architectural and engineering stick structure how the building is built So it is classically a bunker because it has the ceiling is 3.5 meters thick is steel concrete the outer walls are 2.5 meters thick it's still concrete and it develops in two Floors under the ground. There's a first lower ground floor and a second lower ground floor and It was created to stand against attacks But it's not a shelter for people. It was not built as a shelter for people and In fact, it was not chosen as a seat for the Faire la collection Because it is a bunker because the founders and especially Desiree foiella in in his vision was open to any kind of building and also not only looking for it in the city of Berlin Parallely he declared in many interviews. He was looking in Istanbul in Venice He would have also Been maybe interested in a factory building or in an abandoned ship or in a monastery He said in a palazzo in Venice so he was not looking for a bunker because of the fascination of the bunker as a building because of the history of the building but because of the Sculptural nature of this and in this picture. You can see it very well. It looks like a sculpture by Donald Judd it looks like a sculpture by the most iconic conceptual minimalistic art artists of the 20th century and And then it has also another characteristic, which is very different from other shelters These are historical pictures you can find on Google. It's how it looked before the restoration This is how it looks now This is how it looked before the restoration. This is how it looks now This is a garden on the roof now I will tell you everything about this because now the bunker or although it's keeping its characteristics on it is steric on the historical and architectural Surface it became Living organism and a green building and I will tell you everything about it. But what I want to say is This is the uniqueness of this kind of bunker a bazaar Bunker, which is a Banzebs Anschluss and Lager. It's a self-connecting device communication device of the railway system, which was very unique. It was developed actually by Siemens very early and it was one of the very special things the Rice Bank could count on in managing the communications within the railway system in north West in northeast Germany and There were four of these bunkers with this kind of devices One was in Berlin and was the most important one, but then it was a new Nuremberg Munich and Cologne and So it's not small Rooms and low ceilings Which is what normally we would expect is very high ceiling from 3.5 to 4 meters high and very large generous rooms So it's actually a sculpture from the outside It has many sculptures inside as you see if you look at the columns and it has a lot of space to Give to the art pieces space and when I had the honor to meet this couple and It was the the year 2013 the first time I was so impressed by the fact that Although it was not yet looking like you see in this picture It was very clear for Desiree Foyerle how it will look and it was very clear that He had for this building a very special dream. I Now go back to one aspect which I would say for the building itself We also started talking about this very recently before we didn't do is very important Apollo magazine in 2016 wrote something very nice they said The work by Desiree Foyerle and John Pauson the architect who helped and worked with him on the adaptation of the bill of the building to the new function brought a Meditative element into a building which was actually built for the hysteria of war and it became something completely Different indeed it is not only different Because of the content we will see in a few seconds, but it's really it became a living animal it's actually a building with a heart made of water with Head made of grass of the most sophisticated and most natural grass there is a North Sea grass And it has walls which are breathing the temperature in rhythm of six weeks in and out and many living organs So you all see them schematically in this graphic that I prepared But I will tell you more in the into detail, but anyways it became a living Body and in this living body there are incredible pieces of art Sometimes I have this yeah, so About the concept and I try to be quicker because I know we don't have time People enter the building they don't know what is going to happen to them They are asked to abandon their mobile phones because one of the ideas behind the Foyerle collection from the beginning Is that it's a mobile detox zone? It's also very difficult to have a connection there, of course, but it's basically Also nice that you don't look into the screen of your mobile. They go first of all down They suddenly find a very little door and then when they enter in this door through this door It's completely dark. They are for two minutes and 40 seconds in the total darkness with music by John Cage Very beautiful piece composed in 1953 for Morse Cunningham called music for piano number 20 selected by Mr. Foyerle With the many versions of it the longest one The version which is having 11 notes and as many silences people are in the darkness They listen to these sounds and they don't know what to expect They are under the earth with tons of concrete on their heads, but they're also in a dream and then when they go out they see this and they have The most sensual and synesthetic System of Khmer sculptures from the 7th to the 13th century as I said before representing Vishnu's Shiva's Apsaras goddesses Buddhas Bodhisattvas avalokiteshwaras and They have imperial Chinese furniture. What you see in the middle is an incredible piece from the Han dynasty one of the first pieces ever in the history of furniture from China and all of this is there with a Specific light design and space design and when visitors walk through the exhibition. They are performers They are not visitors of the museum. They are part of the performance The Kulisa the choreography has been designed by Mr. Foyerle with the assistance of John Paulson