Concentrations
Our areas of concentration thematize the migration of space and the migrants’ perception of the city. We ask the following questions:
What is the experience of the wall? How is its influence on spaces perceived and shaped by migrants?
How does the wall function as a spatial border in the experiences of Berlin’s migrants?
How have the activities of migrant groups brought about a territorial fixation of the former border zone along the wall?
Is there a threshold from East to West and from West to East?
What is the relationship between migrant territory and the wall? Are there differences in the way each of the groups – Turkish spaces of migration in Kreuzberg, Vietnamese migration of spaces in Lichtenberg, Russian migration of spaces in Marzahn, Arab migrations of spaces in Wedding – perceive?
Media
We are an interdisciplinary team of artists and social scientists whose goal is to explore the migrations of spaces and document, in interviews, photography, and video, the way different migrant groups see Berlin and the changes to the city since the fall of the wall. As we complete each part of our work we will post it on our Website, www.placemaking.de, creating a public sketchbook of our project as a work in progress. The Website will include a forum in which the public has the chance to discuss themes relating to the Website and to share their own experiences. The idea is to have a single place for all migrants to come together, rather than to offer discrete forums for, say, Turkish, Polish, or Vietnamese adolescents, as is often the case on other sites.
Results
The project’s results will be documented with an exhibition and publication as part of a 2009 program commemorating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall. A four-channel video installation will cross traces of wall inscriptions in Berlin urban space with migrated spaces from the perspectives of the interviewees. This newly created space brings together the migrants’ experience of both the fall of the wall and the changes that have since taken place in Berlin. The video installation planned for 2009 will be made accessible to a large public. The planned publication will contain, in addition to texts and photos of the project, a board game—a book with cut-out sheets and construction paper devoted to the other view of Berlin. This book will be available at the exhibition and distributed at Berlin’s major tourist locations.
