Berlin, Berlin!
Homage to a City
“Berlin, Berlin” was the title of a TV series which started in 2002 when our family– on behalf of our ten- year- old daughter - was gathering once a week on the living-room couch to watch it.
In 2020/21 during my current wanderings through the city of Berlin I am collecting different cards, flyers and brochures, all kind of printed materials, that inform about events, shows, museums and sites of public affairs. In my eyes these objects offer me a view through which the city is representing itself.
I am heading to locations I've heard that are interesting and after I arrived there I am going on and often find other places even more interesting in the surroundings.
The material which I thereby collect is inspiring me. I am building Pop -up stages out of it. I make them by cutting certain details out of the cards, then putting them together and by unfolding they build up to something like the stage of a small theatre. Each of them tells its own story and the same time a story of my experience.
The stages have different themes:
Back in October 2020 on a monthlong stay in Berlin I started my project and collected many cards on my wanderings through the city. I made stages on the themes of architecture, the gallery-scene, theatre, nature, the people and how they live and the issues of social discourse. During this time my view of the city was somehow general.
During my 5-month long stay from September 2021 to February 2022 I had the opportunity to gather more intensive and specific insight into the dimensions of the city. So some of the Pop-up stages are dedicated to certain museums and sites, special exhibitions or artists I got to know and who impressed me.
All these locations added a new view and deeper insight to my knowledge of the city.
My intention was now to research the history of the city, so especially the era of the National Socialism. Therefore I visited the great variety of museums and research spaces about the time of National Social policy, the holocaust, the war and the destruction of the city, which in my opinion create the base of all societal happenings afterwards: reconstruction, parting of the city, building of Berlin Wall, life in the parted city, fall of the wall, and afterwards in the time of growing together and new economic growth how the forces of art, culture, social movements and economy are acting together and against each other.
All this I have tried to integrate into my stories of the city -combining it at the same time with some joke or irony.
Finally I have completed about 40 paper Pop- up stages of different size which represent my presence in the city, my acquaintance and interaction with it.
Kathrina Rudolph, 24.1.22
The exhibition is open from 27.2.-26.3. by application to info [at] scopebln [dot] org
There will be a Finissage on 26.3. from 6 p.m.
further information see: www.scopebln.org
