Category: Article
WORDS 3 – TRANSITION
Berlin is a city of TRANSITION- Everybody Comes and Goes
ARTQUEST INTERVIEW WITH ARTIST LUCY POWELL
Within the first week of my arrival in Berlin, the NewYork Times declared, “Berlin Is over!”.
What? Ive only just got here!
I have been having a Wunderbar time, taking millions of photos, going on long walks across different parts of the city, visiting galleries and museums and particular spots pertinent to icons of popular culture, meeting people and most of all finding myself liberated in being able to take it all in and work in a studio whenever I want. So this news is a little startling at first glance, but the more I talk to people who have been here a while, Berliners and artists from other countries who have been living here for a number of years, Im getting a similar vibe….
“There are a lot of stranded artists in berlin”
Have people tended to get lazy?
Are the Fat Cats from overseas cashing in?
I first came to Berlin in 2000, on a trip organised by what was then known as, ‘The North West Arts Board’, when the Arts Council was regional. I had been in Liverpool for many years and coming here was great. The city felt really alive, so much was going on, there was a definite energy, it felt like anything could happen. People were opening up their front rooms as temporary restaurants and gigs and clubs in strange and brilliant places that may not be there if you tried to return the following week. This was way before practically anything in London became a‘Pop-Up’. Visiting again 5 years ago, I was quite shocked by how much building work had gone on, for example Potsdammer Platz was almost unrecognisable. I remember in particular where Checkpoint Charlie is – turned into some sort of disgusting tourist spot where I saw white trainer and track -suit clad Americans posing for pictures and the lovely 1920’s cafe, Adlers, turned into some horrible plastic, boring new place.
The area I am staying in, that I’ve already talked about a little in my previous post- Prenzlauerberg- has changed immensely. Milchof studios where I am based, has been here for 12 years. It is in fact one of the last buildings and set ups of its kind in this area and they want to hang on to it.Almost opposite is a new housing complex , the first ‘Gated Community’ in Berlin. What do you really need a gated community for in Berlin though? Nothing happens! Who can afford to live there? This is the general consensus I have heard.
We are in the East here. When the wall came down everybody left, so this is an area that was former squats and cheap rent. When people left others moved in.One of the last punk parties went on here before the police came. Now its mainly recognised as the area of slow moving bicycles, small children and cafes a go go. The same thing happens in almost every European city-I’ve seen it for myself in Paris, Dublin and London- wherever artists initially move to because its cheap, eventually others come, pushing up rents, opening trendy cafes and shops that initially you think great, i can now buy a decent loaf of bread and sit outside with a decent pint in my local area, but generally most of the original community have no interest in or can afford such things and once its hit say, VOGUE – its all over and the artists move on, usually getting forced to move further and further from the centre of town or to a new city all-together.
How is this affecting Artists in Berlin?
INTERVIEW – Lucy Powell.
I know Lucy from our BA college days back in Liverpool. About 19 years ago Lucy moved to Berlin, so she has seen a lot of changes.
INTERVIEW: http://www.artquest.org.uk/articles/view/3_months_in_berlin_2014
LUCY’S WEBSITE: http://www.lucy-powell.com
NY TIMES ARTICLE: http://www.dw.de/berlin-is-over-but-so-what/a-17492413
WORDS 2 – Artquest Interview-Sonntag
Kerstin Honeit and New York Cheesecake
Sonntag
As part of the remit for my being in Berlin, Artquest have asked me to do some interviews about life as an artist in the city. In the first week I arrived I met April Gertler and Adrian Schiesser at an opening/launch party. Whilst chatting we discovered a co-incidental link with Peckham and a love of good cake and they invited me to Sonntag.
I shall explain.
At the heart of projects they are both engaged in, lies Sonntag. Described as a ‘social sculpture’, Sonntag began life as an idea in Adrian’s head when he first moved to Berlin three years ago. It was difficult to get an apartment and to furnish it and he didn’t know that very many people. He ended up with what might be described as a small 60’s granny flat, inherited same decade furniture and a beautiful tea set containing 35 plates. When he met April the idea for the project finally got realised. An artist is invited to do something in the apartment and April and Adrian set to work on baking the artist’s favourite cake. This is done with the utmost care and dedication to getting everything right. On the 3rd Sunday of the month the flat is opened up and the public are invited in to view the work and engage in conversation over tea and cake. A small courtesy charge is asked to cover the cost of beverages and the ingredients for the cake, which one is more than willing to give.
I arrived with an old friend who lives in the same neighbourhood of Schoneberg, a neighbourhood that I immediately took a great shine too. It feels like an area where real people actually live if you know what I mean: people from all walks of life, working, shopping, drinking. One feels a real sense of place. There is not so much new building here in the West, it seems to have stopped somewhere in the mid 80’s. There are all kinds of living spaces from grand old apartments behind big old doors to many different types of housing blocks and flats. There are plaques on walls and walls where plaques should be. As well as being the place where famous writers, musicians and actors once lived there is every shop imaginable – not to mention famous bars and music venues – in one mighty long high-street. For instance, I was told by a local that “This shop is quite famous you know, it is selling only suitcases” and there is an Apple store that actually only sells apples not computers, mainly because so many people use apples in cake baking.
