An der Wildbahn 33
I woke up to a blustery grey day and felt kind of light-headed and dizzy (from too much dancing and too little sleep) as I went to meet my boss, the curator of the artists' archives division at the Berlinische Galerie. We were driving that day to Heiligensee, a suburb right on the northenmost edge of Berlin city limits, to Hannah Höch's old abode at An der Wildbahn 33 for an afternoon with some members of the BG's foundation.
To most people she's known for being the lone female representative of the Berlin Dada-movement and for her daring lifestyle during Weimar/pre-Third Reich times (she was the mistress of Raoul Haussmann for time and after their lengthy but stormy relationship, her next serious partner was Dutch authoress Til Brugman). She was married for a short time to doctor and pianist Kurt Matthies, but she broke it off in 1944 because "I wanted children and he wanted a mother."
Her photomontages were some of the most polemically feminist and aesthetically innovative works ever created in the 20th century and it was a genre she mastered and whose singular style she even carried over to oils (like in The Bride, the painting below in the previous post). This one is called Roma: 
Although hardcore Dadaists like Hans Arp reveled in the mechanization of mankind (a la the Italian Futurists), HH refused let go of that rural small-town girl part of her aesthetic vision. In 1939, after all her Dada compatriots had fled the country, she spent a good portion of her inheritance and her own income as a designer for the Ullstein publishing house on the estate in Heiligensee. She cultivated her garden according to her own tastes and whims, and as a result her small little garden feels like a nature-collage: cacti are plopped up right next to lilacs, a cherry tree grows over a patch of asters, next to a tropical flower called dim-dam which gives off a lemongrassy aroma. One can really feel lost and disoriented in this small little garden. We watched two videos in what used to be her atelier (now taken over as the studio of the artist who lives there now with his family). The first one was made in 1975, three years before her death. I was struck by how lively and gregarious she was, even as a white haired little lady of 83. She actually had a very girlish giggle after she would say something brash or amusing. HH was a student of Emil Orlik's in Berlin, a fact I somehow find so apt because in Prague I was particularly impressed by Orlik's work (I had never heard of him before) that I wrote his name down and my thoughts on him at the time. Anyway, HH really impressed me as a person, from what I could tell from the video.
The second one we watched was much more haunting. It was taken by her nephew exactly two weeks after her death in 1978. Nothing had been moved or disturbed in her house or garden--he recorded it on his amateurish Super 8 videorecorder and provided a languidly monotone voiceover commentary. The only moving things on screen were the flowers nodding in the breeze, the leaves rustling through the grass. No people, no animals; just the living plants that HH left behind. The commentary mostly consisted of free-association memories of his aunt and incredibly insightful quotes from and about the artist herself. Near the beginning of the film, as we see stuttering images from her garden, he says: "Hannah Höch war meine Tante. Es gibt kein Garten, der so wie meiner Onkel ist wie dieser." (Hannah Höch was my aunt. There is no garden that is so like my uncle like this one.) She never had any children and loved her nieces and nephews dearly, but she often talked about her flowers as if they were her children.
During WWII and the following Soviet takeover, Höch kept her art collection in a tiny attic hidden underneath a trapdoor. She was afraid the fascists would come and take away her and her friends' "degraded art", as they were so labeled once. It struck me sitting there in her old atelier that there must have been something about this house and her garden that compelled her to stay there through the worst of times. It was not just a source of inspiration to her, but it was her private paradise that sustained her sense of beauty in a destroyed world.
Im wunderschönen Monat Mai
When Schubert wrote that Lied he was most probably soaking up the sun in the Wienerwälder and not freezing his Austrian heiny off up North in Prussia. May in Vienna may be warm, but it sure as hell is not in Berlin. With apologizes to Chaucer, apparently here it's April flowers bring May showers, as proved by a German folks' belief in a period called "Eisheiligen" when it gets really really cold all of a sudden after it's been warm and sunny for a while, so that all the plants freeze and die overnight. Lovely, huh? Now after getting caught in the rain at Unter den Linden I'm afraid I've caught a lite sneeze. So ein Mist.
Wednesday night I went to see Fellini's Intervista at Arsenal on Potsdamer Platz with Tandem partner #2, Linda who studies fashion design at the technical college here. She dreams about going to FIT in New York for a year and wants to make fashion "for fat people, because fat people can be fashionable too." Coming from a 5'8" girl who weighed maybe 115 pounds, this was quite an interesting statement.
