The Name Game

There is a very interesting discussion panel happening at the Guggenheim website at the moment: http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/interact/online-forum/the-name-game/session-1


It is all about names. According to the moderator Mark Abley "This Forum will be about the power of names, the ways we allow them or ask them to define us, and their vexed relationship with the rest of language as well as the world beyond words."


Robert Jones is a branding consultant on the panel and mentions the importance of name changes: "So our view is that the fact of a name change can get people to stop and think again; the content of the name change can give a clue about what to think; and changing what people think can of course change what they do."


That could well be relevant to the name changes of the IG-Farben-Haus. How would the name 'Poelzig-Bau' change people's perceptions of it. Instead of bearing the name of a perpetrator corporation implicated in slave labour, the house would be named for its acclaimed architect. Would they then be less likely to think of the building's (and Germany's) difficult past and work through it? 


It would have been rather useful if this forum had happened a month ago so I could have mentioned it in my dissertation!