Berlin, for me, was one of the most interesting places I visited. I just love the industrial feel of it, the constant contrast of run down and ruined with modern and new. The graffiti covered walls and buildings, the harsh and angular urban spaces, the metal and brick and stone. The burnt out husks of buildings, trains and some what desolate looking landscape that appears in areas.
SAMMLUNG BOROS COLLECTION
When I was in Berlin I visited the Sammlung Boros Collection at their Bunker. You have to book well in advance and they only allow a group of 20 to go around the collection at a time while you have a guided tour. The work itself, is very contemporary and fine art based and a lot if it did not appeal to me at all. However, the building in which it is housed is fascinating and some of the collection included several of Wolfgang Tillman’s photos which are truly captivating.
 |
| Exhibition piece |
 |
| Building Plan |
TEUFELSBERG (DEVIL'S MOUNTAIN)
I had heard about Teufelsberg from a friend and was dying to see it so me and my friend ventured out to Grunewald forest to go find the ‘Devil’s Mountain’, a hill reaching 114.7 meters above sea-level and made from an estimated 12 million cubic meters of war rubble. Upon this sits the abandoned US spy station which is sealed up behind a high protective fence. However, you can now access the site for a small fee and go on a tour run by, I think, the graffiti artists who seem to have taken it over (I am not really sure about it all they were pretty scary Germans so we just paid up). the tour allowed us to go inside the buildings and up into the highest white dome, in which there was the most spectacular echo I have ever heard. The whole place is covered in graffiti and tagging and the man told me that there were plans to have some kind of festival/event where any artists could join in and create art work across the buildings and space.
