Supplement to the exhibition "Im Geschmack der Zeit: Das Werk von Hans und Marlene Poelzig aus heutiger Sicht"
by Christian Philipp Müller

3 October – 20 December 2003
Weydingerstraße 20, Berlin

11 March – 23 April 2004
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Universität
IG Farben, Frankfurt am Main

11 September – 14 November 2004
AM, Architektur Museum Basel


An image of a man clad in a black tee shirt and gesturing in front of the Klingenbergtalsperre reservoir in Sachsen designed by the architect Hans Poelzig in 1908 emanates from a videotape monitor. Clutching a microphone in one hand and carrying a large, overstuffed briefcase in the other, this same figure will preside over a twenty-minute-long architectural tour of Poelzig's structures in Poland and Germany. In relative terms, the figure of the announcer remains small throughout this intriguing excursion, especially when contrasted to the featured buildings that threaten at times to overshadow his diminutive form. Occasionally, he stops to read passages about Poelzig and the architect's creative accomplishments from several books.

The tour guide who researches the accomplishments of Poelzig is the artist Christian Philipp Müller, and the videotape is part of the latter's exhibition, "Im Geschmack der Zeit: das Werk von Hans und Marlene Poelziq aus heutiqer Sicht" (In the Taste of the Time: The Work of Hans and Marlene Poelzig from A Contemporary Perspective), recently installed in the renovated Poelzig building at Weydingerstrasse 20 on the northeast corner of the Rosa Luxemburg Platz in Berlin. The edifice was one of many designed by Poelzig in the 1920s for the plaza. The buildings were commissioned as part of a larger urban building plan (supervised by Poelzig) that sought to overhaul the former Jewish ghetto (Scheunenviertel). Although Poelzig had plans for the entire plaza, only four or five (the actual count remains unclear) of the structures were ultimately realized, including the recently renovated Babylon film theatre on the southeast corner. In 2002, Müller was commissioned by an association led by the realtors and owners of the Poelzig Babylon-Ensemble around the Rosa Luxemburg Platz to produce a work that explored the career of the Berlin born (1869) architect. However, "Im Geschmack der Zeit" goes considerably beyond the character of Poelzig, putting the architect's persona into the service of a history of the plaza and, more generally, of Germany and Europe in the twentieth century.

Müller's videotaped tour harkens back to his early performance work in the 1980s.[1] It depicts the artist in his initial phase of research for this project. He casts himself as a "fan" of Poelzig, traveling to numerous structures and interviewing family members as he investigates the life of the mercurial architect. Poelzig's edifices were built in a variety of styles, ranging from modernist industrial buildings to ornamental churches and the Großes Schauspielhaus for Max Reinhardt. His practice was highly varied, and included projects such as the Pergola bei der Jahrhunderthalle Wroclaw (1913) and the design of the film set of the Prague Jewish ghetto featured in Paul Wegner's highly successful film, "The Golem" (1920).

The videotaped component is placed in a corner of the two-hundred-square meter room in which "Im Geschmack der Zeit" is installed. The overall arrangement of the exhibition is in the manner of a theatre or film set, with six main areas, or chapters. Each of these areas is representative of one aspect of Poelzig's practice. The first examines the architect's industrial buildings and his teachings. Chapters follow on craft or decorative commissions, theater, film and the Babylon block. The final section focuses more exclusively on the biography of Poelzig, with some attention paid to his collaborators, especially his second wife Marlene.

On Müller's instructions, the space in which the exhibition initially took place was entirely renovated and the original designs of Poelzig restored. The architect had planned the first two floors of buildings on the plaza as storefronts. Yet, in the post-WWII period these spaces were converted into very small, poorly cut apartments, many with little light. The floorboards were slightly raised (by approximately one meter) by crafty builders in order to get around a city ordinance prohibiting ground level residence. But all of this changed with the reunification of the city, and in early 2003 the occupants (primarily elderly women who lived by themselves) were relocated and the flats left empty. Thus, one of Müller's first tasks in restoring the building back to its original design entailed dropping the floor to street level.

Müller configured the exhibition in two versions. Similar to the manner in which a cinema schedule is slated (with matinee and evening shows), there is a night and a day variant of "lm Geschmack der Zeit." For the night program, Müller employed powerful lights to illuminate the interior of the gallery in hues as garish as those used by Poelzig in the Großes Schauspielhaus and the Babylon Theater. The bright colors emanating from the exhibition space through the floor to ceiling glass curtain walls inevitably attracted the eye of anyone in the vicinity of the Rosa Luxemburg Platz after dark. Evidently, Müller's aim was to draw the passersby away from the central triangle in front of the Volksbühne (and across from the Babylon), rerouting them to the building on the far corner of the plaza (beyond the Karl Liebknecht house, which presently serves as the central quarters of the German Party for Democratic Socialism).