But actually entirely in the head of Mr. Foyerle and and then they walk through the space They discover art pieces, but nobody is telling them what they have to look at. There's there are no texts There are no labels and there are no actively guided tours But we have very nice colleagues experts on the on the on the collection with a cultural background from Asia Japanese Chinese Koreans who know everything from firsthand from their family from from their own story about the religious contents and the aesthetics around these pieces who can answer questions So one has to activate them. They passively accompany the visitors and Then here you have one of the basically one it's difficult to say what is a Favorite piece in a place like that, but I must say I have a very strong connection to this God because I have learned from Mr. Foyerle how important it was It's also very early sculpture from the 7th century is a Sun god Ariara He was both Vishnu and Shiva He has half third eye on the on the forehead and has an incredible power and behind him you have What we call the lake room the lake room is a an underground lake 2500 square meters 1000 octoleters of crystal clear water we cool it down and it's a Perfect, it's like a crystal like a like a mirror. It has been created for its beauty It was in the mind of mr. Foyerle from the beginning because that bunker has a story with water We know that on the 2nd of May 1945 two hours before the general Had given the the order to cease with that with the with the any hostility The SS destroyed a tunnel under the land via canal Which was connected to another building of the ricepan and so the water entered and in this building There was water when a mr. Foyerle and mrs. Pooch discovered the building for the first time But then it's also the water in the experiences of his life going to Cambodia going through Asia and the idea that Labyrinth of water mirrors glass shadows lights and sculptures will let everybody forget where they are lose their direction and Enter a dream where maybe they will also go back at Unexpected moments during the night or when they don't expect it and other times of their lives And we heard it a lot from people they keep on coming back So this lake also has the function you saw the blue in the graphic that I had prepared before It became the heart of the building on the energetic Or let's say clean energetic level because the water is cooled down to three degrees Underneath the water. There's a black foil Protecting a very sensitive concrete layer in the concrete layer. There are copy layers of a heat pump and By cooling down the water we attract the warmth of the earth and then we channel it up and acclimatize the whole building So from a very very very cold environment and very wet environment, which is was before now We have perfect 19 degrees 55 percent humidity constant perfect conditions for very delicate art pieces International standards museum standards even for grand pianos We know that it's exactly the same conditions to to store the most expensive pianos in the world But you also have the most beautiful art installation that you could imagine The hand I just now go through so you have an idea This is the incense room when I said synesthetic. I was not saying it by chance Synesthetic because the combination of all the senses from the olfactory sense the auto autative sense and the visual sense and when we have events also the taste but also then the Optic the tactile sense because we have also meditation so you can lay down on the floor You are massaged by the gong waves when we make the gong with meditation every first Saturday in the month Well, all the senses are part of the gizamt kunzwerk of the total artwork But the center of the gizamt kunzwerk is the incense room It's it was one of the goals of of mr. Fowler when he thought together with his wife to open this museum to integrate in the West an Experience which has been super exclusive since 200 BC and actually only for emperors and high dignitaries and high monks and scholars from the Chinese court and Open it to anybody who is interested to enter this world He designed everything from the room to the table Which is a very special table maker made of African black wood to all the tools Integrated elements from the Khmer Heritage to the Chinese heritage and this very new table designed for him with him by John Pozon Which is heating the incense. Yeah, I am I will go very quick It's eating eating this in the incense. I something is not Yeah, okay These are the scenes from the incense ceremony the seed that's the table is heating the incense and you can have in very Short 50 minutes something that otherwise would that would would be two hours and a half of experience And it's the unique the only place in the world where you can do it I I go through you have an incredible naga Buddha. You have a very beautiful Anish Kapoor installation I go up Christina Iglesias Spanish artists site specific installation the most sensual bronze sculpture You can ever see you can sit around it people do it and and relax Imperial cabinets Adam Fuss Iraqi The sensual thread through the museum is omnipresent. It's the most important That people feel sensuality when they enter a place like that First temporary exhibition open last year Edmond de Val and unseen pieces from the Foyer la collection in the back You have six more bronzes from the Morn Kingdom Burma sixth century and in the front of very beautiful Elegy by Edmond de Val Who is an incredible British? Artists with a very complex European background We are starting to use the Foyer la collection for many other activities fashion shows as you can see performances we started this year with a Program of performances curated a mister by mr. Foyer including a UQ dance from the 14th century We in the middle of a context of the bunker contemporary art and ancient imperial Chinese furniture Incredibly beautiful We have the gong bath as I said every first Saturday of the month people lay down