August 15, 2011 – Imagine a Wall

This week is the 50^th Anniversary of the Berlin Wall. Yesterday’s piece for the 2011 Project was about the Berlin Wall’s rise and fall and it’s representation on maps. I have always been fascinated with the Wall, and have decided the project needs a second Berlin Wall piece.

Unless you lived through it in Berlin, I think it’s really difficult to imagine what it would be like to have your city divided by a wall. Here is what you might do. Imagine your city like I have imagined San Francisco. Get a map and draw that inconvenient and random line splitting the city.

August 14, 2011 – Die Mauer

50 years ago this week, a wall started going up in Berlin. The wall was “permanent” and the city was divided. And then, in less than 30 years, the wall came down. Of course, there is much more to the story of the Berlin Wall, but one of the ideas I always take from it is that the lines we put on maps are never permanent. I have a pile of atlases that I recycle for my art. It did not take long to find four maps of Berlin for this piece. Before World War II, post-war, then divided with West Berlin like an island and finally a modern map showing the German capital.