Berlin Today, Lisa Warbirck

Ich grabe ein Grab

2007-08-16T13:53:00.000-07:00

Behind my appartment there is a graveyard that also serves as a Speilplatz, or childrens playground. I used to think the children`s laughter that I woke up to came from a Kindergarten but it came from here. The combination of cemetary and playground seems perfectly natural and good yet I had not seen it until comming to Germany. My German roomate thougt I was strange when I mentioned it as if it was something out of the ordinary. Here are some kids enjoying the park. You can see the gravestones in the background amongst the grass. I love the second photo because the other children ignore me and continue playing the boy in the middle engages me a direct stare, loving the spotlight.

Graff Kids

2007-08-16T13:25:00.000-07:00

There are scores of wonderful parks in Berlin yet I think my favourite is Mauer Park in Prenzlauer Berg. The first day I came here it was a perfect sunny day and the park was filled with people doing every possible thing one could think of- people playing basket ball, teenagers jamming, punks drinking beer, hippies in drum circle, couples slow dancing- whatever. On top of this the grass was bright green and dotted with wild lavender. At this stage I didn't know the name of this place so I called it "Utopia Park". Of course I have been back several times since and have taken several photos. Here is shown a few kids putting up on the hinterland wall. This wall serves a public gallery which is constantly being adapted by those who frequent the park- in this case 10 year olds.

Tourist Thing

2007-08-16T07:58:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday was Ava's last day in Berlin so she insisted on going to the Ampelmann Store. After buying gummies shaped as the famed East German traffic light man, we thought we may as well get some more tourist activities completed. We walked to Museum Island and stopped in front of the Altes Museum where children were playing in the fountain.
It was at this museum that I first realised how much more public publc space was here in Berlin than it is in New York or Melbourne. One day during my first week in Berlin I stopped here with my bike for a rest. The Velvet Undergroung could be heard from the steps and as I approached I assumed there must have been a fancy art party taking place. However, once on the steps I saw a group of beer drinking 15 year olds sitting cross legged with a boom box. No one was stopping them from having a party here because it was taking place in public space.
Similarly on Thursday the fountain was being used as public stomping group. Many kids were splashing and laughing and keeping cool, until one boy, shown here squatted to take a shit. His sister was unhappy but nobody stopped him-public space.

Don't Feed the Locals

2007-08-13T07:55:00.000-07:00

This dog lives in Christiania. I photographed him because he had such overt attitude. He lifts his eyes as if to say 'Yeah, you think I'm cool? Damn straight- I know it.' His surroundings appropriately fit his charachter while the wood and paving frame him well. He is also kinda fat which is always endearing...

Looooooooooove Shack.

2007-08-13T07:38:00.000-07:00

Christiania exends further than you first may think. After walking through the 'down town' area of makeshift shops, bars and cafes you come to a residential lake side area that extends for almost 2 kilometres. Along here there is a haphazard combination of trailers, well built eco-houses and eccentric shacks. Since witnessing this one I havn't been able to get the B52s 'Love Shack' out of my head.

The Game

2007-08-13T07:30:00.000-07:00

On Saturday night, after tiring of the mediocre punk rock bands playing at Shit Town, Yoni, Ava and I found a random rock and roll bar inside a shack somewhere in Christiania. Here several people sat around a round table playing a wonderful game. I was never able to decern the object of the game but it certainly looked fun. Each player would grab a newspaper, rip out a headline, lick it and stick it themselves or one of their fellow players. Eventually everyone had headlines all over their foreheads, cheecks and chests. Who knows what they said as they were all in Danish.

Bike War

2007-08-13T06:11:00.000-07:00

Although there were many young teenagers frolicing around and watching bands during the night at Shit Town, it wasn't until the daytime that the really young kids came out. On Sunday at 3PM Shit Town hosted an event called 'Bike War' in a huge warehouse space. During Bike War several punks riding brutal vehicles made from old bikes welded together in insane formations jausted and crashed into eachother until all the bikes were no longer ridable. The kids loved this. After the battle had finshed several kids scrambled to smash the bikes further into obliteration... When I showed Judith this photograph she said 'It's very Lord of the Flies', which I think was quite apt. Superficially this is because it shows a perfect blond choir boy looking child performing an act of violence. However it also depicts the excitment arroused by destructive acts, and when shown in context, its illustrates how huge amounts of violence can immerge from groups that would not surface in the individual alone. Luckily here people were smaxhing bikes rather than their peers...

Shit Town

2007-08-13T05:58:00.000-07:00

We didn't just go to Copenhagen to ride rollercoasters. We also went to take photos at a big punkrock festival called `Shit Town´. Shit Town took place in Christiania which is a sizeable independent anarchist state right in the middle of the city of Copenhagen. Christiania is mostly inhabited by hippies but during the festival punkrockers from around Europe took up a significant chunk of its space. Here we see a couple of these visitors quitely ignoring a harcore band.

Tivoli

2007-08-13T05:50:00.000-07:00

Tivoli is a small town in upstate New York but it is also an amusement park in Copenhagen. Ava, Yoni and I went to Tivoli, Copenhagen to ride the rollercoaster that you see here. It was extremly short but manged to turn us upside down plenty of times before it finished so we got our money's worth. Also, its winding rails don't make for a bad photo.

Three Dudes

2007-08-13T05:37:00.000-07:00

Here's another one from the Neukölln tour. This is a great moment because the students form a perfect triangle and their bodies and cameras simultaniouly point to the distance in the left. Also the pattern made by the colours of their shirts is nice- red, yellow, green- primary. primary, secondary. Its also cute how focused and oblivious the subjects are...

Nickelodeon

2007-08-13T05:22:00.000-07:00

This photo was also taken on our Neukölln tour. I was unable to walk past this scene without taking a photograph. Firstly because of the subject matter- man in workman's overalls waters garden, and secondly because of the colour. The colours in this photo are insanely bright, appearing unervingly artificial like those in a hyperrealist painting. It was such a great coincidence that the orange and the green came together in this fashion allowing me to cut the frame diagonally into orange on one side and green on the other. Also the orange-green colour combination is such a funny one- it always reminds me of bad 90s album cover art or nickelodeon slime...

Neu-Kids

2007-08-08T10:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday during our tour of Neukölln I was feeling a little apprehensive about taking pictures of children. Perhaps this was because of the cold stares I received from a group of mothers who saw me walking around a playground with a camera- fair enough. That being said, I still managed to get a couple of good shots in. I saw a shop with a colourful exterior advertising Bollywood films and I thought I'd better go in. Inside, amongst the shiny bangles and shelves of Bollywood movies were these two kids. They instantly loved the camera so I took a couple of pictures and spoke to them in broken German -"Kann ich ein Foto machen?". Their mother was chatting to the store keeper and was pretty happy with the situation. I think this picture is great because as the older brother poses to show his tuff-guy attitude, the little sister unhesitatingly reaches for the camera. After I took this photo I let the brother have a go with the camera...