Excavations and navigations

I finally got a bike! It’s really nice, an old racer, and I’m so excited about it that I’ve been riding everywhere since yesterday, despite the cold. It’s great the way you immediately have an expanded sense of the city when you’re cycling. The horizon you have while you’re on your feet instantly stretches, seeming almost limitless. Although it’s strange riding on the other side of the road, kind of like having to re-learn to navigate road space as a mirror image… almost like learning a new language.

So anyway, this new found freedom took me to a few galleries, but I came across the work of Sarah Oppenheimer accidentally, as I stopped to avoid a crowd of people waiting at a bus stop, which happened to be outside the gallery, Duve Berlin.
















She made two periscopic architectural interventions into the walls of the gallery. The first, which you encounter as you walk in the front door, is like an excavation of the corner of the wall, rendered with precise cuts into some kind of ply. I looked through it, into another room, which appeared to be around the corner, only to discover after I walked behind it, that it was an illusion (albeit, a very convincing one). The second intervention was at the back of the gallery, where it appeared that two slices had been cut out of the wall between the gallery and the administrative offices. I could see the assistant working at her desk, but she seemed to be simultaneously on two levels depending on how I moved in relation to the cuts. When she turned and talked to me through the wall I was a little taken aback –suddenly the illusion of the space had been shattered!

I enjoyed the way this work fractured your perception of space, making you really aware of how you moved in relation to what you were perceiving. And also I liked the way there was a point of realisation, of seeing through the apparatus, when the illusion fell apart, (or maybe fell together) Yet something about the super refined elegance of it annoyed me a little. It was beautiful, but it felt too finished, closed, in a way. It left no room for mistakes, and somehow the workings of the apparatus remained concealed, even when you understood basically how it functioned… (it's interesting, for me, in regard to the periscopes and viewing devices I was making two years ago, which were nowhere near as sophisticated as this, always being literally on the point of collapse...)

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Then, while I was at another gallery, I noticed a postcard with a map on it, called Re-Place Berlin. It seems to be an online project in which people can submit maps of routes that they regularly take through Berlin, and others can then download them. It sounds really interesting. It's a way in which mapping can become a social process, I think. A process in which the city becomes consciously lived. I like that it gives you the opportunity to be a tourist in a place you're familiar with. I had a thought, a little while ago, wondering what it would be like to map a city (this city) from the different perspectives of a tourist, a local, a passer-by... perhaps by taking on these roles for a day and navigating the city through different eyes. I feel slightly caught in between all these perspectives. I'm both a tourist, as well as an inhabitant, or maybe just a passer-by. But in all these roles you can still become a sightseer. Maybe something like this would be a nice extension to the daily maps I've been drawing. I'm wondering if I should submit something to this project, but the problem is that I can’t remember which streets I go down, I just have a vaguely general sense of direction.

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While I was riding along Invalidenstrasse, I stopped at a light and saw an excavator awkwardly trying to put down a huge metal bin, which was dangling from its claw. It reminded me of another little video I made in London, when I came across a giant machine biting off chunks of iron in its dinosaurian jaws… Somehow they are facinating, these strange apparatuses. They seem to be almost alive, as they tear away at the urban structure of the city.



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Also, I was drawing in the condensation of the bathroom window yesterday morning...

and collecting the water from my clothes which were drying...