Cedric Bomford

Cedric Bomford is a worker. Currently living in Berlin, he expends much effort bicycling about town, seeking out fragmentary castoffs from construction sites and discarded scraps from renovation projects. While rooted in the soil of Dada Deutschland—recalling especially assemblers of trash such as Kurt Schwitters, who had similarly architectural ambitions—Bomford begins his laborious process in a non-material zone that depends upon mobile street-based experience, negotiation with on-site work crews and the speculative realities of choosing: he selects stuff to salvage and then proceeds to haul it, without definite aesthetic ends in mind. Consisting solely of such reclaimed refuse, mostly found timber and windows, each of Bomford’s large-scale installation works may be read as a partial, yet often surprisingly insightful, portrait of a built environment, an accounting of its present and former selves.

In the case of Berlin, more so than any other European capital, buildings are pervasively being replaced, bullet holes plastered over. Most signs of trauma, oppression and division are systematically levelled and buried by gleaming office towers and plazas, the face of a sanitized corporate culture. Bomford’s work “Das Amt,” 2010, recently on view at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, may be inhabited as a means to acquire an intensely intuitive understanding of what, and who, has been suppressed. Assembled over an eight-day period, the multi-faceted structure extended from the main gallery space into a foyer area facing the street. From the first glance, the work declared a provisional status, with its rickety and roughened surfaces contrasting considerably with the polish of the wood panelling and banister in the foyer, as well as with institutionally smooth white walls. Compared to the benign-sounding “das Büro,” for Germans the term “das Amt” may imply bureaucratic and governmental contexts associated with the experience of absurd amounts of official documentation, Kafka-esque procedural excess, and historical contexts of surveillance or spying on fellow citizens.

Accordingly, a ground-level windowed chamber—lit but inaccessible or “restricted”—contained lengthy rows of labelled binders, perhaps files on those “of interest” or under suspicion. Circumventing this creepy and crammed cubicle, I contemplated climbing a set of stairs complete with lovely patina and crafted ornament. Likely lifted from a residential building, this feature was here recast as an exterior connecting passage to a gangway platform, which led to a phone-booth-sized tower topping the records office below. Perhaps suitable for guard duty, this booth declared no obvious purpose. Grafted on the other side of the platform was a wall of windows, perhaps plundered from an office tower prior to demolition. Itemizing each of these elements, I had the prevailing impression they were playing roles within a makeshift, assemblage-like whole, referencing a strange cocktail of architectural functions, including military and corporate ones. Simply wandering around, I was left with the prevailing sense of a stage set, an elaborate and interactive prop on which folks may perform or play out scenarios of being watched and followed.

Finally, I entered a ramshackle opening and made my way along a claustrophobic corridor, perusing its well-worn surfaces, including rectangular patches of wood on walls that could serve the simple function of bolstering structural integrity; they also seemed like “sculptural” allusions to pictures hanging on walls. I was tempted to lounge for a while, but sitting or leaning on surfaces would have resulted in stained clothing. Despite mild dirt-related anxiety, I could not help but admire pieces of plywood—with seductively accumulated grey residues—originally used for forming and smoothing concrete but here installed as sections of interior walls, a palimpsest signalling the relentless drive toward gentrification. My admiration for these forms was ambivalent, as these “paintings” were here reduced to mere architectural elements.

Such hesitant attributions of aesthetic quality were distracted consistently by an awareness of the creaky impact of my own body and those of fellow visitors. A charged sense of temporary confinement within a potentially dodgy and haphazard structure connoted the feeling of a fun house, a fairground entertainment often associated with workers stereotyped as perhaps shifty and suspect, just passing through town. The amusement-park feeling was enhanced by windows, including a few salvaged from an old piano factory near the gallery, treated with a double-reflective coating. According to Bomford, these coated windows have a specific institutional meaning in Berlin and throughout Germany, as they derive from the same factory as the windows used in the former Palast der Republik (East German parliament buildings). The factory was recently demolished to make way for a re-building of the Berlin Castle, a telling return to monarchical times that coincides with a systematic repression of signs of the city’s division. This feature encouraged a playful atmosphere that put participants momentarily at ease, letting go of their self-consciousness, becoming vulnerable and therefore ripe for the experience of uncanny and unnerving sensations about incarceration, voyeurism and the predicament of being subject to an institution’s gaze and control. Finally settling into the front space, I noticed a group of windows facing the street, framed by curving walls—features that are rather reminiscent of assemblages by German artist Manfred Pernice—composed of horizontal slats, as well as alcoves suitable for camping out, with a rifle. Hammered into place with haste and urgency, they seemed to me to be a makeshift bunker—appropriate in Berlin where only a few such wartime structures prominently remain—in which one might dwell by necessity, despite the dirt, holding out against the authorities. Suddenly, Bomford’s laborious and wondrous work ceased to be scenery for the stage or a fun house. It became a place to take a stand, a means to outlast them all. ❚

“Das Amt” was exhibited at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Germany, from September 24 to October 10, 2010.

Dan Adler is an assistant professor of art history at York University in Toronto. He is currently working on a book manuscript about sprawling sculptural art exhibitions.