The year 1967 marked the beginning of our present: Modernism, which had presumed that everything could be sorted out through equal housing, furniture and rights for all, was abandoned, and a new, bizarre, eccentric world was born. Architects declared the amusement park the new ideal city; designers shook off the yoke of good taste, and the conflict between the two dominant political systems gave way to the struggle for self- realisation. New media synchronised the globe, images became the arena in which contests for style and recognition were waged.
In a display created by postmodern architecture and design stars Nigel Coates and Neville Brody, the exhibition takes us chronologically through everything that set the tone between 1967 and 1992: Films, fashion, art, design, architecture, technology and music. Artists such as Jenny Holzer and Jean-Paul Goude have restaged historical works especially for this exhibition.
The exhibition is about the dawn of the information society, the unleashing of the financial markets, the great age of subcultures, disco, punk and techno-pop, shoulder pads and Memphis furniture, as well as the boom of the temples of culture, to which the exhibition owes its largest exhibit, the Bundeskunsthalle itself. When it opened in 1992, the Cold War was over and Francis Fukuyama declared in his famous book "the end of history".
Today it is evident that history has moved on, and postmodernism is also being dis- cussed again. At the same time, social media have promoted a renaissance of postmod- ern aesthetics. Designers and architects are newly enthusiastic about postmodern ideas of diversity, contradictions and decentralisation.
In a time of flaring cultural battles, the exhibition holds up a mirror to the present that serves to set direction: once before, new media overturned all certainties, once before, artistic ventures and a more diverse society emerged from depression and uncertainty.