I thoroughly enjoyed our trip to Berlin and will definitely go back again but for longer, by the end of the week my feet hurt on another level and I had smoked more than I had in my life. So you could say it was a good week? I’d say so.

The things I loved about Berlin:

1. At the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum one of my favourite pieces was “Männlicher Torso” 1993 – Georg Baselitz. The way that the wood sculpture had been hacked away by the tools and the marks were so clear. You could also see places where too much had been taken out and more wood put back in. This piece was a clear demonstration of his process, you could see his journey throughout its creation and thus it provided a rich view for the eye,
2. One of my favourite pieces from the whole trip was probably the huge room in the Hamburger Bahnhof by Agnieszka Polska where film was projected onto huge screens and mattresses were laid out for viewers. I sat there for ages transfixed and in the process lost my friends. This is something I definitely plan to look more into for my FMP and use for inspiration.
3. Another part of the trip which I really enjoyed was how my group decided to go for a walk simply explore, we walked quite far out and on the way got a feel for the city. The graffiti is a lot freer and artistic than what you see in the UK. The become artworks and it is everywhere, even with small tags someone has paid attention to it and the detail. We went to this park where there were a lot of young people working on this wall which had graffiti onto of graffiti onto of graffiti and it would have been so interesting to document the timeline of this wall and how it has developed. By far for me, the graffiti was the most significant part of the trip to Berlin.
4. We went to the Objects of Wonder exhibition which consisted of pieces from the Tate and a piece which caught my attention was ‘aaing j gni aa’ by Barry Flanagan. The reason why is because of the shapes he had created and the textures, I wanted to squeeze it or poke it so badly.
5. A point which I found interesting whilst there was the night we went out to the club Tresor, I loved the location, in an old concrete warehouse which on the inside was a maze of concrete corridors and rooms with graffiti on the walls. The whole building in itself was a piece of art, I love the gritty and the grungy. The next day however when we went to the Borros Collection we learnt that it briefly used to be a club itself, the rooms were even smaller and ceiling so low and more maze-like. I can only imagine what it was like in it’s peak in the early 90s.

Unfortunately there were things that I did not like as much as much I don’t want to say :

1. I did not like the exhibition at the Photography and film museum. I felt like it was less intriguing for me since I am not interested in looking a photos of old movie stars or what happened in the background of old movies. I would have loved for there to be more old movie posters and more video. The photography was more photography for the sake of taking a photo of a famous person and not artistically inclines. For someone who is a photographer this may have been useful but to me it was pretty uninspiring.
2. One thing that I was not pleased about in the Borros collection was how quickly we were led through the exhibition. I loved the collection and the artwork in it was really interesting however we were rushed through the collection by our guide. There were so many other groups there that they had to keep the groups rolling which is understandable. However I would have preferred pieces with a description about the work and have my own time to explore the collection, since there were so many pieces I liked but didn’t get enough of a chance to sit and view.
3. At the Hamburger Bahnhof museum I was not a fan of the ‘How to talk with birds, trees, fish, shells, snakes, lions and bulls’ exhibition. The concept behind the exhibition seemed weaker to me compared to the other work in the museum. I had just been sat in a huge room with massive TV screens discussing the end of the world and then coming upstairs to this it seemed a bit weak in comparison and I lost interest quickly.
4. The lack of greenery in Berlin, every park we went to the grass was thin, bare and lifeless. I guess it complimented the simpler architecture around it. However it would have been nice to have some green.
5. Stepping in dog poo.