Upon entering the ground floor of the Poelzig building at Weydingerstrasse 20, the visitor was at once transformed into an actor. One immediately stepped onto a stage with six different mise-en-scènes created by Müller. Each of these "chapters" was organized in the form of a floor to ceiling, two-dimensional theatrical set focused on the personage of Poelzig. In the evening, the "sets" were reflected on the curtain glass windows behind which the cars and pedestrians of the contemporary Berlin flow, creating an uncanny illusion of the buildings thriving once again in the metropolis. The first chapter featured the Oberschlesischer Turm auf der Ostdeutschen Ausstellung in Posen. The sets that followed highlighted a never built church chapel, a column of the Großes Schauspielhaus, the spiral staircase of the film set from The Golem, the Babylon block and a blown-up photographic bust of Poelzig. Müller placed original drawings, sketches, photographs and writings into a glass vitrine located immediately behind each of these freestanding sets. Statements on the state of art and architecture by contemporaries of Poelzig such as Bruno Taut and Felix Mendelssohn appeared on the wall behind the vitrines.

Each of the six sections tracked the manner in which the theme or subject of the particular set has been transformed over time according to shifts in taste. For instance, the third chapter featured an array of late nineteenth and early twentieth century photographs of the Großes Schauspielhaus as a circus, Poelzig's first sketches of the theatre (made for Reinhardt), pictures of its construction in the 1920s, images of the renovations directed by DDR authorities who thought the building was too ornamental, and photographs taken by Ryulji Miyamoto of the staggering destruction of the structure in 1985. Written texts, including some by Poelzig detailing his theory of theatrical and stage space, supplemented the illustrations.

In addition to the visual media, Müller mounted his own collection of recent photographs of still functioning Poelzig buildings on the permanent back walls of the exhibition space. These included pictures of the former IG Farben-Verwaltungsgebäude industrial headquarters (currently the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe University in Frankfurt) as well as photos of Poelzig's paintings hanging in the homes and offices of family members. The show also included an acoustic dimension in the form of several sound stations. Drawing on a strategy reminiscent of that used in his earlier "Eine Welt fur Sich, Ein Projekt rund ums Freihhaus in Wien" (A World of its Own, A Project Around the Freihaus in Vienna, 1999), Müller compiled numerous interviews with people living in and around the Rosa Luxemburg Platz.[2] These recordings, encompassing four generations of individuals connected to the plaza, emanated from the speakers. The individuals interviewed offer their memories and impressions of transformations that in many cases occurred in their lived environment. The effect is that of a myriad of overlapping voices and fragments of narrative as each informant describes how she or he witnessed the flow of history from their window. The oral testimonies are telling. One speaker recalls that, in stark contrast to the present, the Rosa Luxemburg street was a very vibrant public space during the DDR, with an assortment of shops selling everyday goods, as well as ice cream stores, hosiery shops and the like. She also reminisces on the huge transformation of the neighborhood immediately following the collapse of the DDR when some of these storefronts were transformed into sex shops. Another speaker, who spent her formative years in the apartment next to the Babylon Theater, recounts what it was like to hear (but not see) all of the films projected in the theater, and to fall asleep in the evening listening to a distant soundtrack. Yet another recollects that some of the apartment buildings in the neighborhood had "clubs" in the attics. These were proudly decorated with posters, and were used as common spaces for celebrations, meetings and social gatherings. In a way that parallels the effect of "Eine Welt fur Sich," Müller's compilation of the voice of the people (Volkstimme) in "Im Geschmack der Zeit" subtly captures the tone (Stimmunq) of the residents of the Rosa Luxemburg Platz. As the most ephemeral aspect of the show, the oral history represents an invisible yet haunting recording of the direct consequences of public history on personal lives. And it is this dimension, this unofficial seventh chapter, which will most readily be forgotten and erased.