Linda had never seen any Fellini before so unfortunately missed a lot of the allusions in the film. Not that I've seen much from him either, but I have to say that one must have at least seen Fellini's masterwork La Dolce Vita before seeing this one to enjoy it to its fullest. For example, the emotional crux of the movie is the moment where Anita Ekberg and Marcello Maistroianni sit and watch the famous Trevi fountain scene from La Dolce Vita. The looks on their faces were magical in their tragic tenderness as they watched shadows of their younger, reckless selves dancing in the heat of a distant Roman night now projected on a screen...at least it was immortalized on film forever. It was depressing though to see how corpulently wrinkly Anita had become, or how Marcello was still (disturbingly enough) incorrigibly sleazy but was now just a D.O.M. instead of a sexy Italian actor. I prefer remembering them as they were in their younger years: moody, aloof, and stunningly beautiful. Screw nostalgia when you can have escapism, right? Later that night I had a "I'm young and can do whatever the hell I want because I'm in Berlin" night, which basically meant chilling at Tom and his Viennese roomate's apartment with six other cool kids til 5 in the morning, and then walking home from Hallesches Tor, which although not far, is not exactly a hop and a skip away.
Thursday, Christi Himmelfahrt/Ascension. public holiday. Everything was closed, the weather was shit, I went to the gym and had lunch with Jeylan at 4pm on Bergmannstrasse and was unproductive until it was time to meet Manaal for dinner at Felix. This place was ridiculous, like nothing I had ever seen in Berlin before or could even imagine possible for Berlin. The restaurant/club is located off the Brandenburger Tor behind the Adlon Palais complex. Limos cruised in front of the marquee-banquette, the bouncers screened people for sneakers and good looks, and I had to wait in line at 8pm to get in for dinner. Inside, the music was thumping, the lights were spinning, video screens were projecting the requisite ass and titties videos and the people were shaking their thangs while holding up glasses of Sekt. It could've easily been Asia de Cuba or Tao or home--and that was a totally out-of-body, out-of-Berlin experience I had for a night. I was back in New York! 
I had dinner with Manaal and her mom, grandmother and siblings as well as their unofficial "guide" in Berlin, a German-Iranian plastic surgeon to the stars named Koko who has a world-renowned clinic in Potsdam. It is world-renowned because it is the only clinic in the world which guarantees an orgasm after a transsexual operation. In any case, it was quite an interesting experience seeing this sleekly dressed stocky middle-aged man purr and fawn on Manaal's dowager-empress of a grandmother, who was imposing as a walrus as she sat there swathed in sari and jewels and nodding her head sagely to "Pump It". Manaal's badass beautiful mother ordered us two glasses of red wine each at dinner, then after our overpriced and underwhelming meal ordered us a bottle of Sekt while the grandmother went off to gamble ("my grandmother LOVES to gamble") and led the way to the dancefloor. Partying with Manaal's mom?? Hells yeah! Afterwards Manaal and I went to my favorite hookah lounge in Kreuzberg, Die rote Harfe on Oranienplatz and smoked peach hookah over way too much douchebaggy Ivy League talk with Tom and his friend Andy. Then I walked back home from Hallesches Tor again.
I ran around all day Friday: grocery shopping at Lidl/Turkish Market, shopping shopping with Manaal, her mom and sister around Hackescher Markt (her grandmother went off to shop by herself as she mumbled something about Harrods; Manaal's brother dutifully accompanied the dowageress to KaDeWe), and then Mac-and-Cheeseing for Rebekah's down home, Southern cooking potluck dinner. We feasted on barbeque chicken, green beans, watermelon and banana pudding, and listened to way more country music than I would've liked. I also drank a lot of Berliner Pilsner, which would have been unimaginable for me less than 4 months ago. But since coming to Germany I've discovered that beer does not actually taste like carbonated piss and does not have to be drank out of a plastic cup while waiting in the keg line at a gross frat party and hoping that the drunk sorority chick behind you doesn't spill/boot all over. Nein, in fact beer is extremely civilized and a light something for an easy night. Plus, as someone wise once said to me, not drinking beer in Germany is like not drinking tea in China.
In addition to changing my mind about beer, I've also changed my mind about techno music since coming to Berlin. I took Manaal to Watergate, a gorgeous club right on the water at Schlesisches Tor. One side of the club is made up of all floor length windows which look onto the Spree. There's also a small barge right on the river, which would be stunning in the summer (dancing out there on the river til dawn??) but since it was pissing with rain no one was out there. Instead, Tom, Andy, Santiago, Manaal and I danced to music that I used to deplore but found myself somehow enjoying, the ringing in my ears notwithstanding. At 4 in the morning Manaal decided to go home because they were flying back to London the next morning, and I said a fond farewell to dear Manaal (I'm not going to see her until spring semester senior year!!) at yes, Hallesches Tor; and yes, guess how I got home. I deserve a medal for walking all that much in my heels.
