Place In Place Of: Berlin

DE (somewhere near the western border with the Netherlands) vs. US (Pennsylvania)

Is a personal political mindset a symptom of just socialization, or does landscape and space play a role in determining our cultural values? I have been playing with video of two journeys—one from Illinois to Pennsylvania (via truck) and one from Amsterdam to Berlin (via train). I am searching for a difference in the landscape that could help me better understand the massive fissure I am constantly aware of between my own country and most European nations.

The mode of transportation is the first clue. The truck is a place of isolation / independence, the train is a collective venture. Sustainability is an obvious comparison (and also relational to the idea of the collective). There is also a marked difference in the pollution of space with advertising, billboards etc. (the invasive experience of our hyper-capitalist project). And although our differences are political, I wonder if looking for the difference in the landscape—the sky we were raised under—can be a place to understand how these difference are cultural, less political. That our socialization in a space, a landscape leads us to understand our role as individuals, as citizens.

Historically, America has always been the land of the individual. This idea, which has always been an asset, has led to a time where our lack of concern for our global community (born out of a collective nation of fierce individualism) has created an image of greed, unilateralism and empire. Our best asset has become our biggest downfall.

Posted by Meredith at 10:55 on June 26, 2005

Colors of Berlin

We went to see The Colors of Berlin yesterday at the Deutsches Architektur Zentrum. The show consisted of a gallery lined with a vertical cards revealing images, color swatches, maps and some quotes. The cards resembled paint chip samples in scale and formatting. The top row had an image of the city and two color chips below. Underneath that was a card with a location (written), the same location circled on a small, black and white map and occasionally a quote (sometimes English, sometimes German). The projected took images of Berlin, many vacant and without people and broke down the image into two colors that are in some way meant to represent the color of the place – described as revealing the “emotional” color of the site. The show is part of a larger symposium / exhibition that will be taking place this week in Berlin called Loving Berlin.

I found the images to be materially superb – compositionally, color-wise, the way in which they reveal ed a kind of absence. I was reminded of Gabriel Orozco’s images. But I was weary of the camera and the person framing the shot. The formatting of the cards allowed me to understand that the image was taken on the site pointed to on the map. This was just one view of the space and was very intentionally chosen by the artist – but was this really a representation of the site? And were the colors derived from the image anything more than the artist using Photoshop to chose the colors (again a heavy handed gesture revealing the artist).

The exhibition was an obvious glorification of the sites, and Berlin as a city. The artists were asking us to learn to love Berlin in the way in which they do. I guess we always want others to see what we think is virtuous about a place – but the format instead revealed a color palette that referenced interior design. It is gesture that is a covering, a thin skin to hide the past – to pretty up the present. The show seemed to make excuses for a place that seems so uncomfortable with itself, with its obvious internal disagreements that are spread all over the architecture of this place.

But there was a quote on one of the cards that I think tries to make some sense of this problem of blankness and absence and made me wonder if perhaps I am too quick to judge Berlin –
“It is as if Berlin stands on nothing: the void here is “the” void – a void raised to its essence. One feels groundless – and that this is the position of the city. We think of Vienna, of Paris, of the old cities of the south and west, that have an essence, a nature in their staleness. Berlin is not stale, it does not exist in any history, not even any heritage.” – Wilhelm Hausenstein über Berlin: Eine Stadauf nichts gebaut – Berlin:1984 (1932). S.10.

Is this groundlessness a freedom, not a burden? Is Berlin fortunate to not have to deal with the burdens of the glorious material and architectural histories that so many other European cites are both blessed and burdened with? Or is Berlin just content to wipe clean its recent past? I am struggling to answer so many questions about this city – both physically and socially. Berlin, in my eyes sits a the crux of postmodernism and is the definition of how globalization effects urban identity. EXAMPLE: Last night (in Berlin) we went to an Italian restaurant in Kreuzberg, a neighborhood defined by its large Turkish population. Jeremy and I spoke Italian with the waiter, Anna and Susanna spoke German. We all occasionally digressed into English. There were posters on the wall – Pennywise, Agnostic Front, Sick of It All (Hardcore bands from the US).
Nothing is what you expect. Nothing is in place. Everything is all mixed up. It is a schizophrenic city.

