day 115 - berlin

the television tower and the world clock: two iconic images of the GDR and the successes of east berlin. iconic buildings that represented different stereotypes depending on where you saw them from.
and now, they are have been re-absorbed into the 'new berlin' but are still traces, scars, reminders...

day 114 - berlin

it's impossible to convey the power and brilliance of daniel libeskind's jewish museum in berlin. the architecture has been created to evoke physical responses: narrow uneven corridors, voids without lighting or heating, sloping walls and spaces that can be seen but not accessed. it's one of the most astounding buildings I've ever visited. and I visit it every time I'm here.

last time I came however, there was an addition of an installation in one of libeskind's 'voids' - a space that runs the height of the building and has no lighting or heating. the installation is called fallen leaves and today I took some pictures...


the work was created by menashe kadishman and is both a memorial to the holocaust, and also dedicated to all innocent victims of war.
the artist asks you to walk over the hundreds of faces made of sheet metal. but when you do, they echo and reverberate throughout the space and so once you are walking in the installation all you want to do is get out. but if you leave quickly there are ramifications: more noise and a difficult uneven surface. this work is eerie, and makes you quiet and reflect on the faces you are walking over. it's a profound experience, in a profoundly experiential building...

day 113 - berlin

after the 'wall pickers'...



these sections are now being preserved before they disappear entirely...

day 112 - berlin

'the kiss' depicting Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (USSR) and Erich Honecker (GDR) greeting each other.
the original photograph is equally as passionate although not in a trabant...


these images were taken at the famous east side gallery which is a 1.3km stretch of remaining wall that was painted by artists in 1990 to celebrate the wall's collapse. it's a bit worse for wear now, but I'll put up some more images here in the next few days...


this piece of the wall is at potsdamer platz which was leveled after WWII and then became a large part of the anti-facist protection barrier during the GDR.

this piece is in front of the new sony centre and says: at this point the first gap appeared in 1989 in the Berlin wall

day 111 - berlin

the government has meticulously documented traces of the wall and the anti-facist protection barrier and so yesterday we went to find some of them.

these 'goose neck' light posts were designed specifically for the death strip and the numbers printed on them marked the limit of the patrol area. this is limit 35 in section 13...


the photo on the left is a void left in the hinterland on gartenstraße next to the railway. the old wall next to the train lines was used as an additional part of the protection barrier, but we had to climb it to see this void. I knew the void was there (from the government website) but the train wall seemed to present a difficulty in finding it. kindly someone had thought about that and had left foot markings and ropes to get up and over the wall! everything is an adventure here...

day 110 - berlin

there is a 'wall memorial' on Bernauer Straße in mitte that has re-constructed a section of the wall, the death strip and its installations and barriers.

on the left you can see how the wall looked and behind it, you can see one of the many cemeteries that was decimated to make way for the death strip. the 'no man's land' photos I took on the first day come from this area. on the right you can see the renovated wall from the western side which would have been convered in graffiti...


this is one of the electrical control boxes situated in the death strip. in the 4th incarnation of the wall (it kept getting improved) there were automatic weapons triggered by trip wires in addition to the numerous guards in the watch towers and flood lights...

the memorial information talks about this section of the wall: "Bernauer Straße became especially symbolic of the inhumanity of the Berlin Wall: Because of the way the border was drawn in this area - the houses on the southern side of the street were in the Soviet sector, while the sidewalks in front of them belonged to the French sector - the Wall had an especially dramatic impact here. When the border troops started walling up the windows on the ground floor of these houses in August 1961, people attempted to escape to the western part of the city through the windows on the upper floors. Pictures of these escape attempts were seen around the world. Later the tenants living on this side of the street were evicted, and the houses were torn down in 1965. Only the ground floor façades remained; these were used as part of the border wall until 1979."

day 109 - berlin

I've been riding around trying to capture the traces of buildings that have been lost. there are so many.

there are such clear scars of buildings that have been bombed or pulled down because of damage or because they were in the way of the 'protection barrier'. it's quite disconcerting when you come across holes in the facades that reveal such a clear action. what is even more disconcerting is that although most have been left and are obvious in their disappearance, often things have just been built around these holes (rather than them being re-built which is happening more now), making something completely new, that isn't quite new...


there is this gorgeous michael ondaatje poem about scars which questions whether you would tell a new lover about a scar from an incident in the past. do you hide it? or tell them the details about something they can never be involved in? I'm not sure what the answer is in this case...

