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We had to take our video offline for technical reasons. Please refer to Fred Plassmann´s nicely shot and edited clip at architekturclips.de - it´s somewhat shorter but you´ll get a good idea of the presentation. In there also some uncredited stills from the Great Pyramid documentary that will be out in cinemas later this year.
For the files: A thousand individuals from about 50 countries have made an unbinding reservation for a stone in The Great Pyramid as of yesterday. This number is growing by one or two dozens a day at the time. Thank you all!
Much is written these days about Dessau and the Great Pyramid. Since the reopening of the Bauhaus a few years ago, the city was not in international news on that scale. Some say, the Great Pyramid will be built there, some other tell the story, the project is not supported by the city and others again are saying we initiators have turned away from Dessau. So, what´s the truth?
Our About-section tells, how we came to Dessau in the first place. The cultural heritage there is amazing. There is no other region in the world, where you would find three UNESCO World Cultural Heritages within a 20 km distance: The Bauhaus, the Dessau-Woerlitz Garden Realm and the Luther sites in nearby Wittenberg. We had used that argument a lot during the last months and not to our surprise, also Saxony-Anhalt´s Tourism Board finally realized its simple power. If you stroll through Berlin these days, you can hardly overlook a massive number of posters like this here.
The tagline says „ In Saxony-Anhalt we have more of these - 3 UNESCO World Heritage Sites within 18 km distance“. Funny, isn´t it?
So far we had talked to the Head Mayor of Dessau-Rosslau, Klemens Koschig, and a few people from the administration. They all were interested but no one would put the project on the political agenda. What made things not easier, was the verdict of the Streetz Ortschaftsrat (a minor legislative body below city level) in last August, that declined any interest to host the Great Pyramid in their borough. There, people had built single homes in a quiet, green environment and did not feel any urge to change a thing in their sleepy little town of 200 inhabitants.
But should Dessau and the whole region miss the chance to appear on the global agenda again, after they had made the couraguous decision to host the Bauhaus after it was expelled from Weimar in 1925? Shouldn´t they make it clear that the region is still open to renewal after Christian reformation was initiated by Martin Luther there, only 20 km away in Wittenberg back in 1517? Should the city council shy away from discussing the project, because an advisory board representing only 200 out of 90,000 inhabitants had hurriedly dismissed it even before any formal proposition was entered? We always thought the answers to these questions were quite obvious – and last Wednesday we were proved right.
After we had introduced the Great Pyramid project and the designs from the architectural competition, we first discussed the project´s opportunities on the panel and then invited the Dessauers to voice their thoughts and opinions. About 50 of them had come, a turnout our host Omar Akbar, the Dessau Bauhaus Foundation´s Executive Director, found remarkable.
It´s been good to talk. The local BILD tabloid had written the Great Pyramid up to an intimidating height of 600 meters, others had claimed we were a sect – everybody knew something, but not necessarily the true facts. To make a long story short: Representatives from major fractions of the city council in the end stood up and unambiguously stated, that Dessau should not let this unique chance pass. Since last Wednesday we have a political process in the city, that might finally bring new life to Dessau in case the city makes the winning bid in the Great Pyramid´s location tender over the next months.
Just providing political support and even land will nonetheless not be enough, the Great Pyramid will have to be built where customers want it. That might be Dessau in the end – or some place else in another country. At the Gala we showed a couple of charts, exemplifying some drawbacks we see in Dessau. Here is one, that will appear in the forthcoming Great Pyramid book out at Sternberg Press in May 2008.
We always liked Dessau, now finally Dessau starts to like the Great Pyramid. It´s been a good start for the current front-runner..
The Great Pyramid made it into the BBC World Service TV news. With due hesitation the BBC notes the fact that nothing is being built yet but luckily avoided the „German pyramid“ punch unlike in last September´s radio coverage. We´re making some headway it seems..
Here´s the article and there the video we´ve sacrificially shot Monday morning on this wind-swept field near Streetz where Tristana, the BBC Berlin correspondent, managed to find the by far saddest looking view of the small town for her moderation.
The Great Pyramid also made it on the frontpages of Dutch daily De Pers and Polish DZIENNIK, was featured in German major national daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung (not online), was on 3sat Kulturzeit once more and has been covered by German national public radio Deutschlandfunk (listen or download). Thinking of all the image requests from print media we´ve replied to, we guess there´ll be a bit more out very soon..
It´s been quite a night. Musical performances, presentations of previously unpublished aspects of The Great Pyramid and lots of interesting conversations at the aftershow. We know we could have done one or two things better but eventually everybody we talked to was most fascinated by the Gala event. It´s been an adequate closing of last years activities funded by the Federal Cultural Foundation of Germany. The Great Pyramid has finally evolved from a conceptual art project into a serious venture. We´re happy and also somewhat relieved that now everybody is convinced The Great Pyramid project will finally be implemented.
Before the show - The audience and a few TV teams
Presenting concepts for the Great Pyramid Park
Jury President Rem Koolhaas presenting the results of the architectural competition
The major news of the night were the submissions from our architectural competition and the announcement of an international location tender. The designs are being uploaded to the website, the location tender document will follow next week. Although some media still prefer to call it „the German pyramid“ we made it absolutely clear that the location is not yet defined. The Great Pyramid will need to be built in a place were it is welcomed by the region hosting it – but above all will have to follow the preferences of all the people who will make it part of their lifes and afterlifes. In simpler and more business-like terms: It will be built where it works for customers.
Thanks to Rem Koolhaas for coming to Berlin and presenting the competition results despite of an extremely tight schedule, to all the musicians, René for the zero budget stage decoration concept, Lars for implementing it, Christian von Werner for taking photos, Simon for filming the whole show and everybody at HAU for their most professional technical handling of the event.
For those who haven´t been able to attend the Gala we´ll make some simple, unedited video footage available later today or tomorrow.
We will be presenting the architectural competition designs and discuss the Great Pyramid project at the Bauhaus Dessau at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 12, 2008.
The panel:
Prof. Omar Akbar, Executive Director Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
Thomas Busch, Member of the Dessau-Rosslau City Council
Ingo Niermann, Friends of the Great Pyramid e.V.
Jens Thiel, Friends of the Great Pyramid e.V.
Moderation: Dr. Walter Prigge, Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
Image: mhobl (off for a time) at flickr
Sorry, we´re to tired to write a decent Gala post after Stefan, Alex and I relaunched the website. Thanks to everybody who was there, promise to do a bunch of things much better next time and also promise to fix several voids and aesthetically challenging features of the new site very, very soon.
Please check the post in Momus blog where you´ll find a video clip of his fascinating performance, a couple of images from the Gala and some background on where the Great Pyramid project originally started. It´s been a long way out of ironic hell..
Feel free to download and forward our flyer for the March 10 Great Pyramid Gala in Berlin here. The full lineup is on the back.