Posted by Meredith at 14:00 on June 19, 2005

Facing Berlin

We have been here in Berlin for one week. My initial thoughts are what I presumed, different from the preconceived notions I had of the place. Although some seem closer to the truth. First major difference is that you face your neighbor on the train. And in most cases your neighbor looks you straight on – not even nervously.

Jeremy and I are both interested in the Wall – perhaps as all visitors are. It is inconceivable that any person could even consider a feat like this one. And how strange what has been left behind in its now 16 year absence. It has been gone half as long as it existed. Germans reveal a kind of ambivalence towards it by the way in which they reveal / hide its remnants. Last night we were at Potsdammer Platz. This square was Berlin’s center before the split. It was cut nearly in two by the wall (but was also vacant due to wartime destruction) and know has been heavily redeveloped. We were scanning the area for a dark corner for Jeremy to take a piss. Down a deserted street we found an old watch tower (not in its original location). It was a comical shape – like a lollipop – just large enough for one person to climb the small circular stair that made the stem. Jeremy pissed and I looked around. Leaving the street to find our way back to the train we realized we has passed a small section of the wall (3 or 4 large panels) and what one of our books refers to as an “obstacle”. It was surrounded by an area that looked like it was under construction – a chain linked fence and unruly weeds grew up around it. It was not memorialized, but not hidden. It was just worked around as though it were not there at all – like an abandoned building or a homeless person.

The surrounding square – Potsdammer Platz – has been hyper-commercialized. Its reconstruction, in an attempt to regain its central position, has instead established as a glowing hot-spot of lights, “modern” architecture and wi-fi. It is the anti-Europe center of capitalism – global, not local - an amusement park of bright things, but with nothing to do. It is all very American. The scale of the whole square is imposing and offensive to anything human. Cars whiz past as pedestrians exit the underground wondering what exactly they are supposed to be looking at – because it all looks so blank. How does one (re)create a blank space out of a space that was barren (lacking life), not blank – one that is embedded with such a dense history. Have I missed all references to the past, to a shared history, to an establishment of a recognizable space? Or is the pain of this place enough for the Germans to want to forget? Memory is hidden here – though perhaps I just yet do not have access to it.

Posted by Meredith at 11:39 on June 12, 2005

One wall will replace another

Using the aforementioned guide, I made the journey south to find the point where the wall began, or ended, or stopped, or turned. One aspect of the hasty division between west and east Berlin in 1961 (the border was secured over the course of a single night) which I have found difficult to understand is the much overlooked fact that West Berlin was essentially an island within the GDR. I had assumed until very recently that Berlin was located on the former border between West Germany and East Germany, which seems logical—how else could the city have been so decisively split in half? Not so. On that night in 1961 the entire perimeter around West Berlin was secured by the GDR and comprised of 2 sections: the infamous Berlin Wall, which snaked through the middle of Berlin, and the remaining border along the northern, western, and southern boundaries of West Berlin. West Berliners continued with the same freedoms they always enjoyed—freedom to move about the world, to enjoy the economic benefits (and hardships) of capitalism, to participate in western democracy. East Berliners, on the other hand, were kept inside the GDR (or out of the West) behind the Iron Curtain. (Their experience of the everyday is something I’m anxious to learn more about.)

Another much neglected fact about the Berlin Wall: it wasn’t so much a wall as a system of retention, a space to deter East Berliners from, first, even approaching the border, and, second, certainly breeching the barrier. From east to west, the system generally was organized like so: 1) warning markers, painted red and white, to alert comrades of the forbidden zone; 2) sometimes large concrete barriers to defray vehicles; 3) the hinterland wall and followed by a chainlink fence crowned with barbed wire; 4) a zone of coiled razorwire; 5) the patrol track and street lamps; 6) the “death strip”, several meters wide of sand-laden space; 7) and finally the concrete wall.

