The Empty Center

Hito Steyerls Die leere Mitte (The Empty Center) is a multilayered reflection on the shaping and preserving of a presumably homogenous German identity. The field where Hito Steyerl digs and discovers is Potsdamer Platz, a site that had always been a crucial stage for performing Germanys hybrid imaginary, and is today, once again, the self-proclaimed new heart of Berlin. Filmed by Steyerl again and again from 1989 till 1997, during a time when it was a massive construction site, the geographical centre of the city becomes transparent as a place where appearance and disappearance go hand in hand, directed by new and old powers, following new and old scripts. Working with overlapping images, cross-fades, and conflicting narratives, the film traces and visualizes the transformations of the Nachwendejahre (post-turnover years), a process introduced as: The empty centre returns.