I open the gallery three days a week, spending most of my 21 hours a week there translating exhibition texts and artist descriptions from German into English. I also talk to the gallery’s visitors about the exhibition, which some times goes over better than others. With them I usually have to speak a little bit of German, and my coworker ensures that she speaks in no other language. It is quite clear to me that my conversational skills need a lot more practice than my reading and writing ones do, so today I sat in on a course at a private Sprachschule only a couple of blocks away from my apartment. The teacher and the course suited me quite well, and I think I will be enrolling in an intensive course that will last me the next four weeks. This means I’ll be forced to wake up at 8:00 or earlier every weekday, something I haven’t done more than three or four times since being here. A strict schedule like that will do me well. It’s pretty safe to guarantee that I’ll be the most energetic pupil in my group.
Let’s see how much of this past month I can remember. I have been to a couple more gallery openings (mixed media artists Michele O’Marah and Henry Taylor at Peres Projects, photographer Alex Flach at Pool Gallery, photographer Leonard Freed at C/O Berlin, and a group show at NGBK this coming Friday). I have not yet made it to the Neue Nationalgalerie to see the Sugimoto show but have been to the Helmut Newton Foundation and photography museum. There was a show on paparazzi photographers I liked quite a bit but not as much as the show on Man Ray at Martin-Gropius-Bau.
For a couple of days the other week I volunteered at Tuned City, a festival on architectural spaces and acoustics. Friday’s event was held in an old, abandoned train station located right next to techno-powerhouse Berghain. The building itself was an urban explorer’s gem, with floors were covered in graffiti, broken glass, and the shit of squatters who may have considered the place home. There I met sound- and video-artist John Grzinich after being assigned to sit in an empty room and keep watch on the film projector. His film looped for hours on end, and I found myself utterly entranced by the aural synchronization of the rather abrasive field recordings with the building’s own sounds and visual aesthetic. It was a cold rainy day with just enough wind to suck the blue, plastic tarps hung over the windows in rhythm with the clang of metal pots and broken concrete in John’s video. That evening there was a little field recordings festival, where a group played their collection of found sounds from their laptops, improvising and playing off each other’s sounds. It was set up in such a way, with speakers in each corner of a large, mostly empty space, so that different sounds were heard depending on where the listener was situated, creating a really collaborative yet sort of subjective listening environment.
That happened to be the 4th of July. Rachel came back to Berlin that afternoon, joining me at the festival. As we were leaving, we caught the tail end of a fireworks show from the bridge at the Warschauer S-bahn station. For Rachel’s birthday Chaz, Rachel and I went dancing at Lido’s At The Soul Inn (whose music was sadly no comparison to the booty-shaking funk and boogaloo played at the Soul Explosion up at the Volkspark Pavillon in Friedrichshain). Sunday evening we found a bar here in Kreuzberg, Würgeengel, named after a Buñuel film. We also discovered what is perhaps the most horribly (horribly) wonderful cocktail of all time: the aptly-named Berlin Station Chief. Its recipe revealed itself to be 3 parts Bombay to 1 part single malt scotch. Since Mondays are free at the Deutsche Guggenheim, we went to see Freeway Balconies, a show curated by artist Collier Schorr. The selection of the pieces and how they were displayed was the most intriguing element of the show and also the major topic of conversation, our own as well as most everyone else’s. That evening we stopped by Kunsthaus Tacheles, a rather historic alternative artist collective and topped off our trip to Oranienburger Straße with coffee and shisha.
Tuesday evening we made it in the nick of time to see the Martha Graham Dance Company perform at the Staatsoper. Wednesday was a lovely Italian dinner (rabbit, finally!) on Kollwitzplatz in Prenzlauerberg, followed by cake at my favorite baklava bakery in Kreuzberg. Thursday ended with just a little scotch from Room 77, a simple but neat, relatively intimate bar on Graefestraße. On Friday we traveled outside of Berlin to see Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp and old training center for SS officers in Oranienburg. The camp was designed to be a model for later camps. Probably the most distressing part for me was the room for medical examinations and autopsies, which imprisoned medics were forced to perform. They were required to declare a cause of death, even when the real cause would be quite obvious and an autopsy totally superfluous. Then again, the foundations of the execution rooms and crematorium were equally horrifying. The experience really does not leave one too optimistic about or sympathetic to the state of mankind in the contemporary world.
