“Frankfurter Kopien” is a conceptual artist’s book that utilises and reuses the essential design parameters of the so-called New Frankfurt Old Town. The book contains photographs of all the spolia – i.e. older building elements that have been recycled in the colours of the so-called colour plan. This was developed as an annex to the design statutes of the New Old Town and regulated all colour values that were used in the reconstruction work.
By repeatedly inserting and overprinting the photographs of the spolia with the corresponding colours of the respective building, over 120 “Frankfurt copies” were created. While printing each copy, the artist held and pulled the paper, inserted it again and repeated this procedure at will. The images collected in the book are reproductions of the DIN A2-sized unique copies, which were created by manual intervention in the printing process. Frankfurter Kopien thus consists of contingent images that consistently continue the process of arbitrary appropriation of the historical material in an artistic manner. In the book, a selection of the copies in combination with the colours of the colour guide creates its own dramaturgy, which allows a different legibility of the New Old Town to emerge through a concluding index.

Daniel Poller (*1984) is an artist based in Berlin. In his practice, he reflects on moments of historiography in public space. His works have been exhibited internationally and are represented in numerous public collections. His publication Frankfurter Kopien was recently published by Spector Books Leipzig.