My last day in Berlin for the year, so I decide to drop by a museum that don’t know thing one about, save for its intriguingly all-encompassing name: Museum der Dinge, the Museum of Things. Well. Aren’t they all? Ye-es, technically correct, but the categories that museums typically set for themselves are very, very narrow. [...]
I’m not sure what attracts me to these metal box signs. Perhaps it’s their bulky physical presence, the seams, the dents, the peeling paint, the dirt — or the simple fact that they were crafted by hand. An internal backlash to years of staring at 2-dimensional representations of mathematical constructs? Yeah, I think that might [...]
Another generous helping from Berlin’s graffiti/street art scene, a kaleidoscope of ornamented walls from (at least) three eastern ‘hoods — Prenzlauerberg, Freidrichshain and Kreuzberg. The first Berlin graffiti post befindet sich hier.
One of my private Berlin pleasures … a quick currywurst at Curry 36 on Mehringdamm, and then a stroll through the graveyard at Hallesches Tor. The contrast between the non-stop noise and action of the Kreuzberg street and the instant blanket of verdant silence that prevails in the cemetery could not be more vivid. Mature [...]
Berlin is plastered with graffiti. And I love it. Despite a recent crackdown, a decades-long history of (ahem) ‘public self-expression’ can be be read on walls all over the city, from ’80s wild-style to left-wing squatter provocations to the artsy paste-ups of the newly bohemian-chic Prenzlauerberg and Friedrichshain. Though some of it would have been [...]
Spotted in a working-class neighborhood in a northern part of Berlin — the storefront of a ’50s-era architectural glass workshop, sheathed in gloriously ’50s style tiny glass mosaics. The signage is even more beautiful … yeesh, need I write anything at all? Those colors, that texture, the Bauhaus-meets-the-Fifties vernacular letterforms … Just. So. Cool.
