For two weeks in September, I will work as an artist-in-residence in a storefront at Lichtenberg Studios, Berlin. You are welcome to visit this temporary, open studio with a community kitchen for conversations about food and migration. The old German saying “The farmer won’t eat what he doesn’t know” implies that it’s normal to be […]
Inspired by the North Sea island of Juist, a windswept place where Berlin-based pattern designer Anke Wulffen has been spending summer weeks away from the mainland world of cars and bustle since her childhood, Ahoi: Seaside Sweaters is a new e-book that I describe as knit-erature. Anke blends travel writing, memoir, photography and five new […]
If you’ve ever tried to learn a foreign languages, or observed how languages are mixing in Berlin’s neighborhoods (“Jalla! Ich bin Görli!”) you are warmly invited to a language workshop inspired by my recent experiences with Hawaii Pidgin English: as part of TONGUE – Participative Art Project on Everyday Language at the Akademie der ZUsammenKUNFT Friday, […]
“Local time” is a new series within the blog about my current transition from Berlin to Honolulu. Still fresh from the plane and caught between time zones, cultures and stages of my life, I find myself reflecting on the past eight years of becoming a local in Berlin and, looking ahead, wondering how I’ll relate to American culture and local ways in […]
This first week of June, things are feeling summery and full of changes at my studio. For one, I’ve temporarily moved to a studio collective in Mitte for the month, after the Multiverso studio collective closed its doors in May. This Monday, I celebrated my first day (Einstand) in the traditional German manner by bringing my colleagues something sweet — strawberries from one […]
I was sad to find this sign in the window of a little used bookstore on Berlin-Friedrichshain’s Niederbarnimstraße, where we used to look in regularly. We often found oddities, treasures and gifts there, in recent years priced by the kilo: a volume of Grzimek’s encyclopedia of animals that inspired us to buy the whole set; a beautiful hand-colored […]
Last week, I made my first short film. As you may know, I love taking classes and workshops on new skills, be it drawing animals at the zoo or hand-lettering. So I jumped at the chance to join a free intensive video workshop at the nGbK, focusing on the current exhibition, Tagore’s Post Office.
A voice sings out when you call this old-fashioned paint shop in Berlin-Kreuzberg: “Malerladen!” The full name is actually Frauenkollektiv Malerladen, as it’s run by a collective of down-to-earth, middle-aged women. Coming from a variety of related professions, including carpentry and construction, they believe in renovating old Berlin apartments the old-fashioned way, with high-quality linseed […]
Last week, a poster in a glass case in one of Berlin’s subway stations caught my eye. Or rather, half a poster. The whole poster, including the word (Love? Lover?) and the image (a woman’s face) had been torn in half from top to bottom, and only the left side remained.
Tomorrow is Martina’s lettering workshop and I’ve been collecting more Berlin lettering to mentally prepare. Above, the window of an after-school activity center in a Neukölln storefront, painted paper letters proclaim “On Fridays, it’s really happening!
