Saturday, June 2, 2012

Sight Seeing

Today I took a tour through some of the art galleries located in Mitte. In one gallery, there were two paintings of a clown holding a plate of flowers and offering one to the viewer. When you looked through a small screen in front of the paintings, they overlapped and created a three dimensional effect. Across from that, a long television screen mounted on the wall played a video from the clown's point of view of people receiving flowers. On top of it all played a soundtrack of whining electronic noises timed to the video. It was...bizarre. If a clown with molecules for hair handed me a flower while making discordant R2D2 noises, I certainly wouldn't take it.

After the tour, I headed off on my own to visit the Brandenburger Gate and the Holocaust memorial that we had discussed in class. As I came out of the train station and into the plaza right in front of the gate, the size of the gate finally struck me. Here was an enormous stone construction hundreds of years old whose primary function is to create negative space. I perceived the vast gaps between its columns just as much as the columns themselves. It is not a gate for keeping out, but for letting through. It moved me more than some of the art I saw earlier today, that's for sure.

Finally, I popped over to the Holocaust Mahnmal. It is an enormous field of smooth stone blocks which start off fairly low to the ground on the outskirts but quickly rise to approximately 5 meters tall. Furthermore, the ground itself dips and rises so that you might see someone one second, and the next they have gone under and out of view. The idea behind all this was to provide a space of reflection and solitary and to demonstrate how something might start off small, but you can quickly find yourself in over your head. It's a nice idea. However, it falls apart when people enter the mix. There are no plaques to clarify the purpose of the memorial, and the information center located underneath it limits the number of people allowed inside at a time creating a line that not everyone (read "myself") is willing to wait in.

As a result, the atmosphere in and around the monument is relaxed, social and even playful. Adults smoke and picnic on the table high stones. Youths jump from one stone to another, going "further in and higher up." Kids play hide and seek crossed with tag on the ground level. I tried to remain serious, to let the memorial's grim message press on my heart, to resist the urge to shimmy my way up between two tall stones and emerge high above the ground. I completely and utterly failed. The most serious thought I could conjure up was that I would not want to be there at night when anyone might be there with me.

1 comment:

  1. Your comments about the Holocost Mahnmal make me think about a couple of things. First of all, I want to share your indignation. As I look at the picture, the stone block remind me of tombs. There is some gravity (pun intended) in a graveyard. This brings me to Memorial Day and Death anniversaries where people picnic in the fields among the dead. I think of the Lincoln Memorial where one can share a solemn memory yet be among those who run up and down the steps and enjoy the vista. Finally, I'm brought to Mel Brooks and his insistance that, in order to overthrow the hold the Nazis still have on our memories, he mocks them. Maybe those who frolic are giving the memory of those who administered such a heinous act the proverbial finger.