I love it.
So, talking of cake again…
We partook in some fresh Peppermint Tea and New York cheesecake which just hit in all the right places and was utterly delightful. The work of artist Kirsten Honeit fitted so perfectly in this whole context. Myself and my friend got chatting to different people and had a throughly lovely time. Such a different experience to turning up at some gallery on your own, not knowing anyone and trying to get to the bar.
Sonntag = one of the nicest Sundays I have had in a very long time.
Note: Kerstin Honeit presented MOTIVES? THAT’S AN UGLY IMPLICATION an installation relating to her work-in-progress TALKING BUSINESS at Sonntag – 16 February 2014 ( see above Image)
The Next Sonntag in Berlin : 18th May, Schiesser, GossowstraBe 10,10777Berlin
Next International Sonntag : 5th October, Peckham, London
Link: http://sonntagberlin.tumblr.com
Lucienne In conversation with sonntag:
SIBYLLE-Girl about Town
I picked up some copies of this wonderful magazine in a flea Market last weekend and wanted to know a bit more about it…. SIBYLLE was a GDR magazine for Fashion and Culture that started life in 1956 and was published bi-monthy.It was considered to be the East German equivalent to Vogue magazine. Full of groovy pop pictures, this mag was really different to the other GDR fashion mags, much more hip and creative, with some coloured pages, beautiful models and containing sewing patterns. It was revolutionary because it encouraged people to be different, the opposite to the communist idea. Famous photographers such as Arno Fischer, worked for the magazine. He was very important at this time for his movments beetween east and west as a frontier runner.
WORDS 1
First Impressions:
THERE IS SO MUCH SPACE!
WHERE IS EVERYBODY?
IT’S SO QUIET!
Note- Whilst Berlin is similar in area to London it has less than half the number of people.As of March 2010 the city-state population of Berlin was 3,440,441 with London weighing in at 8,308,369 in 2012.
Peckham v Prenzlauerberg
The streets of Berlin are wide and sometimes you will hardly see a soul. At 10am in my area all is quiet, except for the birds tweeting and maybe the odd dog walker. Everyone round here seems to have a dog, usually a small dog and/ or a baby or toddler. Walking home from the U-bahn on a Wednesday at one in the morning I saw a smooching couple and then a guy having a cigarette break after finishing work at a restaurant. Thats all- and it’s quite a long walk from the U-bahn. No one has tried to run me over, shouted insults at me or got in my way when obsessively searching for nothing on their mobile. There are no crowds of loud school kids loitering outside supermarkets and I didn’t experience anything near a rush hour on the U-bahn during the week because people work different hours and a lot of shops close at 8pm. What is this place?
Compare and contrast my walk to the supermarket in Peckham to here in Prenzlauerberg-
As I step out the gate it is inevitable I will tread in dogs shit if I’m not careful and that will continue down the course of the street until I hit the main road. I usually put on my iPod for the walk to Sainsburys. I have to turn it up louder than I would normally like as I hit the second part of Queens Road toward New Cross because there is so much loud traffic which is often at a standstill. Don’t bother driving anytime between 4pm and 7pm or taking the bus because you will sit for a long time in traffic. At least four blokes on bikes will try to run me down by riding on the pavement in the course of the 10-15minutes it takes to reach the supermarket. There is a police station at one end of the road and a fire station at the other and planes going overhead all day everyday and night.
In Prenzlauerberg I am woken in the morning mainly by the sound of the birds. At lunchtime you can hear kids playing outside as there is a kindergarten next door. As I leave by the front door of the studio, I do need to watch where I’m going as yes, however ‘gentrified’ it’s got round here, people do still let their dogs shit in the street and people do still ride on the pavements despite there often being an allocated part of the pavement for cyclists and the empty wide roads to ride on, but they ride slowly and often have a child attached on the back.
Before I left London town, on a backstreet in the Rye, I noticed someone had planted Bluebells and Marigolds around the base of a couple of trees. How lovely I thought, that has totally brightened up my morning. Perhaps they don’t have a garden and this is a substitute of sorts.
I noticed a similar thing done on the street adjacent to where I am now in Berlin but with pansies. Only this is a little bit different. They are planted in front of one of the many cafes that line this street- so these flowers though pretty are really here as a little marketing ploy to entice you in for some Fruhstuck or suchlike- How do you choose which cafe to go in? How do they all manage to keep going? One thing I will say is that they are all independent. I have yet to see a Starbucks and I have no wish to.
Lucienne In Berlin 