I recently visited Berlin with the Center for the Force Majeure group. We were there because we had been invited to do a exhibition in an old botanical Museum. The idea was to cross-pollinate by bringing the arts into a scientific institution, and science displays into the artistic institution, a cross cultural exchange so to speak.
We landed in Berlin at 9AM with about 3 hours of sleep, our hotel was not ready so we went to a museum, not just any museum however, this was the Topographie of Terrors. It is where the headquarters of the Nazi Regime was located. Probably not a great choice since my psyche was vulnerable from lack of sleep and extensive travel. I had physical reactions to the endless black and white photographs of laughing nazi officers, and images of the endless lines of jewish and polish people with a strange empty look in their eyes, knowing and not knowing. I literally heard recordings of the judges yelling and condemning innocent people to death simply for for speaking their minds.
I left there with a nauseous belly and my head swirling unable to process the depth of terror I had encountered. We then jumped on a hop on and off bus and drove through East Berlin, with its endless concrete apartment buildings and distinct lack of growing things, it was a damp day with clouds coming then going. The most informative moment of this ride was when we passed into the westside of the city, and then suddenly the heaviness was lifted from the greenery and a sense of quality of life being restored. Why was the wall and the communist regime such a failure? The philosophy Marx put forward had many merits and also many things overlooked leading to a dysfunctional system when put into practice. I left the bus wondering what are the missing pieces?
All this settled into my psyche over the next couple of days as I experienced the hip edgy, realness of Berlin city. We had meetings with Sandra Bartolli to discuss the exhibition at the Botanical Museum. This was a interesting experience. The museum itself was old, outdated with some 70s flare, they had big centerpiece botanical “models” everywhere. When I first entered I saw a bunch of head sculptures of famous old colonial botanist, the bronze sculptures hung out from the wall, and eerily stared at all those who entered.
The director of this odd locale kept saying that they are different because they focus on botanical “models”. By which she meant simplified versions of things like stamens being represented with sticks and balls. Yes sticks and balls. I thought that this place need to come alive, grow, break free from its colonial past, transform with vines and crawlers and open air courtyards and skylights. The botanists working there are surrounded by claustrophobic and stale versions of life, models of life, plaster and plastic. How can we have enlightened and progressive botanists if they cannot see beyond the past?