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December 17, 2005
Hope
Annelie was so kind to invite us to her wedding in her hometown Großräschen near Hoyerswerda which is a 2 hour drive away from Berlin. The party took place in a cafe near a lake. What made this lake special was that it made us all rethink the definition of "lake". Actually it was a lake-to-be because everything was there except - water. The massive cavity used to be a former coal-mine and is now turned into a lake. In about 20 years this pit will be filled, the surrounding nature recovered and every square inch will be occupied by swarms of tourists. And as you can see on this picture of the bridge: the residents are prepared.
Posted by Ralph Ammer at 03:08 PM | Comments (0)
December 13, 2005
Tradition?
I visited the Gemäldegalerie Berlin twice last week. Somehow I have never been there before within the almost 10 years I have been living in Berlin.
Maybe my growing up in a catholic environment in Bavaria made me avoid any kind of religious art. But not this time: I went the distance, entered these halls filled with medieval and renaissance paintings and fully immersed myself in the collective christian nightmare of fear, brutality, superstition, confusion and longing for salvation.
I was struck by the awkward transformation of biblical sceneries into the local context of the painters. One could easily tell by the faces and fashion styles of Jesus, Mary and the other characters where those paintings originated from. Whether they wanted it or not: depicting the heavenly community the painters also portrayed the societies they were living in.
This made me think about originality again: Those artists treated the same topics with the same characters, using the same medium in a similar style and sometimes even similar compositions for decades if not centuries. Still, every single painting looks unique, reveals its own visual inventions, tells a different story and has its own meaning. Maybe these subtleties can only be perceived because of the similarities. Being used to the idea of constant progress which incessantly forces one to come up with something radically new and unseen I was wondering what media art and design would look like if they would not have to fulfill the need for the sensation of the new.
Posted by Ralph Ammer at 12:59 PM | Comments (2)