[Zoo]Logical Garden
Photographing Berlin by Night
The Void
The Angel of History
Olympiastadion
[Thirteen pre-digital photo-textual works. Produced as 100x75cm laminated Cibachromes on aluminium for exhibition, and as a boxed set of postcards & text for dissemination, during a residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, 1987. Critically celebrating Berlin's 750th anniversary and it's stint as 'European City of Culture' 1988]
about BERLIN BEI NACHT [1988]
There's no such place as West Berlin - ask them in the Deutsche Demokratische Republik - it's called 'Vestberlin', [translates: WESTberlin, WESTWORLD], but there's still no such place. Ask them in Bonn, political capital of the Western Bundesrepublik - where the elected representatives of 'free Berlin' have no say - it's a constriction of speech. Like the pole at true North, West Berlin is erected by language - at absolute West everywhichway is East.
Images and words - gathered during cold-war reconnaiscence - reconstrue the average visitor's overview of the city ...turning ruin into facade. At night glaring neon makes shrapnel-scars [and ugly Marshal-planned buildings alike] invisible. In that moment when we celebrate 750 years of Berlin, history is collapsed. Lying in ruin behind the scenes, we have found Berlin bei Nacht.
Those who live there - behind the facade - know better. Some attempt an antidote to the word-objects of Consumerism with spray-paint stolen from 'Bauhaus', [others use glue]. The paint, unlike neon, exposes what it covers - but it too is primarily formal. It marks out a territory - the street - where a stand is to be taken. This is no place for the very young or the very old, but they are just the ones without choice. The ghetto is suddenly around them, the very innocent and the very guilty.
For some, this is Paradise. At the very least it is a place where
I live and work. To make an accurate picture of such a state
of affairs
you must rewrite the caption underlying it.
This is my work... Ich bin Berliner.
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