Lichtenberg Studios

On my first walk along Rummelsburg Bay, I noticed two seemingly abandoned shopping carts filled with plastic bags, clothes and shoes. They looked like social exclamation marks next to the smart new buildings, townhouses, homes for the wealthy on the banks of the Spree Bay. I photographed the found objects and used one of the pictures to create a missing person’s report, which I copied several times and posted on lampposts and building entrances with the text: “Missing – shopping cart with several bags. In it clothes, shoes. I would be grateful for any information. The contents are for survival.

Last seen: S-Bahn Rummelsburg. Please call 0176-48532440.” I actually received a few calls: My car had been found. On another tour in Buchberger Straße, a rather inhospitable area, I discovered a shabby, tattered bag hanging from a window on the façade of the Berliner Rockhaus, a former office building from the GDR era. What might it contain? I also photographed this anti-idyll to make another flyer, which I posted in the area around the site. “Wanted – bag with valuables. The bag itself is getting on in years, was hanging on my window in Buchberger Straße (Berlin-Lichtenberg). It was probably stolen. It contained cash, among other things. I would be grateful for any information. Please call 0176-48532440,” was written on it. I received calls again: “Look out of your window,” said one. “Otherwise I’ll take the cash out.” On the other hand, I didn’t receive any calls about the third wanted ad I posted in the Frankfurter Allee area on the corner of Schulze-Boysen-Straße. “Found – Brown leather wallet with cash and private notes found here around the corner. The owner should call 0176-48532440.” The wallet was pictured on the note. A few more forays through the district would have allowed me to continue playing with this kind of artistic intervention in many other places. Back at the picturesque Rummelsburg Bay with all the contrasts between modern housing culture, simple huts on the water, also called houseboats, or the Rummelsburg prison converted into apartments, built in 1877-79 as a labor camp, operated during the National Socialist era as the Berlin-Lichtenberg Municipal Work and Detention Center, and in GDR times as a prison (would you want to live here?), the green fence along the water kept me busy. A biotope is protected there, the habitat of numerous animal species on the banks. “…any disturbance, such as trespassing, is prohibited. Violators will be prosecuted under the law”, the signs there say. So why not attach Italian video surveillance signs to this fence, which, with their black camera with a yellow background, certainly have a signal effect. So the Italians are now monitoring here. An absurd game that turns the rules of human interaction into a theme. Exploring Berlin-Lichtenberg with its Stasi headquarters, the Asian wholesale market, the zoo, the many high-rise buildings and many an uncomfortable corner in the gray November with its short light is an undertaking that can only be rudimentary at best in three weeks. There is still so much that you can and should react to artistically… I had brought some no man’s land with me. Better: a red and white barrier tape with the word “no man’s land” printed on it. On the way to the Ring-Center, I noticed four trees standing close together in front of a high-rise building on the corner of Frankfurter Allee and Gürtelstraße. I declared this area no-man’s land and was amazed that it was still there days later. One question keeps bothering me: what if land didn’t belong to anyone? Could it still be conquered? It’s about Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s critique of property: “The first person who fenced in a piece of land and boldly said: ‘This is mine’ and found such simple-minded people who believed it, became the true founder of bourgeois society. How many crimes, wars, murders, sufferings and horrors would one man have spared the human race if he had torn out the stakes or filled up the ditch and called out to his kind: ‘Don’t listen to this cheat. You are all lost if you forget that the fruits belong to all and the earth to none.” The subject matter concerns the question of living space and armed conflicts in equal measure. It is about inequalities, about conflicts. Today, stretching a red and white fluttering tape around an area of “no man’s land” is an intervention in property relations, and at the same time a confrontation with Rousseau, the existing social and political inequalities, and also with the cruel wars of the present. I must confess that I also left the district once: I also marked out a no man’s land in front of Café Moskau in the Mitte district. The no man’s land there wraps around a bus shelter. Lichtenberg may forgive me for being unfaithful once.

Wir, Gewaltsamen, wir währen länger.
Aber wann, in welchem aller Leben.
sind wir endenlich offen und Empfänger?
Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, II, V

Now that I think back on my experiences in Berlin of last October, I’m compelled to direct my attention to the Schrebergärten I fortuitously discovered in Lichtenberg. As much as the Hamburger
Bahnhof, Gemäldegalerie, Bode Museum, C/O Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie, Gedenkstätte Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, Jüdisches Museum Berlin, and others made a deep impression on me, I realize
now that it was the presence of nature as expressed in the exuberant foliage and vibrant colors of the Schrebergärten that really captured my imagination, and held me in their spell.

Seeing the sun rise from the studio in Lichtenberg at dawn called forth Romantic impulses I’d never felt before in any city’s confines. I would pedal out quickly on my bike to the Sans Soucis cluster of
gardens and maisonettes 10 minutes away. The early morning light combined with the moisture from the dew sharpened the textures and concentrated the colors, increasing their saturation several fold, intensifying unexpectedly my perceptions. Yes, color would dominate and seal my residency! Moreover the fertility of the dark earth once uncovered astounded me. That black loam permitted intensive planting guided by personal fantasy and passion. No aesthetic model nor design doctrine appeared to control the plot’s layout nor the selection of fruit, vegetable or flower varieties. The one authority to intervene in the organization could only be personal and idiosyncratic, demonstrating subjective delight.

These were “Green” citizens on the loose with the freedom to enhance their lives with the nourishment of the freshest vegetable and fruits, as well as bouquets for the table. The care administered to the combination of certain seasonal vegetable and fruits reassured me of the primacy of the seasons. Moreover, the rustic dwellings, the ad-hoc constructions, and vernacular inventions were tangible proof that architecture without architects can astonish as well as serve a purpose.

Even the birdhouses bristled with artisanal ingenuity. Comfort has myriad expressions in these communities verging on the surreal. Each morning would bring its fresh discoveries, a new bloom here, a ripened green there, a fruit fallen to the ground, the passage of birds, the insistent call to migration of the honking geese – all this available to passerby’s. Peering over the fences allowed me to absorb enough chromatic energy to fuel the entire day. Remarkable daily sustenance quite physical as well as mental. I had to catch a glimpse of what had transpired in the course of my absence. Had a frost covered the ground, what new bird had arrived or left, were the sunflower seeds falling yet? And the liberty to wander from impression to impression and photograph quickly without the trying nuisance of guard dogs barking out their territory. In fact, anyone with eyes could enter this parceled realm from an inclusive distance and stare in admiration, perhaps even in awe, at the wonders of natural world.

All pictures: Mark Lyon, Berlin 2024