and are massaged by the gong waves and we are inviting and Welcoming many who want to have exclusive dinners there So the place is alive the energy you can breathe there is very different from What you would expect this was the last event done by Armani during the film festival And this is our team and I'm done. I just want to say one thing this This miracle in a city like Berlin, which is very important for For the contemporary art scene this miracle within this a contemporary art scene is Only possible because of the founders but also because we have an incredible team We have like artists creatives coming from China Japan Performers masters of calligraphy masters of the incense ceremony masters of the tea ceremony all together in one office We work together every day. Everybody's welcome. Please come and visit us. Thank you Hello welcome to all of you and thanks for having invited me to be part of this seminar This is the title of my presentation air-raid shelters From an ephemeral construction to an eternal memory. Why these ephemeral? construction because when shelters were built it it was something temporary it had to be for a Certain period of time war wasn't supposed to last for so long So it was easy that these got forgotten because it was built Built for something temporary, but this is gonna last or they lasted for Decades and physically In the shelter The shelter might remain or the shelters also Remain in documents in papers and this will remain forever So the first part is the war The bombing took The word to people's door because the front line was far away, but bombings came to people's door steps What were bombing bombings were planes cannons Bombings have been going on for more than 300 years against a civil population Here we were talking in Barcelona about Italian aircraft, but it could be the artillery in Madrid or other things so these aircraft will attack The population and there were dead people this was the attack on February 13 1937 and Here we could see that the people of Barcelona were ready for everything except for Bombs dropping upon them Here we can see despair Walking without a destination with everything they had on them this lady probably only the mattress and that made Society people to move the mobilize We think that we have to think that in Barcelona and here you can see the beginning of this shelter Most shelters were built by a civil society because the city of Barcelona only built 36 Cell shelters out of 1322 so the city bill Really very few Shelters it was people who built the vast majority of shelters and people organized And the building Here we can see the building of two air Great shelters in Gracia. They were built together in March 1937, but two months later They separated the people who build Shelters they divide it and now they are gonna be connected in Gracia during the civil war and According to the documents we have 32 shelters were built in Squares these were public shelters People build them so the neighbors could go down the shelter and 37 87 that belong to neighbors or two families These shelters would be the ones built in the neighborhood of Gracia and We know now that the city has divided the city in different neighborhoods So these shelters are located in what it is now a day the neighborhood of Gracia But at that time the neighborhood was bigger This is the shelter in revolution a square the health care Services were here Once the war was over We go into the second would I call the second chapter we see which is Reuniting again someone has said that the Shelters were forgotten I Think here that people who had been in shelters wanted to forget then After the war my father was sent to war when he was 17 the second day of being in the war His friend was killed. My father didn't want to talk about the war. He didn't It it's not that the Franco is I mean post that on him. It was himself that he didn't want to remember So people didn't have lots of interest in shelters and people thought well these let's turn a new live there is Writing which explains that they sent a letter to the city council saying we don't want to know anything about the shelter, but The authorities at that time said no you have to look after the shelter And it was in Democratic times when these shelters reappeared again in on October 1981 the shelter in solar square was reopened that shelter was built by the city council. It was a cellular Shelter it was never finished although may be some people and took shelter there Even if the floor was uneven the only the one that was used of this can was in Tetuana square here. We can see Shabye balls in the picture He was a councillor. He had the main role in opening this solar square Shelter in 1981 At that time No one was asking To protect these shelters and in the end that was demolished and a parking lot was built in 1994 a parking was built in revolution a square and that allowed For a shelter to be reopened here There was a certain pressure by certain associations and we managed that neighbors could visit the shelter But and people started going down in an unofficial way so When They open the access the workers left when it was night time and neighbors took the wood or the things that were closing the access and went down But the Authorities didn't change any archaeologists because they were not very interested in the shelter So it was the tell you the story of a grassy at this association who was very interested and Asked for an intervention and for the shelter to be preserved when these shelter was open at Maxon in Verdi Street the design Institute. I was allowed to go into a factory shelter And I was able to see that shelter I could access through the factory This was the entrance. I Want to show you the entrance to that shelter in that factory. I saw it that in 1994 and I asked the factory Maxon it was quite difficult to get the permit to go there and to take the picture and In 2007 I was able to take pictures inside the shelter in 1999 after Strong pressure by pilar