Müller has for some time now been concerned with the question of how to represent a social or people's history of a place, one that is at times inconsistent and even contradicts the official version. At play, as James Meyer has observed when speaking about Müller's earlier Platzwechsel, are the negotiations between the "literal site,” the actual location, and the "functional site.” The latter "is a process, an operation occurring between sites, a mapping of institutional and discursive filiations and the bodies that move between them.”[3] Müller has consistently problematized public art in the pursuit of a greater integration of artworks with the community in which they are produced and exhibited. A case in point is "Public Art is Everywhere" (1996).[4] Invited by the city of Hamburg to participate in a think tank reassessing the concept of public art, which in the view of some legislators was becoming too ephemeral, expensive and difficult to maintain, the group's mandate was to recommend ways in which the function of this type of art could be increased. Müller proposed that public artworks be integrated more thoroughly into their respective sites, and he followed this up with a complex project that questioned the difference between a museum's public and institutional space. More specifically, "Public Art is Everywhere" focused on the areas located between museums on Hamburg's museum mile. Müller organized a public competition in pursuit of the photograph that captured this vicinity's most exceptional location. By formally submitting entries, the public became directly involved in drawing the artist's attention to a number of spaces that he would surely have otherwise overlooked. The photographers thereby assumed the role of "native informers,” aiding Müller in constructing a work that was at once specific to the site of Hamburg's museums and to the social (and even unconscious) dimension of citizens who were personally connected to the space.

"Public Art is Everywhere" also entered a contemporary art world debate on the merits of artists producing public site specific projects in places or contexts where their attachment was minimal. The privileged status of these "outsiders" over the views and work of local "insiders" was questioned. This matter was part of a much larger conversation that assessed the ethical dimension of speaking for others. In "Platzwechsel," a project centered on the Platzspitz Park in Zurich, Müller openly took part in this debate, directly confronting the notion that only those within a particular community have the right to make art about that public. Although he was invited by the Kunsthalle Zurich to execute a one-person show, Müller instead proposed a four-artist group exhibition. The participants would include two natives of Zurich (Ursula Biemann and Müller himself) and two artists with little or no connection to the city (Tom Burr and Mark Dion). The double entendre of the title "Platzwechsel" (Changing Places) refers both to the history of the park and its transformations over the centuries, as well as to the exchange of ideas and points of view between the artists (the German term "Blickwechsel" means a change — and even an exchange — of perspectives). Dion and Burr's alien status allowed them to see as strange a number of aspects that the "insiders" had naturalized.

Many of Müller's projects include a similar paradigm of insider and outsider. For one of his most famous projects to date, "Green Border," produced in 1993 when the artist participated as a representative of the Austrian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Müller disguised himself as a local and easily crossed into Austria from each of its seven borders.[5] Similarly, with "Eine Welt für Sich," Müller focused on a small close-knit neighborhood in downtown Vienna and attempted to reconstruct the city's history through the current composition of its residents. In this instance, he worked closely with the community and conducted tape-recorded interviews with many of the locals who were asked to speak about their emotional connections to their neighborhood. As with "Im Geschmack der Zeit," then, in "Eine Welt für Sich" the insider position was represented on the acoustic level.

Yet, unlike the Hamburg, Zurich and Vienna projects that negotiated between the local population and the artist, there was a third player in "Im Geschmack der Zeit": the architect Hans Poelzig. The latter indirectly determined the subject matter and the site for the installation. Müller was thus faced with the problem centering the show on the work of another artist while maintaining the integrity of his own artistic practice. In his highly influential book, "The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry," Harold Bloom proposes six possible strategies that young authors may adopt when negotiating their work vis-à-vis that of their strong predecessors. Bloom is concerned only with "strong poets, major figures with the persistence to wrestle with their strong precursors. even to the death,” since "weaker talents idealize.”[6] How, then, we might ask in the present context, might Müller have created a work that would self-consciously acknowledge and pay tribute to the production of Poelzig, and yet also critically distinguish itself from its precursor? For Müller ran the risk of becoming a mere documentarist or biographer unless a creative misinterpretation or "swerve" occurred. Here it is important to note that this was not the first time that Müller took on the challenge of the work of strong predecessors. Previous projects have wrestled with the productions of Walter de Maria, Joseph Beuys and Le Corbusier. In each case, Müller's concern was not to be subsumed by the other personality, but to clear imaginative space for himself.[7]

