Oase Berlin Alexanderplatz
The above picture presents an intriguing image, a somewhat cluttered but not unattractive arrangement of lots of different parts. But what is actually in the picture, what can this constellation tell us? Where are we? We see a man on his back on an aluminium stepladder working with a hot air gun to remove the already rather weathered sticker lettering from the roof frieze of an informal kiosk. ‘Chinasnack’ and ‘Döner’ can still be read with some difficulty. Around the corner is an image of a palm tree in view. Electricity for his work the man draws from the neutral grey-painted structure whose door is ajar.
The verticality of the man standing on the stairs is further enhanced by the Fernsehturm, the television tower, landmark in Berlin and Germany’s tallest building rising up right behind him. Next to the tower, we can just make out the top four floors of the ‘Haus des Lehrers’ a modernist office, just like the tower built in the GDR. Again next to it, we see the foilage of a Linde, Berlin’s signature tree, which in many places makes the city smell like sweet honey rather than car gases in June. Here, there is probably only a pungent smell of burnt paint. We are at Alexanderplatz, that much is clear, but somewhere on the border of the square.
The square has been a ‘contested place’ since the fall of the wall and perhaps for longer; diverse parties (Bruno Latour would say actors) lay claim to the space. Sometimes briefly, in the form of a demonstration, sometimes longer, in the form of the construction of yet another megalomaniac real estate tower. On the left in the picture, we see red cranes standing in the deep construction pit from which a 130-metre tower is to rise soon. The claim to space of these two is not only temporally but also qualitatively different. A demonstration briefly livens up the square, but the construction project is part of a development that makes the square increasingly stony and inhospitable. What is the position of this small kiosk at the edge of the square? Perhaps its poetic name ‘Imbiss Oase’ can tell us something more?
Living and non-living actors
Alexanderplatz, of course, has infinitely more actors than a demo, yet another colossus or this kiosk. Apart from people, there are other living beings that like to use the square: insects, birds, foxes, raccoons, rabbits and other mammals, or more immobile creatures like trees and plants. Non-living actors are also part of the square, agile actors like the wind, (ground) water or car traffic, and relatively immobile actors like the rubble layer from WW2 devestation just below the street surface or the neatly aligned bricks that make up the facades of the buildings. All these living and non-living actors make the square vibrate. How do they sound together? And how do we appreciate their sounding?
Simple questions with multiple and as yet partly unknown answers. Soundtrackcity will address these in 2025. A preliminary exploration was already done in October 2024 by Michiel Huijsman and a number of fellow artists and local residents.
