Tuesday morning begins with breakfast at Lindsey’s, then a slippery walk on pavements all covered with black ice. Yesterday, S-bahn trains were cancelled due to ice on the tracks; today, luckily, they’re back in traffic. The trip from Wedding to Steglitz takes approximately 40 minutes, then another walk from Rathaus Steglitz to the Institut für Theaterwissenschaft at Freie Universität Berlin. Here, the sidewalks are carefully sanded since our path coincides with the direction to a meeting point and facility for the community of blind Berliners. Gratefully, we trod along following a gentleman finding his way by help of the white stick.
This is my first visit to the Freie Uni. (and, in fact, to Berlin). I try to make myself familiar with the venues booked for the symposium, as Lindsey prints the first copies of the event programme. It’s difficult to imagine that all these things are actually going to take place here; that all these people will soon show up in person… Still two days to go.
For the afternoon, I decide to visit Haus am Waldsee further out in the Southwest part of the city, to see the exhibition we’ve added as an option for Sunday’s programme: Weathering by Beverly Buchanan.
Leaving the Freie Uni, I see a man writing something in the snow covering the windshield of a yellow car, then continuing to the next one to leave another message, before he strolls on along the road… Arriving at the Rathausplatz, I realize today is January 27th – the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The Haus am Waldsee turns out to be a museum of modest proportions, a patrician villa within a large English garden, dedicated mainly to contemporary art since 1946. The ongoing exhibition – works by Black American Artist & Diva Beverly Buchanan (1940-2015) and London/Amsterdam-based artist Ima-Abasi Okon touches me deeply. Buchanan’s equally headstrong and compassionate way of moving forward as an artist, bringing forth the dignity of vernacular architecture in rural US Georgia (and thus, of its builders and dwellers) and carrying out toilsome projects rooted in experiential understanding of power structures and history; paired with the walls painted by Okon with bee pollen soaked in water, in a colour floating between dirt and gold, and conveying a heavenly scent through the light-filled spaces.
In the evening, Remoteness team member Tinka arrives from New York City and we move into the hostel apartment that Lindsey has provided for us. Tomorrow will be a busy day…
Helena Hildur W. 