One doesn’t ‘adopt’ Berlin; the city adopts you. If you’re lucky. It’s just one of those things.
The city did just that for a group of wandering musician-gypsy-festival organisers from India recently. In Germany as a panel of ‘music experts’ from the region, the group was in Berlin and then Cologne in August as part of an initiative undertaken by the Goethe Institute in conjunction with the well-known electronic music festival/professional music fair, C/O Pop.
As is wont to happen when a group of dynamic individuals all working towards the same end, albeit in different, if complementary fields, comes together, this group wasn’t content to sit back and merely watch proceedings unfold, talking to festival organisers from across Europe and c. to see what could materialise by way of collaborative enterprise between European (German, more pertinently) and South Asian musicians/event organisers/record labels. They wanted to perform. And perform they did.
Archana Prasad, an artist from Bangalore who ‘plays’ with ‘Lounge Piranha’ in the capacity of a visual artist (or ‘VJ’) had something to do with this. An independent local art gallery, ‘PutiKlub’ in the uber-trendy Western area of Kreuzsberg had exhibited Prasad’s work when she was in Germany earlier this year. She contacted them again, saying she was back as part of a group of musicians and artists who wanted to organise an audio-visual installation/presentation while they were in Berlin. Manolo, the owner of the gallery, jumped at the idea.
Thus was born ‘Nameless Now’, which saw electronic musicians Samrat Bharadwaj, Varun Desai and Prashant Pallemoni from India, RnB singer Randhir Witana from Sri Lanka and mandolin player Faisal Gill from Pakistan come together to lay down and create a musical score onto which Prasad, projecting onto a wall of the gallery converted into a gigantic screen, ‘played’ with images “suggested by the music these guys created”.
Jamming with each other – letting the one and then the other take centre-stage – the act’s main protagonists did their thing, wowing the assembled Berliners (and a motley crew they were as well – Turks, Mexicans, Middle-Easterners and Spaniards, among others, rubbed shoulders with the more indigenous members of the audience), as only they knew how.
This example, so typical of the city, serves to highlight the openness of Berlin’s attitude; its assimilative state of mind – everything that constitutes the city’s cultural consciousness, which consists of so many, many parts, each one generously embraced.
Berlin is living proof of the veracity of Calvino’s claim: Here is a city that constantly reinvents, rewrites, and in so doing, reiterates itself. This it does by dint of its unique ability to not simply make room for the ‘other’ to its norm, but by suspending with the very idea of a norm, thus abolishing in the same fell swoop the need for a creation of the ‘other’.
Showing posts with label Germany - Berlin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Germany - Berlin. Show all posts
Friday, November 28, 2008
'Harmony in Germany': Another small-scale reflection on a decidedly human-sized city
If this piece sounds like an ode to Berlin, so much the better: that’s exactly what it is meant to be; a paean to a city which celebrates ‘humanity’ in its many facets, most notably in its architecture.
Where the imposing (undeniably beautiful, nevertheless) gothic cathedrals of Cologne, Angers, Paris or Tours are meant to dwarf; leaving one with no delusions of aggrandisement to labour under, the scale of buildings in Berlin is decidedly human – it fits us well, and doesn’t make people feel like immaterial specks of dust to be trodden rough-shod over by a whimsical higher force.
In this, perhaps, lies the city’s singularity. It places the human being at the ‘centre’ of its ontology, and derives an exquisite pleasure from letting its inhabitants know as much. This physical scale isn’t, however, to be confused with a smallness in the scope of Berlin’s undertakings: ‘Charité’, one of the biggest hospitals in Europe is housed here, and has long been recognised as one of the leading lights in the progress of medicine; the awe-inspiring Bode and Hamburger Contemporary Art museums (the latter housing some brilliant Warhols – but that is another story waiting to be told) are food for some of the most spectacular thoughts one can possibly hope to, well, think.
The focal point here is that these institutions don’t confound because of their size; they don’t overwhelm or make one long for the surety that only a 10X10 room provides, to make us feel ‘relevant’ in this world and in our own skins. It feels as though the thought that went behind these constructions was one which sought to reinstate our faith in ourselves, since it used the normal human being as the model in its determining of the scale of the structure at hand.
The religion that Berlin is founded upon, therefore, is clearly that of humanism.
This fact is also borne out in the ‘walkability’ quotient of the city. There are several cities and towns in Germany considerably smaller than Berlin, and yet one can’t help but walk while in Berlin. Or cycle, of course. Taking a cab, the (super-efficient, but then almost all things German [save their national railway] tend to be) tube or a bus just doesn’t allow for the same familiarity as walking the streets of Berlin does.
The Wall might well have come down in ’89, but the psychological barriers which were its attendants persist yet: people are ‘Easterners’ or ‘Westerners’ first, and ‘Berliners’ next. A city poised on this wildly interesting precipice, the surest way to come to terms with the diversity and ‘many-headed monster’, to borrow from Rushdie, that is Berlin, is to walk. And it isn’t difficult when the city’s streets and very architecture call out to you to do just that.
Where the imposing (undeniably beautiful, nevertheless) gothic cathedrals of Cologne, Angers, Paris or Tours are meant to dwarf; leaving one with no delusions of aggrandisement to labour under, the scale of buildings in Berlin is decidedly human – it fits us well, and doesn’t make people feel like immaterial specks of dust to be trodden rough-shod over by a whimsical higher force.