You don't send me anymore
Since my roomate's been gone traveling in Israel I've basically had my apartment to myself. Being alone definitely has its perks (walking around naked/blasting music from the living room/watching endless DVDs in her room that doubles as the living room) but I've gotten so lonely sometimes that I've taken to talking to the furniture. I've just been going a little whacko perhaps. Also I think I'm losing a lot of steam and Begeisterung for being in Berlin. No, I still like it here a lot, but this past week I've had such annoying brushes with the notoriously evil German beauracracy that I've had more than my fair share of "I hate Berlin" days. For one, my student visa is not yet ready despite three weeks of just waiting, which means if I want to go to Spain in June I have to haul ass at 6 in the morning tomorrow to go to the main office and retrieve my passport from a pile somewhere on a bitter, bored clerk's desk. And I can't get my 110 euros of "greeting money" from the city of Berlin for moving to Berlin and being a student (yay socialism!) unless I go back to the city hall and wait in line and get a stamp, even though I already have a stamp that is for the exact same purpose, but on another piece of paper. GAH!!!
Enough bitching. Wait, actually I lied. I need to bitch about one more thing: classes here. Nothing to write home about. Quite honestly, I would actually feel bad for asking for credit for them. For one, not only do they meet only once a week for "two hours" (actually one and a half), half an hour of that time or more is taken up by whichever student is giving a presentation (Referat) on a topic that day. The professor doesn't actually do any teaching per se, other than sporadic comments in reaction the student's presentation. And if no one signed up for a presentation topic, we just don't talk about it. For one of my classes (Art and Play, avant gardism and the theory of play in 20th-21st century art) our professor did not give us a syllabus, but rather narrated the syllabus to us on the first day of class. And no one wanted to do the Referat on Dada because it was the first actual class and too early in the semester. I asked her about the readings and the "reader" is a bound binder of some photocopied texts that aren't required ("you can read them if you want", she said) and is in the library, which is only open from 10 to 5 Mondays to Thursdays and 10 to 4 on Fridays. Weekends?! Fugeddaboutit. University libraries are never open on weekends because hey, librarians have social rights too--rights to their 38 hr work week. (boo socialism!)
Last Fri night was pretty crazy: we celebrated Dan's 21st birthday with food, wine and dancing at his place, then headed to Sage Club where my Tandem-language partner Luiza somehow convinced me to take a dip in the reflection pool there. It seemed like a brilliant idea at the time. But oh fuck was it cold. After attempting to "dance" off the water I hauled my wet ass home and then took a hot shower to make sure I wouldn't get a cold. Guess Germans don't believe in heating their reflection pools.
Luiza's this cute Polish girl who's striking it out on her own in Berlin to study translation (she wants to be a simultaneous translator and is learning 5 languages), she's in her second semester and is living in an apartment in Neukölln, known as the roughest part of town and has the highest crime rate in all Berlin (in all Germany, perhaps). To make money she works at a betting office around the corner from her place, which is where she met Siddik, her big Turkish boyfriend. It's quite a sight seeing blonde buxom Luiza with her swarthy Turkish man, but they've been together for two years already and just took a trip to Egypt together. So that's sweet.
I watched Veronika Voss a couple of days ago, it's the 3rd and last installment of Fassbinder's BRD trilogy. I remember seeing Maria Braun at MoMA a year ago and was totally blown away by the ending, literally--no pun intended, for those who've seen it. Fassbinder chose to film it in black and white in a hyper-stylized mode that cites American crime noir movies of the 50s as well as the archetypal washed-up-eccentric-old movie star story, Sunset Boulevard. This fits the conceit of the film perfectly because Veronika Voss tries to convince others around her that she has contracts lined up with MGM, 20th C Fox and the other big American film production companies of that age. Ominous reminders of the critique of Hollywoodization (or Americanization of film/society/culture) come in the form of creepy country music tunes piping in at bizarre moments throughout the film. All in all, the film is a very apt example of good narrative cinema that effectively embodies the ideals of the New German Cinema...I say narrative because Prof. Levin has us watching weird shit like Straub and Huillet's documentary-like, boring as hell Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach.
