A discourse about urbanity, urban design and communication strategies in the public space is potentially eligible to reveal existing social structures and point out alternative models. These models in practice comprise a greater experience than the urban space is able to offer its inhabitants/users today. In such a discourse, I attach importance to the public space as a social arena where communication between the residents plays a central role. Who is able to get a word in today’s society and what sort of speaking is this? The interaction with art and art projects in the public space is naturally determined by the way we are dealing with the term art as well as by the position that we have in the public space and the political/social landscape. In my opinion, most of our public and visual production of symbols can be seen as a contribution to the forming of opinions – directly or indirectly. Expounding these problems was a dicisive intention in my ddr-project – which stands in a situationistic tradition and is furthermore using an adbuster-strategy.
By transferring the letters ddr into today’s world of commercial logos, my project attracted a lot of attention – as desired – and was discussed vividly.
The reactions ranged from the graffiti activist group cbs, who – by using a rather limited view of how to critically deploy the use of public spaces – claimed, that the project was lacking a critical discussion of advertising mechanisms, up to politicians in Berlin’s House of Representatives1 who – very absurdly – thought of ddr as a glorification of the former east german system.
ddr attracted lively interest from the public as well as national and international press – more than 30 papers and several radio and tv stations were reporting the project.

1

During an interpellation in the House of Representatives, the representative Krestel (F.D.P.) from the senate office asked, if the signets were not exalting a system of mischief, while a graffiti activist group - in a cloak-and-dagger-operation - exchanged one of the billboards at the station with their own logo. After a fairy long time the purloined billboard reappeared – clearly visible on the facade of the Kaufhof department store on Alexanderplatz.

Aage Langhelle