When the stadium announcer announces the “Greatest Rock’n’Roll Band on Earth”, a gigantic structure grows up behind the stage, with lighting, pyrotechnics and all sorts of ideas. The tens of thousands of the audience are delighted. But who had these ideas?
In the case of the Rolling Stones, but especially of Pink Floyd, the idea generator was the architect Mark Fisher. He wasn’t drawn to building a house. During his studies at the renowned London Architectural Association and influenced by the rebellious group “Archigram”, he dealt with ephemeral things, including inflatable structures. This is how the contact with Pink Floyd came about. From then on, inflatables were among her stage shows, which culminated in the tour “The Wall”.
It already took place at the beginning of the eighties. But when the Berlin Wall fell, there was an occasion to perform the spectacle here as well – no matter how much the simple plot had to do with the political situation in Berlin. An estimated 320,000 spectators made a pilgrimage to the then no man’s land between the Brandenburg Gate and Potsdamer Platz on July 21, 1990 and cheered the eventual collapse of the (Styrofoam) wall of the stage set.
He could develop versions – and also implement them
Mark Fisher had prepared the spectacle partly with precise construction drawings, partly with suggestive images of the expected experience. That was what made the genius of the designer Fisher – who died in 2013 at the age of only 66 years – possible: he was able to develop visions and at the same time show the exact way to their realization, moreover under the conditions of tight assembly and dismantling, transport and adaptation different venues. His exuberant drawings, whether heightened with pencil or in color with airbrush, now cover the walls in the Museum for Architectural Drawings on Pfefferberg from top to bottom, as if the exhibition wanted to emphasize once again that there were no limits to the designer’s ideas (Christinenstraße 18a, until January 16, 2022. Catalog (German / English) € 25).
In addition to the stage sets for extensive tours by Jean-Michel Jarre and U2, for example, Fisher designed the opening show of the Expo in Seville, southern Spain, in 1992, or an acrobatic performance in London’s Millennium Dome in 2000. The Rolling Stones, global show giants, let themselves be designing structures by Fisher for several tours; in a video shown in the exhibition you can see her joking with Fisher.
His limitless imagination suited Elton John’s order to design the appropriate ambience for his 200 appearances (!) In the paradise of artificiality: the opulently designed catalog calls it “Las Vegas baroque pomp”. Whatever style was required, Mark Fisher understood his craft.
