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places – Lens on Berlin

LENS

Words CLARA MIRANDA SCHERFFIG

ON

Photography SAMUEL ZELLER

BERLIN

To observe Berlin from a high vantage point is a confusing experience. Initially, you see what you expect to see: a city center, with a road
grid that progressively fans out towards the outskirts, a river. But soon, you start to notice that the city is really made of doubles: two
city centers, two television towers, two ports. Exactly in the middle, a sprawling green area and a monumental archway: the Tiergarten
and the Brandenburg gate. It is significant how a city that has been divided for over forty years does not cluster around a cathedral or
a castle, but rather, around a monument that is a symbol of passage. The geographical center of Berlin, as we now know it, is a fake – it
has been redesigned from scratch after the fall of the Wall. This is probably the reason why the city’s most important museum, the Haus
der Kulturen der Welt, has been erected in the midst of the Cold War, with a peace-keeping intent. From its terrace, one can admire
both the nearby House of Parliament, (the Reichstag) and the summit of the faraway Alex television tower erected by the DDR. The
HKW offers themed exhibitions that often bring together anthropology and contemporary art: the annual Transmediale festival, of
course, but also many shows dedicated to seldom explored and somehow quirky themes (an exhibition dedicated to monkeys, and the
relationship between humans and other primates, for example, or a workshop on how to waste time on the Internet).

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