Lichtenberg Studios

Marit Lindberg

In this conceptual art project a person born in 1961 walks through the district of Lichtenberg and thinks about time, history and circumstances. Places reflect the past while new things are constantly happening.

Present and past exist in parallel and being in Berlin means standing in the middle of European history. In the former East Berlin, small details appear all the time that are reminiscent of other places, but are also something special to this place.
The person remembers a postcard that is usually sold at memorial museums from the DDR era. The picture was taken in 1961 and shows a painful scene where a family is torn apart. One parent climbs over a coil of barbed wire and the other is left with a child in their arms.
Perhaps the child was only a few years older than the person who now walks about thoughtfully.
Has the child seen the other parent again? Did they get back together in 1989?

The person goes to the Ringcentret, which was a major attraction in the early 1980s as one of the first shopping centers in the DDR. Now the center is being rebuilt. It is full of scaffolding and the shops are temporarily closed. Instead, the person goes to the Castello Kiez shopping center in Lichtenberg and drinks a cup of coffee.
The mall was built in 2000 with “creative energy but no precision”, according to its own website. (castelloberlin.de)
The person goes to Kosmonauten Allé, just because the name of the street sounds exotic. It is reminiscent of colonial endeavors that seem to belong to the past, even though they are very current.

The person in this work was represented by four cartoon paper dolls that looked like Marit Lindberg but could really be anyone. The paper dolls are photographed in various locations. Each doll was finally left in different places in Lichtenberg.

When the dolls are placed for the last time, they are marked with the text:
A person born in 1961 walks around and thinks about history, time and coincidences.

Perhaps someone found a doll and perceived its meditative posture as an act of resistance to the senseless war and tension in the world?

Asami Togawa

At the time, I had the impression that the area around Lichtenberg Studios was a dark and lonely place. This was probably due to the extensive construction and road works at the nearby Ostkreuz station. The towering old water tower next to the station was eerie to me and always seemed to be watching me. I felt like an unwelcome stranger in the city. The glow of a supermarket sign amidst the dark and empty construction sites dimly illuminated the dark and empty interior of the supermarket, letting me know that there was no one to be seen in this dark and empty neighborhood. This supermarket has now disappeared.
Are 12 years long enough to change the memory of a city?

Places that were once shady and damp now glow in the colors of the season’s flowers. Landscapes are built up, dismantled, built up, dismantled, over and over again, creating layers. Most of the time you can only see the top layer, the one behind it remains invisible. But sometimes you catch a glimpse of these old layers, memories peeking through the cracks. The weather in April is changeable, cloudy one moment, sunny the next. Suddenly it’s hailing.

Some people may enjoy bumping into old places and reminiscing. But for me, walking through the countryside and recalling memories from 12 years ago was almost unbearable. When I asked people in the area about the dark and empty supermarket, they told me they didn’t know there had ever been one.

I try to build a bridge between the visible and the invisible by slightly changing the things I pick up. I want to set the temperature of memory just right from where I stand today.