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← SEEING · 2011–2013 · SQUATS, WALLS, LISTENING STATIONS

Berlin.

BERLIN · TACHELES

The Squat

an art squat in a ruined department store on oranienburger straße. every wall painted over a hundred times, every stairwell someone's studio. they tore it down in 2012.

TACHELES — the letters welded onto the gate.

a doorway painted shut — a red halo round a face, tags over tags over tags.

a figure in white, dripping, painted straight onto raw brick. nobody signed it.

the toilets. two sinks, no doors, a monster inked across the ceiling and a decade of flyers tiled over the tiles. this is what people mean when they say a building was free nobody was coming to fix it, so everybody was allowed to change it. — the toilets. two sinks, no doors, a monster inked across the ceiling and a decade of flyers tiled over the tiles. this is what people mean when they say a building was *free* — nobody was coming to fix it, so everybody was allowed to change it.

BERLIN · KREUZBERG, 2012

The Last Cheap Year

kreuzberg was west berlin’s dead end — walled on three sides, so the rent stayed nothing and the landlords stopped repairing anything. turkish guest workers got the condemned tenements. german boys who didn’t want the army came because west berliners were exempt from the draft. then the punks and the squatters — a hundred and sixty-five occupied houses by 1981. when the wall came down the dead end became the middle of europe overnight, and nobody had told the money yet.

2012 was the last year before it noticed. tacheles was evicted that september. the spree banks were being sold while people marched to sink the deal. spanish and greek kids arrived with one suitcase because the euro had eaten their countries and this was still the cheap capital.

i had come from karachi, a city that hides what happened to it. berlin does the opposite. the hill is made of war rubble and they sled down it. the wall isn’t demolished, it’s a gallery. the spy station is a picnic. nobody there performs recovery. that was the first place i understood that damage doesn’t have to be a secret — it can be a wall you’re allowed to write on.

a trashcouture sign in a shop window. new york is monarchy. berlin is the ape that climbs the building and won’t come down — the only city that brags about being the wrong one.

a moped that stopped being a moped. every hand that passed left a layer until the object underneath went theoretical. the stickers are berlin’s census — everyone who came through, needing to leave proof.

a café furnished out of other people’s flats. sputnik lamp, four chairs that don’t match, an eye on the wall so you know the room watches back. nobody was designing berlin then. they were just refusing to throw anything out.

hung over the door, above the chalkboards: TROUBLE WILL FIND ME. a whole city’s fatalism used as a welcome mat. not keep out — just, it’s coming anyway. come in.

hand-lettered on a bedsheet above the coffee grinders — because you attempted to attack the will of the public that you are representin’, you gonna burn in that hell that you belive in. spelling left in. a café that hung a curse where the menu goes. — hand-lettered on a bedsheet above the coffee grinders — *because you attempted to attack the will of the public that you are representin’, you gonna burn in that hell that you belive in.* spelling left in. a café that hung a curse where the menu goes.

os gêmeos painted this six-storey yellow giant off schlesische straße. the brazilian twins say the yellow men come out of a dream they share. they wrapped him in a keffiyeh and set him down in a turkish kiez — a foreigner standing guard over the street that housed him.

a skeleton in a sunset, hung with beads, facing a figure whose whole head is feathers. day-of-the-dead grammar on a berlin firewall: the dead dressed up and standing in the light instead of tidied away.

a pasted-up body with no bones — black, speckled, one wooden arm, a face made up like a mourner’s. glued on wet and buried under other people’s names inside a week. every wall here is a lease, not a deed.

painted across the shopfront backwards, so it reads from the inside: where is jesus? three question marks under it, in case you thought it was rhetorical. two people wait at the door, not looking up. — painted across the shopfront backwards, so it reads from the inside: *where is jesus?* three question marks under it, in case you thought it was rhetorical. two people wait at the door, not looking up.

a red thing screaming at roof level, a furious man in a pink collar at street level, someone’s blue blob between them. four artists, one wall, no agreement. the bins are the only thing anyone maintains.

a raised fist and a face going green behind the weeds. the mural outlived the movement. the plants are outliving the mural. nothing gets trimmed on this side of the canal.

a car buried under turf, a stripped bus turned into a grandstand, on land nobody had bought yet. the machine goes under the grass; the people sit on the wreck. this is what free land looks like before it gets a price.