Müller asserted his own voice in several ways in "Im Geschmack der Zeit." One was by shifting the focus away from a biography-driven study of Poelzig to one that also examined the history of site — in this case, the Rosa Luxemburg Platz. Müller not only researches how Poelzig developed as an architect, but also delved into a history of the neighborhood of the former Scheunenviertel or Jewish ghetto. In the process, the project tracked the dramatic growth of the district at the turn of the century with the influx of immigrants from the East, the deplorable razing that befell it in the first decade of the century, the construction of the Volksbühne immediately prior to the First World War, Poelzig's commission to redesign the area in the 1920s, the quarter's Nazification in the 1930s, its transformation again in the post-WW11 period under the auspices of DDR authorities, concluding with the state of flux and uncertainty into which it was thrown with the collapse of the Wall. Like his project for Documenta X (1997), Kassel for which he researched the square in front of the Fridericianeum and sought to uncover overlapping and contradictory histories, or his investigations of the Platzspitz park, Zurich, "Im Geschmack der Zeit" mined place as a complex site of multiple histories and narratives. The project tracks a plethora of events that characterized the Rosa Luxemburg Platz, including migration, urban renewal, control of the masses, cultural life, revolution, two World Wars, Communism, reunification and its discontents. History is not presented as static but as a phenomenon that continues to develop and into which Müller inserts himself directly. In the process, the exhibition visitor learned that the Rosa Luxemburg Platz was currently a hotly contested site with a number of interest groups, ranging from realtors and gallery owners to the PDS and the officials of the Volksbühne, all vying to impose their own agendas and determine the future development of the plaza. Indeed, the current environment of the plaza strongly parallels the situation that Poelzig encountered in the 1920s when commissioned to rebuild the area. The Volksbühne, for instance, has once again become one of the most dynamic cultural sites in Berlin. The theater not only features an array of avant-garde performances and music, but also serves as a platform for intellectual debates. By presenting an intricately woven fabric of the richness and complexity of the Platz, Müller's "Im Geschmack der Zeit" swerves away from the domineering presence of Poelzig to locate its attention on the historical vicissitudes of a geographical location in the city of Berlin. The artist now assumes the role of historian, researcher and guide, a macrocosm of the role he plays in the videotape that supplements "Im Geschmack der Zeit."

Müller's investigations not only contribute to the historical record of the Rosa Luxemburg Platz, but on another level they also comment on the relationship between an artist or architect and a site (defined not only as a geographical location but as a historical and discursive locus as well). Most studies of Poelzig have tended to focus on one aspect of the architect's practice and read his buildings and projects through this lens. By contrast, Müller demonstrates that Poelzig refused to adopt a particular style, with some of the architect's structures resembling the clean lines and unadorned interiors and exteriors of the Bauhaus school, while others are utterly baroque in their excess of ornamentation.

Müller organized the six chapters of the exhibition spatially in a manner that corresponds to the curvature of the gallery space. The installation fanned out, with its various stations revealing the entire spectrum of the architect's practice, from the most abstract to the most decorative. Müller also exposes some of the contradictions in Poelzig's work, such as the architect's design of retrograde structures that were to be built with quintessentially modern and technologically innovative construction methods. Müller thus lays open the dramatic complexity of Poelzig, who sought to be avant-garde and traditional at the same time. Indeed, Im Geschmack der Zeit reveals that such a lack of commitment to any one style also characterized Poelzig's politics. The architect perpetually tended toward a middle ground, spurning both the right and the left of his day. In the end, however, it was precisely the architect's ambiguity that was his downfall for he ultimately fell through the crocks. No one came to his defense when the Nazis turned on him.[8]

Müller confronts the question of how to account for Poelzig's lock of consistency (and of conviction) by revealing that the architect's designs were often determined by the particular context in which he worked. Thus Poelzig could at once contribute to the scheme of the Weissenhofsiedlung and conceive of highly ornamental pillars inside the Großes Schouspielhous that bear on uncanny affinity to the equation of nature and technology in Karl Blossfeldt's "Art Forms in Nature" (1928). But this working method, in which the context determined and bound the design to the specific site, made it impossible for Poelzig to be on internationalist in the mode of Le Corbusier or Mies van der Rohe. For Poelzig's buildings could not exist anywhere other than in the specific location for which they were designed. His modus operandi thus represents a form of cultural pragmatism that accommodates the taste of the particular context, or of what Pierre Bourdieu has described as the "habitus.”[9] To that extent, Poelzig's architectural practice is conducive to Müller's recent interest in exploring the complexities of "distanced" taste.[10] Can one understand something about the operation and mutability of individual taste by studying Poelzig's oscillation from style to style? And what are the connections between "good taste" ("Gesundes Volksempfinden") and distanced modernist taste that is often considered to be elitist? For example, the Poelzig buildings on the east side of the Rosa Luxemburg Platz still have the modernist flat roofs that the architect designed. On the other side of the plaza, however, the National Socialists gave the structures pitched roofs in the 1930s. Operating in what they considered to be "Gesundes Volksempfinden," they transformed Poelzig's original layout. Similarly, the brightly painted interior of the Babylon movie theatre was considered to be acceptable in the 1920s and early 30s, but repugnant by both the National Socialists and the officials of the Deutsche Demokratische Republic. To be sure, this exhibition's exploration of the vicissitudes of taste is a particularly pertinent issue today as the question of how to renovate the plaza - often put in terms of what historical period should be preserved - has been hotly debated.[11] Rather than returning the plaza to its pre-WWI condition when it was the site of the Volksbühne and the Scheunenviertel, in the post-reunification period the consensus has been to renovate the site according to the way it was in the late 1920s, with Poelzig as the unifying figure. Müller's "Im Geschmack der Zeit" reveals the extent to which this celebration of the Weimar era is a comment on contemporary taste. Poelzig's "expressionist" work corresponds to recent trends in architecture that now aver the postmodern structures of Robert Stern and Michael Graves in favor of the expressionist constructions of someone like Daniel Libeskind. Thus in dialogical terms the politics of the person inform the site, the site informs the politics, and the taste of the time (then and now) informs both.