frutos We Managed to open the shelter in the amana square. I had seen the shelter in the 60s when an Electricity transformer was put in there and I saw that there was a hole in 1990 when there were some renovations going on in the square the access to the shelter was found and in finally in 1999 The shelter was open. So here we can see the first Entrance or access that the firefighters did and pilar frutos the woman That you can see who was the person who really fostered the opening of this shelter When we knew that Parking lot was gonna be built in juanique square We insisted a lot that we had to see and and we went there and said if You are gonna start drilling Well, you might have problems So in the end we did the field work and we could find the entrance to the shelter That was in 2001 Here you can see some archaeologists that were examining some remains of rubble and Garbage to Everything was important But then we realized that there are things that can have a second life and others don't but here We were picking up everything we could find Here the walls here were stone walls in 2002 I could go down To the shelter of Elie Thalde factory that day you can see the gentleman in red He lived in the staircase giving access to the shelter and The rest are family members of a lady that granted me access to that shelter Memory Is this eternal memory we have been Asking for the protection of these shelters and We have a catalog and this catalog was updated in 1998 and we managed to include air-raid shelters under sea protection That means that before destroying it needs to be documented. We were the only Neighborhood in Barcelona having this sea protection. So we're going to try to move on with our work When the Placid Aldiaman shelter open in 2006 After some works we can see the visit on the first day to see the shelter then There were some guided tours and Finally in 2009 the Talleria Historia de Gracia will take being charge of this shelter in 2007 307 shelter was open Valerie Powell The woman who really Fought for these the protection of the shelter and the city council really mistreated her But thanks to her and now a square has her name this shelter Was made accessible to the public here We can see and with the yellow head met the mayor at that time counselor as well the Director of the History Museum of Barcelona that was the day of the opening when visits started Why have I shown the Shelter in Placid Aldiaman with visitors and here with only politician Well, some things are done almost in a hidden way and other things are made very Officially We have been fighting for a long time In Gracia neighborhood and in Pablo say neighborhood There has really been a battle and we have achieved things in other neighborhoods The intensity of this movement has been a lot less Let's go down the shelter of the Amana square in the Amana square. There are two Entrances in the surface It has mine galleries at twelve point five meters labyrinth Hundred and seventy people sit it that's the capacity and two hundred standing Here we can see the Health park It doesn't it didn't have toilets three more accesses going down This This is the shelter that We're gonna visit tomorrow afternoon if you're interested you can enroll and we will go down that shelter If we talk about this shelter from a memory perspective here, we can see these Structures that were put in place at the beginning Here we have Writings from people who experience the bombings and excerpts from the novel the Amana square We are at the street level and here we have the interpretation center where it is explained the beginning of the bombings the carriers air carry plane carriers that came from Mallorca passive defense and The shelters and the the Amana square shelter explanation. So guided tours are organized Since 2009 And here you can see this guided tours You can see 68 thousand seven hundred People visited since from 2010 till 22 We have more and more visitors and as we have seen in the German case during the pandemic the number of visitors went down and now we're going up. We haven't reached the peak of 2019 but 2022 has been a good year Students from secondary and high school Over 20,000 students have visited the shelter with the corona pandemic the number of students went down in 2020 for the first three months we received lots of students then everything stopped in 2022 we had the biggest number of students visiting the shelter In the Amana square individuals who come or a group and that's Over 40,000 people who have visited the Amana square shelter as you can see here in the graph On the right You can see When there is a drop it was because of the financial meltdown At that point the number of visitors reduced as well as with the pandemic and you can clearly see this ups and down If we talk about the shelter in revolution a square as a Space for memory the shelter is gonna Will open in August next up August and here we can see the health Part or services of the shelters These people were part of the every Army that was a reenactment And I took this picture it was part of my book Because I thought it was important to tell the story The Factory shelter that we're gonna visit tomorrow morning to it's an important shelter too because it was an industrial one and And it's Good example Even if it's a private shelter the people running the shelter or in charge of the Shelter would like to open it to the public In 2009 I Published this book At that point there were not many books Published on shelters in Barcelona Yesterday we were talking about the seminar that took place in 2009 at the museum history And in 2010 We celebrated a seminar as well About different shelters in Catalonia and we have recently Published this book Rooters de la guerra civil it's in Spanish and the Diamana Square shelter is in the book The one in to road a la rubira and to conclude a People who have visited our shelters these more than 60,000 people the Bass majority are people from Barcelona from Catalonia some from Spain