Vortrag: Post-Wall Arcadia – Über Dan Graham und das Café Bravo mit Raoul Zöllner

30 years ago, on a December evening in 1994, Dan Graham gave a lecture at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin (now UdK Berlin). This lecture inspired the development of his first sculpture, in which sitting, lingering and drinking coffee should be possible - Café Bravo. As a functional sculpture consisting of reflective stainless steel panels and two-sided mirror panes, it marked a new phase in the early history of KW Institute for Contemporary Art. Since then, Café Bravo has become one of KW's most iconic commissions.

Café Bravo symbolizes both the institutionalization of KW Institute for Contemporary Art and the rapid transformation of Berlin in the upheaval years of the 1990s. Architecturally, it is oriented towards commercial building forms; office buildings with atriums and monotonous shopping centers became markers of a young and dysfunctional capital that felt the urge to professionalize.

The lecture Post-Wall Arcadia by Raoul Zoellner is an homage to Dan Graham (1942-2022) and his Café Bravo, which he realized together with the architect Johanne Nalbach. As an extension of the KW, unboxed format, the lecture offers new insights into the archive of KW Institute for Contemporary Art. Excerpts from the video documentation of Graham's 1994 lecture are interwoven with historical fragments from the 1990s and deepened with further reflections from his essays.

Raoul Zoellner grew up in Berlin, studied at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam and is director of the Boros Foundation. He explores new forms of art education and developed the educational formats KW, a hike and KW, unboxed for the KW Institute for Contemporary Art.