In addition to situating Poelzig's architectural practice in its social, political and geographical context. Müller also shatters the myth of the solitary genius. Already by including Poelzig's second wife, Marlene, in the title of the show, he establishes the collaborative dimension of the architect's productions. Chapter One emphasizes Poelzig's early career as a teacher, training and working with others such as Martin Gropius and Chapter Six brings to light all the people who worked with Poelzig behind the scenes to help realize his projects. Furthermore, Müller chooses to present Poelzig's film work not by representations of the theaters and studios that the architect designed but rather by blowing up images from the set of "The Golem." As it turns out, this structure, although ostensively designed by Poelzig, was actually configured by his wife Marlene, who had been trained as a sculptor. To the extent that "Im Geschmack der Zeit" tries to showcase the people behind the "master," Müller opens a discussion on contemporary architectural practices whereby individual "super-architects" such as Norman Foster or Frank Gehry come to be identified as the sole creators of their designs, with their celebrity star status eclipsing the contributions of all of the other individuals who work for their firms. This phenomenon is pushed one step further by Rem Koolhaas who included installations by artists Tony Oursler, Candida Höffer and Jeff Preiss in his one-person exhibition at Berlin's Neue National Gallerie in the fall of 2003. The seamless assimilation of Oursler, Höffer and Preiss's installations into the overall design of Koolhaas's exhibition fully incorporated these artists into the Koolhaas architectural machine. In stork contrast to the acquiescence of Oursler, Höffer and Preiss, Müller very clearly positioned himself outside the Poelzig industry; although "Im Geschmack der Zeit" centers on the life and career of the early twentieth century architect. Müller's contribution is anything but passive. Rather, he cannily enlists Poelzig and the architect's productions as material to generate a new art work that among other things explores the political economy of taste.

Poelzig conceived of his theaters in terms of three interrelated spaces that would naturally flow into each other: the street and the area immediately outside; the liminal zone of the lobby; and the interior where the fusion of stage and audience eliminates the fourth wall. The Babylon Theater on the Rosa Luxemburg Platz is a perfect example of this type of architecture. In a similar way, Müller has structured "Im Geschmack der Zeit" around the metaphor of a theater, blurring the distinction between live performances and films. If Poelzig designed the Babylon Theater to dynamically engage with the Volksbühne, then Müller completes the triangle with the building at Weydingerstrosse 20 now serving as the third angle — a hybrid space on which to stage multiple unfolding histories. In the process, Hans Poelzig becomes but one player among many in a complex theatrical drama staged on the plaza.

The relatively small and seemingly insignificant physical form of the gesticulating artist carrying a microphone in the videotape component of "In Geschmack der Zeit" is therefore highly misleading. Müller's role is not inconsequential. He actively provides the viewer with an abundance of information and directs the entire course of investigation. In a similar manner, Müller played a discrete, yet highly significant part in the exhibition as a whole as he transformed the main floor of the Poelzig building at Weydingerstrasse 20 from a site of private residences into a highly public space. As such, "Im Geschmack der Zeit" contested attempts to privatize the Rosa Luxemburg Platz in the manner of that has recently defined many other Berlin plazas dominated by theaters and living space — and here the Potsdamer Platz comes most prominently to mind. With its highly informative and multifaceted elements, Müller's "Im Geschmack der Zeit" affirmed the public dimension of the Rosa Luxemburg Platz and advocates for the continued heterogeneity of what for over a century has been one of Berlin's most vibrant plazas.