a wooden deck on the flutgraben, full by seven in the evening. that water was the border. everyone is drinking on the death strip and no one mentions it.

houseboats strung along the canal, one serving food off a chalkboard. the last summer you could live on that water for nothing.

a beetle the size of a dog bursting out of the plaster, and under it a green-party poster: vor der mauer, nach der mauer, schickt der staat die wanzen. before the wall, after the wall, the state sends the bugs wanzen means both the insect and the wiretap. two germanies, one habit. — a beetle the size of a dog bursting out of the plaster, and under it a green-party poster: *vor der mauer, nach der mauer, schickt der staat die wanzen.* before the wall, after the wall, the state sends the bugs — *wanzen* means both the insect and the wiretap. two germanies, one habit.

a creature built out of crushed cans, blue-eyed, clawed, crouched under a dripping tap. consumption drawn as an animal that has grown a face and is now waiting for water. painted where the recycling actually piles up.

two heads, all eye and all teeth, drawn in pen on the wall between other people s signatures. the eyes are enormous because in a surveilled city looking is the loudest thing you can do. — two heads, all eye and all teeth, drawn in pen on the wall between other people’s signatures. the eyes are enormous because in a surveilled city looking is the loudest thing you can do.

scratched into the paint and dated 6/28/2012: if the world s my oyster, you are its pearl. jos hern ndez signed it. the most defended concrete in europe became a place strangers left love notes on, by hand, with a key. — scratched into the paint and dated 6/28/2012: *if the world’s my oyster, you are its pearl.* josé hernández signed it. the most defended concrete in europe became a place strangers left love notes on, by hand, with a key.

a corner in january the ironwork tagged, the render gone, four artists deep on one pillar, the street empty behind. this is the texture nobody photographs: not a mural, just a wall that everyone has touched. — a corner in january — the ironwork tagged, the render gone, four artists deep on one pillar, the street empty behind. this is the texture nobody photographs: not a mural, just a wall that everyone has touched.

a hand-painted sign wired to camouflage netting: please: no drinks, bikes dogs. the only rule on the whole lot, and it asked nicely. berlin s authority was one board and a please. — a hand-painted sign wired to camouflage netting: *please: no drinks, bikes & dogs.* the only rule on the whole lot, and it asked nicely. berlin’s authority was one board and a please.

me, that autumn, in a coat i bought secondhand. i was thirty-something, freshly unemployed from a magazine, and for the first time nobody in the city knew what my surname was supposed to mean.

stencilled on black: you can’t break me today, come back tomorrow? — stencilled on black: “you can’t break me today, come back tomorrow?”

BERLIN · MAUERPARK, SUNDAYS

The Amphitheatre

an amphitheatre built where the wall was. every sunday a stranger sings and two thousand people cheer for them. behind it, a flea market selling other people’s lives.

it fills without an invitation. AM I ♥ BERLIN, sprayed on the step.

flohmarkt. other people’s lives, laid on blankets, three euros each.

a puppet in a red dress dances in her own suitcase while the crowd walks past.

shot through the crowd, moving. i kept this one for the blur.

BERLIN · AFTER DARK

The Lit City

the electric company strings light through the trees and calls it a gift. the funfairs stay open. i shot most of this out of focus on purpose.

LICHT FÜR BERLIN, down the whole boulevard.

the wheel, out of focus — the crowd was the picture.

and in daylight: a bronze woman in an empty fountain.

the sony center at potsdamer platz a tented sky over a plaza built on the widest part of the death strip, two blue cones of light where the watchtowers were. the money came back and lit it like a christmas card. this is the other berlin, the one with a facilities budget. — the sony center at potsdamer platz — a tented sky over a plaza built on the widest part of the death strip, two blue cones of light where the watchtowers were. the money came back and lit it like a christmas card. this is the other berlin, the one with a facilities budget.

BERLIN · TEUFELSBERG

The Listening Station

a cold-war spy station on a hill made of war rubble. the americans listened to the east from inside those domes. now the domes are torn open and every surface is painted. the best gallery in berlin has no roof and no door fee.

the radar dome, skinned. TOMMY, CLEO, and everyone else who climbed up here.

a whole wall of swirl, under a concrete ceiling nobody maintains.

a painted shack in the trees — two faces, one eye, and CUT THE... the rest is gone.

    
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poetica— SABA KHALID · saba@poetica.studio