Greetings from Berlin

This July August I was lucky enough to be invited to do a short studio residency at the VCA’s studio-apartment in Berlin, a partnership with Phasmid Studios in the East German borough of Marzahn.

The studio is between some new housing developments and a row of factories mostly surrounded by bushland. From the studio windows you can see the huge smoke stack of the Heizkraftwerk, a gas power plant: a constant background to my studio endeavours.

The studio is large and comfortable and despite the fact that most people are horrified that anyone would live so far from the city centre it’s only a 25 minute tram ride, a tram that reminds me of Melbourne so much because of the large Vietnamese population in Marzahn, 80s immigrants from North Vietnam to communist East Germany.

Berlin is famous for its 24-hour decadence but knowing that you can work until 2 am and then go out and meet people for a drink actually made me more productive though my body clock started to do strange things.

As with everywhere in Berlin Marzahn has layers of disturbing history. The nearby water treatment plant was an internment camp for Roma people from 1936 until 1943 when they were deported to Auschwitz. Very few of them survived and Marzahn is one of the places commemorated on the monument to Sinti and Roma: a flat, black, triangular pool near the Jewish memorial. The German state is forced to interact with and critique its history but the overall effect is a more advanced style of state propaganda, making the government seem reasonable and just but functioning in the same way that capitalism is capable of incorporating and subsuming its own critiques.

The Reichstag Art Collection is a good example of this, featuring works by Sigmar Polke and Hans Haacke that are critical of or poke fun at the German state. This strategy of incorporation or co-option is far more nuanced than Australia's attempts to shut down art and critical debate in general, but definitely something I’ll be thinking about for some time to come.

Marzahn is also famous for neo-Nazi rallies against refugees, always vastly outnumbered by the anarchist Antifa (anti-fascists). During my residency the Berlin elections brought out some of the most hateful political posters I’ve ever seen. The posters of the NPD (actual national socialists) feature photographs of a man in Islamic garb with a mobile phone in one hand, and a fan of 50 euro notes in the other. Meant to represent a refugee, the caption reads ‘They get everything, and you?’ Unlike One Nation the NPD are never elected federally though this style of racism in politics does feel uncomfortably familiar.

Anyway Greetings from Berlin!!!