Alexander Alberro, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Florida, is the author of "Conceptual Art and the Politics of Publicity" (2003). His essays have appeared in a wide array of journals and exhibition catalogues. He has also edited and co-edited a number volumes including "Two-Way Mirror Power: Dan Graham's Writings on Art" (1999), "Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology" (2000) and "Recording Conceptual Art" (2001).

Nora M. Alter is Professor of German, Film, and Media Studies at the University of Florida. She is author of "Vietnam Protest Theatre: The Television War on Stage" (1996), "Projecting History: Non-Fiction German Film" (2002) and "Chris Marker" (2005). She has written numerous essays on film, video and visual studies.

This supplement was published by the Verein zur Förderung von Kunst und Kultur am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz e.V. for the exhibition at the AM Architekturmuseum Basel.
Made possible by: Allianz Versicherungs AG Niederlassung Berlin - IBAU AG - Ernst G. Hachmann GmbH

Notes

1. Kleiner FUhrer durch die Ehem. Kurfürstliche Gemläldeglerie Düsseldorf (Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, 1986); Carl Theodor's Garten in Düsseldorf-Hellerhof (Düsseldorf-Hellerhof, 1986); Ein öffentliches Bad für Münster, TV-Film, 40. directed by Jef Cornelis (BRT Brussels. 1987).

2. IG Kaufleuten Freihausviertel. represented by Hannelore Kaffer and Georg Kargl, eds ., Eine Welt fur sich. Ein Projekt rund ums Freihaus in Wien; A project around the Freihaus in Vienna (Vienna 1999).

3. James Meyer, "The Functional Site," in Platzwechsel (Zurich 1995), p. 27. See also James Meyer. "The Functional Site. or the Transformation of Site Specificity,” in Erica Suderburg. ed., Space, Site, Intervention, Situating Installation Art (Minneapolis 2000); and Miwon Kwon, One Place after Another. Site-Specific and Locational Identity in Contemporary Art (Cambridge 2002).

4. Achim Könneke and Christian Philipp Müller, commissioned by the Cultural Department of the City of Hamburg. Kunst auf Schritt und Tritt, Public Art is Everywhere (Hamburg 1997).

5. Stellvertreter / Representatives, La Biennale di Venezia, Austrian Pavilion (w. Andrea Fraser and Gerwald Rockenschaub) (Venice 1993).

6. Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence. A Theory of Poetry (London 1973), p. 5.

7. Christian Philipp Müller and Gallery Micheline Szwajcer, Promenade (Antwerp 1990). Promenade is in dialogue with Le Corbusier's plans for Antwerp. Vergessene Zukunft / Forgotten Future (Kunstverein Munich, 1992) relates to Le Corbusier's, Edgar Varese's and Jannis Xenakis "Poeme Electronique" for the 1958 World Fair in Brussels. as well as to Nicolas Schöffer and Veit Harlan. Ein Balanceakt / A Balancing Act, Documenta X (Kassel, 1997), references Joseph Beuys and Walter De Maria's permanent works for Kassel.

8. Müller first considered naming the project "Der Goldene Mittelweg" ("The Golden Path in the Middle"). based on these aspects of Poelzig's life. The title made a subtle reference not only to Poelzig's changing aesthetics and political beliefs, but also to the design of the "Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz”, with the Volksbühne occupying the central spot in the Y-shaped open space that in the early twentieth century split two of Berlin's major arteries.

9. For Bourdieu's theory of "habitus." see Pierre Bourdieu. Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1977).

10. According to Bourdieu, "taste" stems from the deeply rooted expectations that individuals internalize from their experiences of abundance or scarcity in the social world. Actors with abundant capital enjoy considerable freedom from the practical constraints and temporal urgencies imposed by material scarcities and the consequent necessities of earning a livelihood. Those with meager capital find little respite from the practical demands of making a living. This relative "'distance from necessity" produces different class habitus, which in turn generate distinct sets of tastes. Bourdieu, Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Cambridge, Moss.: Harvard University Press. 1984), pp. 466-467.
    In this respect, Müller's Im Geschmack der Zeit connects to the artist's ongoing interest in examining the construction and formation of "taste,” both literally as in his current works on French wine (On the Desire to be in Perfect Tune with Nature, 2001) and cooking (Hudson Valley Tastemakers, 2003), and figuratively as in his work with chocolate (A Taste for Money, 2002).

11. Ironically Poelzig's first real job was for the Department of Monument Protection.