That afternoon we went to see the Richard Serra videos at Kunst-Werke but were pretty blown away by Riccarda Roggan’s photographs. There were several things I really liked about her work, but mostly how it reminded me that a photographer is also an artist. Not just someone who is meant to document the world around them. I often forget that a photographer holds the right to create a story, to construct an aesthetically based world just like any writer or painter would. The photojournalist and street photographer in me always fight against my desire to stage a photograph or to shoot anything that isn’t entirely true to life. I’m really excited about the possibility to start working from this realization, even though I would like to stay on the streets and out of the studio. (For those curious few, I have received two offers as a party photographer.)
After Rachel left, I had to adjust once again to living alone. Having someone cook dinner for me while I’m busy at work becomes addictive very quickly. Before hosting I also rarely went out, having had cocktails perhaps only one other night. My homebody lifestyle is for a large part due to the lousy weather. While June was quite lovely, July has been little else but cloudy skies and rain. Today, for example, I wore a sweater over my t-shirt as well as a thick scarf and still felt too cold. I have yet to turn on the heat register in my apartment, but the time might be fast coming.
To compliment my solitary condition, I went to a small cinema to see Taxi Driver, which I really liked and had never seen before that evening. It is a very powerful movie, and I caught so many shots, gestures and lines (not only “Are you talking to me?”) that I have seen referenced in other films. Going alone to the cinema is one of those pastimes I often forget how much I love doing. I certainly prefer it to going with someone else, though it is also nice to go out afterward to discuss what our thoughts and things. But sometimes I see a movie only for me, and I see no reason to share these moments with anyone else.
This past weekend I missed yet another fashion week (the first one being in Paris). I didn’t see any of the shows or attend any of the after-parties, though Laszlo talked me into going out on Saturday. We went first to a party in his apartment building (where I unloaded my first batch of cupcakes with great success), then afterwards to Watergate, one of Berlin’s less pretentious electro clubs. I left and went home quite early, as I have been suffering from some unusual ear pain for the past few days that has me nauseated and just plain cranky. I suspect I have a middle ear infection and will have to see how much it will cost to see a doctor as a completely uninsured foreigner.
Earlier that day I met my Australian friends Tom and Laura at the zoo to celebrate Laura’s birthday. We had a really lovely picnic there, and spent several hours wandering and watching the animals. I am sure I saw Knut, the famed (now-not-so) baby polar bear, though I am not entirely sure. The hippo habitat was particularly impressive and probably the best hippo exhibit I have ever seen.
Sunday morning I woke up early enough to go hunting for antique telescopes (for an exhibition, not for personal use) at the Straße des 17. Juni flea market. The afternoon was lazy and slow, consisting of a late (4:30 pm) brunch (a feta and arugula omelette and Eiskaffee, which is more like a coffee float or milkshake than the iced coffee drinks we have in the States) and, after, a long sit in the nearby bocce park with Laszlo.
And that brings me to this evening. I sit here reflecting on my past two months in Berlin as well as what I hope will come from my third. As has already been public knowledge for a week now, my life here in Berlin as I currently know it will end in late August. Then, I will return to the States (Ann Arbor, again) to work and, if I am lucky, take another class. I have not really had any income since living in Berlin and it is about time for me to stop borrowing and start paying off my credit card. I have been able to stay within my budget most weeks, which has been set at a very reasonable 35€ (about $55) for food and entertainment. This has allowed me fresh fruit, vegetables and bread from the weekday Turkish market in addition to my normal groceries and a decent meal out (Thai, Indian, Italian, brunch) once a week. Still, I find it necessary to return home for a bit and am even looking forward to it.
And so there it is.
