58 min | 2017 | Video/Sound: Clemens Wilhelm & Joakim Blattmann
Premiere: November 9th 2017, 9 pm – ACUD Kino Berlin
ACUD Kino | Veteranenstrasse 21 | 10119 Berlin
The Berlin Wall is now gone for as long as it stood. It stood for 28 years – and it fell 28 years ago. The Berlin Wall was toppled by a peaceful revolution, but it lives on as some kind of ghost. It’s consequences can still be felt today. The wound of the city has turned into a scar, partly it healed well, party it is still open. Physically in the cityscape, as well as psychologically in the heads, it is still very present.
DIE MAUER IST WEG documents a circular walk around the entire former Berlin Wall in the year 2017. The film consists of photographs which all follow the same conceptual composition: they show the path ahead which represents the Berlin Wall, with West-Berlin to the left and East-Berlin to the right of the image. In 160 km the film leads through the banality of the former death strip, the demarcation line between the blocks of the Cold War.
DIE MAUER IST WEG is a re-visit and visualization of this wound which capitalism, communism and fascism cut into the city. The viewer of the film gets a chance to experience the dimension of human insanity which this architectural and political wall posed, and which Berlin had to survive.
During the premiere at ACUD Kino, Berlin, the video work was accompanied by a live-soundtrack, which combines an arrangement of musical instruments with original sounds from the Berlin Wall.
DIE MAUER IST WEG shows the absent, a wall that is no longer physically there. It is a paradox attempt to picture the invisible.
© – Clemens Wilhelm / Joakim Blattmann 2017
JOAKIM BLATTMANN 