I visited Berlin, November 2017. The experience was influential to the rationale behind my project; I was drawn to the way certain factors had formed part of Berlin’s identity, in particular:
1. Road Markings - Street markings that lead to tourist attractions. The idea of journeys interested me; tracking movements of people and human interaction particularly relates to the idea of memories being formed. Aesthetically faded arrows represent faded memories, and the cracks in the tarmac were another visual representation of transience. The lines in the tarmac and linear paint markings join the images together and symbolised the way memories are created within the city.
2. Berlin wall political art and reminders of segregated history.
3. The contrast of the wall’s historical memories with tourist attractions selling artefacts and fragments of the wall.
4. Impressions the wall had left, the Berlin wall museum with metal bars protruding.
5. Layers of posters, torn weathered layers, memories that have faded away but reminders of them still exist.
6. Old vs new architecture, re-building areas of the city. Additionally, Berlin has created pop up homes for refugees, which fill up empty spaces and reflect the integration present within the city today.
7. Buildings submerged by layers of vines and plants; which visualise ways memories can engulf the city.
8. Sense of human interaction, graffiti, pen on the wall, carvings on table, I became fascinated with shoes that were hanging from a bridge which were embedded with memories, shoes tell a story.
9. I also enjoyed empty rooms, no interaction, representing memories about to be created.
10. The Holocaust memorial is a simple concept, yet so powerful. I was inspired by the varying scales of the blocks, it’s repetitive qualities and also the way cement is utilised to create strong metaphors - being a strong united material; evokes the memories of the people who were killed as a result of the holocaust.
11. Jewish museum, artefacts and objects given by parents to remember them by. When children were taken to concentration camps.
Kommentarer