In this, perhaps, lies the city’s singularity. It places the human being at the ‘centre’ of its ontology, and derives an exquisite pleasure from letting its inhabitants know as much. This physical scale isn’t, however, to be confused with a smallness in the scope of Berlin’s undertakings: ‘Charité’, one of the biggest hospitals in Europe is housed here, and has long been recognised as one of the leading lights in the progress of medicine; the awe-inspiring Bode and Hamburger Contemporary Art museums (the latter housing some brilliant Warhols – but that is another story waiting to be told) are food for some of the most spectacular thoughts one can possibly hope to, well, think.
The focal point here is that these institutions don’t confound because of their size; they don’t overwhelm or make one long for the surety that only a 10X10 room provides, to make us feel ‘relevant’ in this world and in our own skins. It feels as though the thought that went behind these constructions was one which sought to reinstate our faith in ourselves, since it used the normal human being as the model in its determining of the scale of the structure at hand.
The religion that Berlin is founded upon, therefore, is clearly that of humanism.
This fact is also borne out in the ‘walkability’ quotient of the city. There are several cities and towns in Germany considerably smaller than Berlin, and yet one can’t help but walk while in Berlin. Or cycle, of course. Taking a cab, the (super-efficient, but then almost all things German [save their national railway] tend to be) tube or a bus just doesn’t allow for the same familiarity as walking the streets of Berlin does.
The Wall might well have come down in ’89, but the psychological barriers which were its attendants persist yet: people are ‘Easterners’ or ‘Westerners’ first, and ‘Berliners’ next. A city poised on this wildly interesting precipice, the surest way to come to terms with the diversity and ‘many-headed monster’, to borrow from Rushdie, that is Berlin, is to walk. And it isn’t difficult when the city’s streets and very architecture call out to you to do just that.
'Harmony in Germany': Small-scale reflections on large-scale windows
If there’s one thing I’ve learnt about Berlin, it is that this city is big on reflections. It likes to see, be seen and be seen seeing. The fabulous windows in my room which run from ceiling to floor, looking out onto the drama that is Oranienburger Strasse by night or day allow, equally, for the Berliners waking past on the aforementioned Strasse to look into my hotel room and see whatever it is I intend them to.
And this doesn’t hold true just for living spaces either. The brilliant jazz clubs lining the market place off Friedrich Strasse also have enormous glass fronts looking out onto the street – a way to draw people in, clearly, but it also means that the fabulous music on display can be enjoyed even by those unwilling or unable to pay the steep (relatively) entry fee that most of these places command.
This idea of individual space not necessarily having to equate with the inability of others to look into that which is ‘ours’ is the interesting thing here. The fact that someone else can look into my hotel room from across the street doesn’t make it any less ‘mine’, because, for the most part, this gaze isn’t an intrusive one.
Whilst still preoccupied with this notion, I found myself at the Holocaust Memorial in the heart of town, next to the Brandenburger Tor, one of the better-known symbols of Berlin. The memorial is unprepossessing in appearance – it comprises a series of concrete slabs of varying height and size, laid out in a symmetry which chills by virtue of its total and complete precision. In every direction, the Memorial gives out onto parks and solid new constructions, visible from any point within its confines.
Underfoot is gravel, and thousands of small, tar squares, which put one in mind of the ruthlessly methodical, clinical fashion in which the events the Memorial marks took place. The concrete slabs get higher, reaching almost twice a person’s height the closer one gets to the centre.
The irony, driven home impeccably by the Memorial, is that the victims of the regime, like the visitors to the monument, could see, clearly, that there was an elsewhere – an outside world – it’s just that they weren’t going to be allowed to be part of it.
The murkiness of Germany’s history, therefore, to my mind, goes a long way towards explaining its people’s newly-found insistence on transparency in every way shape and form: in governance and its procedures, in accountability at the work place, and, as it happens, in windows as well.
And this doesn’t hold true just for living spaces either. The brilliant jazz clubs lining the market place off Friedrich Strasse also have enormous glass fronts looking out onto the street – a way to draw people in, clearly, but it also means that the fabulous music on display can be enjoyed even by those unwilling or unable to pay the steep (relatively) entry fee that most of these places command.
This idea of individual space not necessarily having to equate with the inability of others to look into that which is ‘ours’ is the interesting thing here. The fact that someone else can look into my hotel room from across the street doesn’t make it any less ‘mine’, because, for the most part, this gaze isn’t an intrusive one.
Whilst still preoccupied with this notion, I found myself at the Holocaust Memorial in the heart of town, next to the Brandenburger Tor, one of the better-known symbols of Berlin. The memorial is unprepossessing in appearance – it comprises a series of concrete slabs of varying height and size, laid out in a symmetry which chills by virtue of its total and complete precision. In every direction, the Memorial gives out onto parks and solid new constructions, visible from any point within its confines.
Underfoot is gravel, and thousands of small, tar squares, which put one in mind of the ruthlessly methodical, clinical fashion in which the events the Memorial marks took place. The concrete slabs get higher, reaching almost twice a person’s height the closer one gets to the centre.
The irony, driven home impeccably by the Memorial, is that the victims of the regime, like the visitors to the monument, could see, clearly, that there was an elsewhere – an outside world – it’s just that they weren’t going to be allowed to be part of it.
The murkiness of Germany’s history, therefore, to my mind, goes a long way towards explaining its people’s newly-found insistence on transparency in every way shape and form: in governance and its procedures, in accountability at the work place, and, as it happens, in windows as well.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)