Just came back from Belle & Sebastian at Columbiahalle. They were so hilarious and endearing and tons of fun on stage. Some chick had the balls to shout her name "Alice!" to Stuart and he started spinning some psuedo-yarn about Alice while Stevie played Jonathan David, then Alice was invited to go up on stage and she danced with her plastic pfand beer cups. Amazing. A really short American hippiesh chick behind us was pontificating loudly about her existence in Germany: "I mean, it's so empty and meaningless anyway--I don't really have a purpose here unless it's being American for a living, for my German students." Is that so? I wonder what motivates someone just to pick up their lives and pack up and spin a globe or stand blindfolded in front of a map and stick their finger at somewhere on the globe and say "hm, I think I'll just go and teach English in, oh, Berlin for a couple of years." Would I ever be brave, reckless or spontaneous enough to do something like that? Maybe it's because I've been having doubts about wanting to come back here for a whole year to do research for art history after graduation. Berlin's a great town for it, no doubt, but how far will that really take me in terms of where I want to be in life?
I FINALLY rented Match Point and watched it last night. I thought it wasn't that spectacular and although the best part (the last third) was good, it certainly is not "the best American film this year." An American film with English pretentions certainly does not qualify as such. Some of the lines of dialogue were just laughable. Yet I did like the subtle hints of upper class philistinism in the Andrew Lloyd Webber reference as well as the disgusting art work that Chloe handles and puts on the walls. I would like to know, however, which aria keeps getting played throughout the entire movie (espesh when he goes to the kitchen and sees **SPOILER ALERT** the ghosts of Nola and Mrs. Isby). What is its significance, pray someone with a good opera background please enlighten me.
Alright, off to brave German bureaucracy in a few hours. That's probably one aspect of the DDR that lives strong and is encouraged to persist--hm, how to inculcate Ausländers' lives with much, much more red tape than necessary? After all, I'm here technically illegally anyway because I'm already enrolled and going to classes at the uni even though I don't have a student visa. Was auch immer. I think this country is pissing me off because it's been pissing with rain for the past week. I bought tickets to go to sunny Spain in late June and I am so, so, so looking forward to that.
Prenzlauer Berg, etc.
The site of the famous Berliner Luftbrücke (or airbridge) during the siege of West Berlin is only about two miles from my apartment. It also happens to be where the concert venue (the aptly named) Columbiahalle is located, which is where I saw Iron & Wine and Calexico live on Thursday night. They were unbelievably good. I ended up in the second row right underneath the incredibly talented trumpet/xylophone/accordion/weird blowy piano thingy player. Everyone was dancing and jiving and I really felt for a couple of hours that I was in the deserts of Arizona and listening to some high quality juke box music with a Latino flair. Those guys really know how to play music well, one really sensed it was their life's passion yet they were totally unpretentious about it. Plus I was really impressed with the audience here and how much everyone was into them. At the end they mentioned how much they love playing in Berlin and kein Wunder, because they were such a wunderbare audience.
The weather in Berlin has finally blossomed into warm, light gorgeousness. I love how it doesn't get dark until 9pm here. Instead of doing my reading for David Levin's film class and my theory of photography class at Humboldt, I took Dexy and rode all the way from Kreuzberg to Prenzlauerberg on Saturday. It couldn't have been a more perfect day: the sun was shining, there was a faint scent of spring in the breeze, I felt the wind stream through my hair, I had my sunglasses on and was cycling through Berlin! What could be more surreal?? It was a lovely ride until the chaos that is Alexanderplatz, where I got thoroughly lost and covered with dust from the numerous Baustellen there (construction site)--well, Alexanderplatz is simply one giant Baustelle and it can't be helped. In any case it was a relief to arrive at Kollwitz platz where not only everyone was out in the sunshine in the cafes drinking their Milchkaffees but there was also an incredible farmer's market. Good thing actually that I didn't have any cash on me, or else I would've blown a lot of money on useless-yet-fun food items like organic tricolor spaghetti or the weird white asparagus (asparagi?) with which all Germany seems to be obsessed at the moment.
I locked Dexy up and went for a little walk around the area and peeked in countless boutiques and funky 2nd hand stores. While traipsing down Lychener Strasse I popped in for a much-needed haircut and despite my rule about not trusting non Asians with my hair, I was pleasantly surprised by the result. It was sort of like that part in Roman Holiday, only I a) did not get it cut that short, and b) am not Audrey Hepburn, unfortunately.