But I digress. I located the southernmost point from where the Berlin Wall runs north through the city. Much of the patrol track remains in this initial section, but the space of the border has largely been overgrown with vegetation in the last 15 years. A new ecosystem has developed in the zone of the former death strip: wild grasses and flowers, an odd tree here and there. Horseback-riders from the neighboring stables have forged trails along the path of the former wall in places.

Most notably, though, a new barrier is being constructed in place of the former: a multi-lane autobahn. It will stretch for several kilometers into the center of Berlin, following much of the former wall’s path—and it is as much of a boundary. I attempted to follow the patrol track north as far as I could, which meant following the unfinished autobahn as well, and I was completely cut off from the other side, unable to find a place to cross back over into the east. The question I have been carrying with me came back to mind: where is the wall now? This new barrier may not have the same absolutist ideology behind it, or the same imperviousness, but, in a sense, its physical effect was similar to that of the former wall, especially for me as a pedestrian. I am reminded of the I-35 expressway which bisects Austin, TX from north to south (and countless others across the U.S.) and how that city seemed to by so divided along that line in so many ways. What happens here in Berlin?

Posted by Jeremy at 22:48 on June 30, 2005

Über-Spree-Trams

Posted by Jeremy at 00:06 on June 24, 2005

Cracks and Gaps and Urban Chandeliers

Exceptionally said…

Beware, though: the assimilation of these exceptional spaces is on the move. This consumption seems distant enough maybe, since there still remain so many of the “gaps and cracks” of which Lear writes, but the transformation certainly is a visible work in progress. I have to wonder for how much longer they will be forgotten, these urban voids and squatters’ compounds and abandoned warehouses and intersticial wilderness. Proper, branded space as represented by the techno-commercial miracle of Potsdammer Platz (Sony Center et al) seems to be spreading along the arteries of Berlin.

Posted by Jeremy at 01:44 on June 22, 2005

Wo ist die Mauer jetzt?

Where is the wall now? Newly arrived to Berlin, we sensed the presence of the Berlin wall, like a pervasive humming sound which at times seemed louder or softer depending on our imagined proximity to its former path. Its specter has asserted itself as the primary datum by which we have begun to understand the city, or have wished to understand the city, or have needed to understand the city. The image (and it is mostly imagined) of this monumental boundary is provocative in so many respects, raising so many questions about the nature of this place: Berlin’s socio-spatial organization, the economic, political, and historical divisions, the post-reunification project at large, the way the Berliners have (dis)acknowledged its presence and engaged this very troubling and inevitable part of their collective history.

In the first few days of frantic movement about Berlin, we looked for the wall often as we traveled by train through and around the city. We imagined that we caught a glimpse of it at certain points, but could not be sure if in fact we had seen it. Identifying the wall is difficult in that Berlin is actually punctuated with crumbling walls and buildings and infrastructure throughout much of the city, as well as blanketed with a relentless layer of graffiti—all features which, according to my preconceived notions, combine to signify “the wall.” Added to this confusion is the erratic path of the boundary as it winds through the city, especially near the Mitte (the historic center of Berlin which fell on the eastern side); the wall sometimes followed existing street patterns, but then might cut obliquely and acutely across plazas or jump quickly across a portion of the Spree River and then back again.

We recently came across a very helpful book entitled Wall Remnants — Wall Traces which comprehensively documents all extant traces of the wall. Full of detailed maps, photos, and contextual information, this guide has been instrumental in giving us a much clearer image of the physical parameters of the former wall.

The wall lingers in our imagination. But it is not the only datum by which to consider Berlin. The danger is that the wall—in all its enormity and immediacy—becomes a cliched, trite symbol which misrepresents a much more nuanced and complicated set of circumstances; especially for we foreigners who wish to deal with this city as an object of enquiry and as a place in which to live.

Posted by Jeremy at 11:37 on June 19, 2005