day 108 - berlin

back at the demolision site of palast der republik - this major scar within city is still causing controversy.

this building housed the government of the GDR (and cafes, discoteques and even a cinema) that was built on the even older site of the berlin city palace which was damaged in WWII and consequently pulled down. during the cold war, east berliners used this building to meet, socialise and experience life. it was more than just a government building, it was a symbol of normal (and interesting) life.


but after reunification the building ceased to have a use and was re-claimed by artists. it became a haus of experimentation, innovation and amazing experiences. so this symbol of repression also housed hope, experimentation and was the funkiest place in town in two different decades.

a torn city has inhabitants also torn about what should be kept, what is a symbol of opression, what is a symbol of transformation and who should make these decisions...

> go to a lovely film about the palast looking at these ideas here...

day 107 - berlin

one of hitler's bunkers built for the people in berlin that also housed anti-aircraft guns on its roof.
this bunker is now almost hidden by trees in Humboldt-Hain park...


after reunification, the government tried to dismantle this bunker but found the infrastructure too solid.
so, they piled the rubble from the aborted attempts near the remains, forming a small hill which is now covered with trees. the remaining half has been left for rock-climbers and the curious...

day 106 - berlin

this watch tower (click to enlarge), now surrounded by pink apartments, is one of the few left in berlin. the official GDR name for the wall, these watch towers and the 'death strip' that had automatic weapons triggered by trip wires, was the anti-facist-protection wall.

the remains of the jagged wall that was part of this anti-facist defense system is about 300 metres from this rare remaining watch tower...


this watch tower is now a memorial and is called after Gunter Litfin, the first person shot on the anti-facist-protection wall on the 24th of august 1962 – 11 days after the wall was erected...

day 105 - berlin

this building has been left untouched since WWII and still has bullet holes everywhere...


when I first visited this city ten years ago, there were bullet holes in buildings everywhere. it's not so common now, but the front of this building on oberberger str. in fashionable mitte, reveals a trace of the unrest that was here for so long. the buildings either side have rendered these traces away, but three doors up, a renovated building has left two large bullet-riddled sections of their facade as a reminder...

day 104 - berlin

this small ten day project is about berlin scars. so an obvious place to start is with the death strip and the berlin wall. in mitte, the geographic centre of berlin, and part of the old east, the wall took a leap into the west to annex this old centre.
after reunification, this part of town became super-hip. brad pitt has an apartment here. but right in the middle of some of the most expensive real estate in town is part of the old no man's land between the walls, which has still not been re-claimed... (click on images to enlarge)







lest we forget: there is no forgetting here. when the wall was erected, all the buildings in this grassy area were removed to make the 'death strip' and the buildings that were left (including these) had their windows blocked up to stop 'escape' - people were even forced to start entering their houses from the back door.

wherever the wall was, the foundations have, where possible, been preserved. this is another angle of the same area on bernauer str. with the edge of the wall scarring across the street as a permanent reminder. this area was one of the most famous streets during the divided city as the walls were so close you could see into the gardens across the 'street'...

day 94

the construction in the middle of this picture is palast der republik which was built in the 70s to house the east german government. it was built on the site of the berlin city palace that was bombed in WWII and then demolished in the 50s. but now, for a number of reasons (including asbestos walls) it is once again, a building in the process of demolition, symbolically taking years to disappear.


but most inhabitants of this city take this kind of change for granted: when I asked what had happened to the empty centre of this church, the unemotional answer was: an american bomb.

day 93

this cafe on schwedter str. in mitte is so über that is has no name. while I joke that things in paris are fabulous, berlin-nonchalance cannot be reproduced lightly...








.

day 92

tonight was the final of the euro cup 08 (yep, that's a soccer game - I had to ask too) and we went to an old dis-used transmissions factory in prenzlauer berg to watch it: 800 german fans willing deutchland to be victorious over spain. alas, they lost...


the line to get into this exclusive venue and remanent of the past went around the block. they locked the gates two hours before it started and inside there was nothing but beer, chorizo and national spirit...

day 91

finally in berlin for a few days of inspiration...






I just love this city - it's so comforting. while it's large and unwieldy, it's also like a small town.
it's a city of contrasts and contradictions and scarring. and somehow it's captured my heart...