This is an image of Ampelman, those of you who have been to Berlin will know that this figure appears on the traffic lights in the old east when you are to “walk”. So, as walking forms the core of my proposal for my time in Berlin, the Ampelman seems an appropriate symbol for the project.
I am trying to keep an open mind about how work will develop while I am there. However I have been thinking about ways in which my research during the time in Berlin can relate to general themes within my work.
Thoughts at this moment involve researching the German Romantic movement and the invented landscapes of 18th Century Europe. The vast building projects of 19th and 20th Century Berlin and the huge empty expanses of that ravaged city give me the same kind of feeling as the unseeable sublime in the paintings of Kasper David Freidrick. It is all so big, evoking the sense of a greater power, leaving you vertiginous.
I want to revisit Freidrich the Greats fantasy summer palace and gardens Sanssouci at Potsdam. This place epitomises the 18th century romantic ideal. Whilst at first it seems difficult to make a link between the grandeur or German Romanticism and the tiny dolls I have been photographing in the studio, I feel that there are links. Their existence reflects a compelling need to attempt to make sense of the unimaginable vastness of a world full of difference and a desire to possess this. In a similar way the landscapers and architects of the 18th century created small ideal versions of the world full of the exotic, to be possessed and enjoyed by the aristocrats of Europe.
I was quite exited to discover the existence of a more contemporary invented landscape in the “Teufelsberg” or “Devils Mountain”. This is built out of rubble collected from the post war streets of West Berlin. I have since realised that this is where Anri Sala filmed one of his pieces that were shown at the Serpentine last year. The mountain is topped by an extraordinary structure that was a US listening post during the cold war. However my interest in the site is the mountain itself, a mountain that rises from the flat plain on which Berlin stands.
I would just like to be there now to experience all these things. But I have to help students to get through their degree show first.