and few very much And if you have questions, I'll happy to answer them Have a couple of blogs As well about Shelters in Barcelona, thank you Thank you very much to our four panelists, and I'm sorry if we have thrashed you in But I wanted to have time to reflect on what you have mentioned I think the debate on memories live debate the uses the uses the experiences generate Consequences on us I had a thousand questions and after listening to you I have a thousand more but because we don't have a lot of time I would like to give you some time if you want to Say something about what you've heard and if you don't have comments, we will open up At first I want to thanks to all of the presentation, which was very very very interesting I learned a lot in those two days and My questions go straight to the Germans Because of the difficulty of that memory this heritage, I will say and to Kai Heine my question would be To know how you deal when classes of students come because I'm history teacher and with that memory of the Germans as a victims and Which is not in the official curriculum treated like that So how is your approach and what is your we talked about yesterday? But what is your real final goal in that guidance that you do? Without or trying I don't know if you do that not just taking this position of victim is a victim and Just a comment to Maruka because as a Buddhist with Muslim roots I have found that really very interesting and how you use that space which is usually so full of pain and Put it in the darkness and if you go there your first idea is this Panic maybe and you lighten that up in a very beautiful space, but my curiosity was Who are the sponsors? You know who paid all that and Yeah, because I guess not the city hall so and who is the creator of that idea and do you follow? a movement of Buddhism or of a certain philosophy So thanks Especially this the school groups is a special Special target group if you use these words Those kids are coming for today except those are coming as and as People who escaped the war in yeah, east of us And I mean any place with it They don't have personal experience with war and not neither their parents or their grandparents so These there is what we experience is no living history oral history in the families about war and about suffering through the war and What we try to do in the tourist is how we try to Give them a whole picture which is Nice for mass because there's 90 minutes For for them and so first we have to give them the prospect of the war and What happened and we never mentioned forget who started this war and Then how it could fight back to you how it slapped back on you and What my colleagues here said the war The bombs bring the war to your home. It's a house door And that's what happened and then we try to give them the Experiences of wrong word for that but and at least a feeling of what it was to be in the bunker What it meant to be in bunkers Well, we'd not forget that this point is and we learned said that yesterday even to We are talking about bunkers shelters in Dictatorship situation in a racist situation So even that we try not to forget as to to give the that's a lot of Stuff a lot of history that the kids had to had to Take down at this point. That's we know that and after 90 minutes you can see when they go so through the door that Son again light again but what you get done back is a lot of nice emails not so much because unfortunately if you get a have a good experience you Most often you don't say it right. Thank you as a school kid But what do you have is just recently we got an A job Appliance from a girl to that now it's a woman who was With her school at ten fifteen years ago on on one of the tours and that's one of the reasons why She studied history and now she'd like to broke with us So that's this as a circle. We must create And that's what we try to do another thing. I didn't mention that before but We offer the tourists in now seven languages. So if the people from From Spanish speaking countries from the front French speaking countries from Denmark from Netherlands And they come to us with the school groups and we try to give them these Tours in their language Which is sometimes I think we have to discuss with the teachers because the teacher think okay, we go to Germany will learn German But if you want to really Experience a good tour you need to know what you hear and not to try to translate the whole time So and that's one of our aims to to to not to make it an Exclusive German experience, but we're trying to be inclusive as possible One thing we don't have a solution till now is What I mentioned was here by my last colleague the inclusion of people was Yeah With disabilities Because all the all the structures we have are you can't go inside with a wheelchair You have to we have to step down you have to step out And so we have a lot of people you unfortunately We have to exclude and we try to even to try to build up a program for these people a virtual program so they can't Find it at home and follow us through zoom conferences through the structures That's thanks for the future for us to do. We know that that's yeah Thank you Yeah, I will use now rhetorically a chiasmos to answer So I will start from the last thing he said and I will try to build up to your question So language actually plays a very important role in experiences in museums and We also Include language of course, but not in an in with an actively guided tour. So it's more the way the interaction is found between the personal company and the public which is always very unique that leads then to the explanation of what is Experience inside of the museum in case somebody needs the explanation and Inclusion plays a very big role for us as well and our way to inclusion was actually to open the Arms of a very lively Community in Berlin, which is the Asian community to people and and the content coming from Asia In a Western institution to people who might not have had the chance yet to encounter