The Berlin Wall as Living Ornament

Abstract

In this article I argue, based on Gilles Deleuze’s concept of affect, that the aesthetics of the Berlin Wall, i.e., the aesthetics of the different generations of the Wall itself (especially the last generation of the Wall) and the artistic interventions on the Western side of the Wall, in form of graffiti and wall art, have created effects which not necessarily challenge the Wall’s function as a border fortification system, but incorporate it in dialectical form. Affects triggered by the Western Wall’s sensational effects and its meandering course through the divided city have animated the Wall in such a way, that the Wall transforms into a living ornament. I read the Wall’s aesthetics as Baroque, in which façade and inner structure are seemingly unrelated but not separate and condition each other. I argue that the growing tension between Western surface intervention and Eastern military structure have the potential to bring forward states of e/motion, which I term in the Deleuzian sense: becoming political.