Dispatch: Berlin: Breaking Down Walls
By Clara Tang
Installation view of (left) MARJETICA POTRC‘s Caracas: Growing Houses, 2012, building materials and infrastructure for energy and water supply and communication, 480 × 745 × 315 cm; and (right) SIAH ARMAJANI’s Glass Front Porch for Walter Benjamin, 2001, glass, perspex, stainless steel, and anodized aluminum, 326 × 388 × 543 cm, at "Hello World. Revising a Collection," Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2018. Copyright the artists and Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
Since the late 1980s, Berlin has been hailed as the artistic center of Germany. The city offers a high standard of living for its population, and, despite steady rent hikes, has been affordable compared to the rest of the country. These conditions have also attracted crowds of artists, curators, and cultural professionals from across the globe, who have, in turn, gradually cultivated platforms representing diverse communities, seeding the city’s thriving international arts scene of today.