some of those aspects and To find always Not a preconceived way to answer things but to to look for the dialogue So passively Accompanying and then answering questions and then going deeper if it's needed and then performance plays a big role in inclusion as well because the body language has a power in its own right and The power of performance is also this and the whole experience is performative because of what I explained before and Then going back to the concept who is the curator of this and what is the vision coming? From which it's coming so Desiree foiella is a curator He is the collector and is a designer behind all aspects at the foiella collection as a total artwork So he's the founder of the collection itself many years before The museum in Berlin was opened starting from His childhood He was already working in an iconologic way although of course it was a spontaneous natural Economic approach approach. He was combining in his mind and his eyes and in his experience Elements from different cultures Italian art contemporary art Asian art European contemporary art with Objects objet au verre with silver with so very very diverse He started from his childhood. He traveled with his parents He discovered more and more the passion for collection for collecting and the love for Asia and then he developed his specific knowledge as a connoisseur in London at Sotheby's and in New York as Sotheby's then working for Michelle Verna then opening his own gallery in Cologne and starting to experiment as a pioneer in juxtapositions at the end of the 80s and early 90s and discovering that his soul is not only the soul of a Gallerist but more of a curator and a collector for himself for the arts and also for other collections because he was working a he's working as a consultant for international collections and His approach is synesthetic approach Which is so open and so I answer now I try to answer now the question about the religion I Would say the further collection has a spiritual deep spiritual openness to the to this very Secret and very important relations Connection in the soul of in the soul of human beings between human beings across the centuries So it's possible for somebody nowadays walking through the further collection to feel Contemporary of somebody who has created the Chamea sculptures in the seventh century all art becomes contemporary again And we are actually time travelers this because In his sensitivity since a child he didn't concentrate on the art historical elements primarily also that is important but Not primarily that but the emotional level which is making us all equal when we look at art And in this sense, I would say it's a deeply spiritual place, but not exclusively religious of one religion and And and the openness is really total so that's that's not a boundary and it's inclusive So this is the idea and Then I would like to say something answering the first question when a dream is really strong and You cannot live without doing exactly that you find a way to Create something impossible and this is what happened and it happened because of two people together because of a vision already existed and somebody who embraced completely this and opened because of Specific knowledge no because I mean I talked about one of our founders and then there's another founder Sarah Pooch Museum director for many many years in this city in Barcelona now president of the Miro Foundation in Barcelona trustee friend Art historian studying in New York the NYU working at the MoMA So a lot of knowledge together with another kind of knowledge Created the possibility. So I would say it's not a financial question. It's a question of One endless of never-ending dedication that is actually what created this place And now it's open to everyone. We're looking for partners We are happy to find partners and I think It showed with a very diverse program that there are many ways to become partners. Thank you. I think there is another question I think there was someone else. If not, I'm gonna ask a question We have five minutes left We've been talking about uses and Experiences which can be very different Emotional experience puts us on and at the same level And I would like to tell us about your experiences Where is the main debate between giving meaning or turning things into a museum? And from your personal experiences For instance someone walking by a Bunker and without noticing it or some people who didn't go back Didn't want to go back to a bunker. So I would like to you to say How do we have to what do you think about giving a new meaning? Well, it's a very complicated topic in Badalona, there is a shelter in front of the city hall that it's an exhibition place We have many petitions To access the shelter to shoot horror movies and I always refuse And I would ask a question Would we turn The opera house of Barcelona into a cemetery. Is that what we want? Or do we need for instance if a shelter is very narrow Are we gonna turn this into sewage or are we gonna use these places to explain a story I Gramoon has been mentioned a place in Catalonia in Catalonia the shelter if it had been bomb or not Agra moon was bomb because all of a sudden it become front line and That was the front line for the war and was bombed. I Think it's very difficult and we have to be cautious when We Try to change the meaning of a memory a space. We have to be very cautious so In our case, it's a bit different because it's not this space is not a public space It's a private space and the building doesn't have Per se for the population in Berlin an Active significance before the the the founding of the museum as a for your collection But I would say that Maybe I would not use the term monumentalization in this case, but I would use the second word this re Evaluation and recontestualization in in terms of one of the main Now I would say nowadays, but since many decades already main Industries in the city of Berlin, which is the art industry. So The intervention has taken