This might just be my own fantasy, but it seems that Eastern Europe and the fall of the Soviet Union played a fundamental role in the development of installation art as a formula.

Something to do with borders being so important in one part of the world, at a time when they were becoming so unimportant elsewhere. Outside the barbed wire of communist surveillance, the Soviet Union was virtual. Governments played a media war, and most of what was considered an "offense" on the part of our nemesis actually took place in the "non-place" of our t.v. screens. In the midst of it all, artists working under the influence of a cultural schitzophrenia, began developing a peculiar relationship to space. To the idea of territory;  to what was and what wasn't under governmental control.

"Wrapped Reichstag" in Berlin was one of the most moving pieces for me. It's like getting this crazy idea in your head and deciding to just role with it, like writing poetry on your face, chainsmoking cubanito cigars all night, etc. Except this idea was royally, futuristically expensive. It took years to execute, and nowhere in the description is there actually a reasonable explanation for why they did it. But somewhere in the back of your head it all makes sense. Wrapping a massive German acropolis in white recyclable material. Yeah! 

In this increasing abstraction of national identity, what do we have to tie us together? Definitely not the old notion of place. It is clear that capitalist America, like Communist Berlin, is a state of mind. What does "parliament" mean to most Germans? Why should they even care? There is so much mobility in the world, and there are so many of us. No longer do we have one central gatheriing place. But if you wrap your parliament in masses of aluminum-coated fabric panels, they will come.