I was here today

Berlin 2010

Albert Speer’s bunker

I collect art that I don’t understand
- Christian Bonos


Visitors exit the bunker slowly,
so slowly. One man’s voice still echoes
in the architecture
of fear –It is
the Remembrance, before the remodeling.
Then someone pounds his fist
like a hammer
against the wall and cries out
“Humpty Dumpty… “ had a great fall.
By the time Bonos arrives, visitors are
knocking away – with mallets, chisels and crowbars –
at the blue concrete.
They are so intent
upon deconstruction that their palms are calloused
their skin is cracking.
.
When they are gone, Bonos sits looking out. He imagines
the collection – sculptures, installations and performances –
His collection – that will occupy this space.
Meanwhile, buried somewhere in the rubble, Mr. Speer
is still breathing out, repentant,
through a sophisticated ventilation system –
His doing.
The temperature in the “Banana Bunker” is ideal
for storing fruits and vegetables, and constant
for sexexperimento, techno and fetish parties.
He once told Playboy magazine: “If I didn’t see it,
then it was because I didn’t want to see it.”

Bonos looks out
from his penthouse and garden atop the bunker,
where visitors enter, by appointment only,
today and every Saturday afternoon,
to view the works that he finds
so difficult to understand
in the beginning.


From Nazi Bunker to Artistic Haven

I tried to peek inside the window of this art haven. Though it was dark inside, I saw more there than I care to share here.

Christian Bonos says he did not purchase Albert Speer's six-storey ground-level bunker for protection, but to house his collection of contemporary art. While most war bunkers in Berlin were built underground, the marshlands along the banks (sic) of the River Spree necessitated protection above ground too, and this particular bunker is one of the few that was not demolished after the war. I hear that Olafur Eliasson's wrecking ball now hangs, however, from the gutted interior of the bunker - like the sphere atop the famous TV tower at Alexander Plaza emitting invisible signals throughout the city, or a rotating disco ball that explodes technicolor light shards onto the concrete surfaces of the interior. A man on the street pointed up to Bonos penthouse on the roof and mentioned that Bonos holds open house by private appointment only (Sundays).