out of I would say maybe the vergessen height the Yeah For get Yeah being forgotten out of this being level of being forgotten or not known and is placing this place In front of the eyes of everyone but in a very concealed and very discreet way Inside of of the main discourse or the main industry now the creative industry in Berlin open it to opening it toward the discipline So it's possible to when we have chances like this which is so great To open a new door and analyze another element. I must say if now would we didn't have the time but Actually, I prepared many other facts. I wanted to share with all of you one. I will share now historically This building could also be interpreted or be seen as a key to read some of the most complex Moments in the history of the city of Berlin because you might all know but You know Berlin was divided, but you also might know that After World War two The interpretation of property as to the properties of what was called the rice bun Was very diverse on the two sides of the city Because in the GDR they Maintained for many reasons also legal reasons In order to be able to operate with the same railway system also in West Berlin then maintain the old name rice bun, which is Actually linked also to the political situation of during the war so in all the operations that you we all know of Re-analyzing the memory of what happened during World War two keeping a name like that was quite a big Big decision they had to do it or they did it in order to maintain control and the possibility to use the net the network of The railway network in West Berlin Operative so it was a specific situation only for Berlin Basically the GDR thought that all the buildings belonging to the estate of the rice bun Even if they were not in East Germany when they were in West Berlin They belong to them and there was a discussion about this Which was very complex because it was they decided it was the Cold War with At a certain moment you it was difficult to take a position But the building has been used after The 50s for a short period of time, but it quite significant Significative as a the Nazis have it's a it's a storage of the Senate of West Berlin Although the East German government thought it was their property and they never accepted it was not their property and Rice bun existed in the East there was another Society dealing with the former heritage of the rice bun in the West of Berlin Which was trying to substitute it it through the Senate suddenly they had the authorization to use it They use it for a short period of time to have reserved the Storage of goods in order to resist during the Cold War against them So it was a it's it's like a very complex system, you know, and this building could represent this But still it's not a landmark Now it became one of the I would say Places of discussion or a re-discussion of the vision towards art For this 21st century in Berlin because it's a new access new approach a new vision It's not Negating that the rest should exist not at all and Berlin has a very complex system of museums I think you also know the Humboldt forum is an incredibly important poll of discussions positive negative around many other Aspects for art not coming from Europe and the colonialist past and so on so in all this plus all the contemporary art scene and the performance in and so on the furlough collection is using The contents to put together everything and every now and then aspects of this me of this building and its history And maybe it's possible monumentalism come out. So I would say it's a it's a floating and Organic development. Yeah Yeah Actually, I have to say you've taken a competition company of the of the game Because you you choose to not to use this as an historic place, but in an art place, which is What I've seen now, but I've never been the chance to come in. You're sold out every tomorrow We take you there So what I've seen till now from you and what I've heard from from my colleagues who have happened there is It's an impressive way to use this place and then and then and then we Way to imagine to use this kind when you when you at the moment when you've started you You said that it looks like and like a piece of land art And that's when a moment where I smile to please don't say that to the architects of the bunker Because they do that Because they don't want to go to war to the front at this moment for us a difference to using that as an art and Distance to to we learn to use that as an I cancer a real museum. They have exhibitions What we do is we try to always to Come To shelter the moment we have now we try to if there are layers from the back from the past we try to Show them and we try to to bring this place we have to As possible as near to its original Time stamp so the people could experience The past that's what we try to bring in and so on it in a way we Musa lies these so we near we go near to be a museum But this place as we have it's no museums. They're not They're speaking but you have to listen and therefore we do in tourists So we so one time every two years and that's will be in June We make in the long night of the Intervallton, so we open all the places we have and then you can go and freely and my colleagues Is just standing there and like a little bit like on your call if you ask them they will Don't stop talking, but they shouldn't So you can experience this just places by yourself But normally the normal way we try to do that is we try to Conserve them as a best way as possible and we try to explain them While you experience them while you go inside while you are there you will hear some of these structures are in the subway So you hear the subway next to you over you under you. You feel the vibration Or you're feeling trapped because you don't have any experience from the outside so that's what Well, what I think it's the experience of making a tour with us is a thing we'd like to have Thank you very much to all of us. Thank you for inviting me to share. Thank you