EXPEDITIONS
CULTURAL CAPITAL
Sid Shepherd (Year 13) savours the delights of Berlin’s contemporary art world
T he October half term saw a cohort of enthusiastic Sixth-Form Dulwich artists take to the streets of Berlin. Led by an experienced assembly of teachers, we were pitched into the city’s confrontational art scene at the Hamburger Bahnhof, where the works of Turkish artist Gulsun Karamustafa, and Julian Rosefeldt’s bizarre-yet-brilliant film installation, Manifesto , explore themes such as Futurism, Dadaism and Suprematism and engage with burning issues like human trafficking, migration and freedom of expression. Art, Berliners understand, must engage critically with the world around it. Sometimes, however, that task seems impossible. The Holocaust Memorial – situated near the Brandenburg Gate, right in the city centre – was designed by Peter Eisenman and Buro Happold and unveiled in 2005, 60 years after the end of Hitler’s genocidal war. It testifies not only the bleak and brutal moments in the city’s history, but to the role art can play in exploring even the darkest moments of human suffering. The jumble of exterior walls is perplexing; the mazed pathways reveal eerie, concrete voids, one of which contains Menashe Kadishman’s Fallen Leaves installation. The many thousands of thick, iron plates covering the floor commemorate the senseless violence inflicted on the Jews of Europe during the Second World War. If history can be remembered in works of art, it can also become works of art. At the East Side Gallery, we walked along a stretch of the Berlin Wall that remains to this day. Not even the ice-bitten Berlin breeze could detract from the significance of this flimsy, graffiti-stained wall.
An afternoon in the environs of Potsdammer Strasse, boasting a wide array of independent and commercial spaces, brought us into contact with the German gallery scene. At the Blain Southern Gallery, Chiharu Shiota presented us, in her web-like ocean of red thread, with a meditation on uncertainty and wonder. We witnessed a techno-scientific- artistic collaboration at the beautiful Martin Gropius Bau, one of the city’s prime exhibition halls. And we explored another breathtaking venue in the Sammlung Boros, a Nazi air-raid shelter, turned psychedelic club, turned art collection, which exhibits the likes of Wolfgang Tillmans and Michael Sailstorfer. There, Ai Weiwei’s work, Tree (2009/10), really captured my imagination. The work speaks of a loss of cultural meaning, while showing the visual power of art in the form of a newly assembled, powerful tree, conveying the ambivalent image of life with all its breaks. An outstandingly raw, edgy and inspiring experience for student and teacher alike, the Boros collection was a thought-provoking, in-your-face exhibition – a real highlight of the visit. Overall, this trip presented us with a wide-lens view of Berlin. The main attractions, the inspiring architecture and the artistic underbelly showed us why it has an outstanding reputation as a cultural hub. We certainly gained greatly in experience and knowledge – not just in terms of considering the physical presentation of our work, but in reflecting on the vital skills to be cultivated in order to improve each one of our personal art practices.
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