Today (Sunday) after church I Bahn'd it to Warschauer Strasse to meet up with Dan and Sandra and later Amy. After a ridiculously humongous brunch we hit up the Boxhagener Platz flea market where I bought this incredible old fashioned Agfa camera for 4 euros, leather case and all. I'm excited also to develop my pictures from my Fisheye Lomo camera. Tomorrow the grind begins again, but the grind in Berlin is really not stressful at all. In fact, it feels like an extended Berliner Holiday. Just wait til I get my ass kicked by having to write 25 pages completely auf deutsch for my final papers though. But yesterday as I was zipping along those cutesy streets in my sturdy bike, it dawned on me that I truly fell in love with Berlin. Maybe that's a function of the weather, or my carefree idyllic lifestyle...but there's something to be said about the fact that I now feel totally happy and safe and excited by this place.
In some ways I feel like one of the blind men in the fable with the elephant--not just in terms of the physical fact that I haven't been to or seen many parts of Berlin, but obviously on a cultural level there are many many things I don't know about the politics or culture or scene of the city. That would take a lifetime though, but I'd be happy with a few years here at least.
That is a picture of the heinous Fernsehturm at Alexanderplatz. Yucky Alexanderplatz.
Potsdam
What a glorious May Day! While people were out throwing bottles at the police, Jeylan, Dan and I grabbed our bikes and went to Berlin's most illustrious suburb, also known as the capital of the province of Brandenburg: Potsdam. It was a short bike ride to the S-Bahn station at Yorckstrasse, then a straight shot on the S1 to Potsdam Hauptbahnhof. It couldn't have been a more perfect day to go, and despite having stayed out til 4 in the morning the previous night (Walpurgis night out with Tom/David/Jeylan after our weird ass Alexander Kluge movie chez Amy), I was excited to go out and enjoy the stunning day.
Potsdam was scarred heavily in the bombing of WWII, but despite that, the old gorgeous churches and Prussian summer palaces have more or less been restored to their former glory. We rode around the cobble stone streets to the grounds of the Schloss Sanssouci--I felt as if we should have been sitting in barouches and reciting Goethe aloud. There were "Caspar David Friedrich trees" all lined up along this path, and off the sides to this path were green rolling fields with people picnicking and children playing.
It was postively magical, especially when Jeylan and I rode around a lake my the Marmor Palais and saw a VIKING SHIP take passengers across the huge lake. Yes! A real Norwegian Viking ship, but unfortunately before we could get on the boat was full and we didn't want to wait half an hour. So we rode around ourselves instead. See how the clouds are perfectly reflected? It could be a Delft painting. The sunlight appeared on and off which made those moments of "Jesus light" so miraculously beautiful that I could find no words, just smiles and more exhortations of how lovely, wie schön everything was: the wind in our hair, the smell of spring, the grass fields, the blooming flowers...the entire old section of the town really was something out of a Brother's Grimm tale.
One moment that especially made me feel like I was in a Märchen (fairytale) was this little incident: As we were riding our bikes along a the path that went along the rim of the lake, two little girls were chasing a yellow ball down a slope. Before one girl could catch it though, the ball rolled down to the side and of course, fell inevitably into the lake. The six year old girl's eyes began to crumple up and fill up with tears. An old couple walking a beagle strolled by just then and the old man in a tweed cap pointed his walking stick at the ball, and the dog proceeded to jump into the lake and retrieve the yellow ball. He doggy paddled it to the shore for the little girls. Now isn't that just Grimm-like? I half expected the dog to morph into a beautiful prince and start speaking in self-deferential high German.
Afterwards we rode back to the cute main street, Brandenburger Strasse and sat down at Cafe Maximilian for an incredible Eiscafe (with a kugel of vanilla gelato inside, mm) and a piece of torte. Yum. But my stomach is bursting now because I just came back from dinner at Gugelhof, a famous Alsatian restaurant on Kollwitz Platz in Prenzlauer Berg where Clinton and Schröder ate together on Bill's visit. I had Raclette for the first time in at least eight years, and the smell and the texture of it really brought me back to my days at German Swiss in HK and the INCREDIBLE Raclette stands lined up along the courtyard during the Christmas Bazaar, with all those Swiss men handling huge wheels of Raclette that were just grilling underneath real Raclette grills. I'm going to unearth our Swiss home Raclette maker somehow and resurrect my erstwhile obsession with this Alsatian delicacy.
And now I shall go to bed with a full stomach and a satisfied smile that today was a wonderful Feiertag.
I woke up to a blustery grey day and felt kind of light-headed and dizzy (from too much dancing and too little sleep) as I went to meet my boss, the curator of the artists' archives division at the Berlinische Galerie. We were driving that day to Heiligensee, a suburb right on the northenmost edge of Berlin city limits, to Hannah Höch's old abode at An der Wildbahn 33 for an afternoon with some members of the BG's foundation.
