Dennis Hollingsworth

Berlin

What a great time I've had in Berlin! Five days of friends, deep art talk, endless beers (Berliners), high jinks, multiple art vector rendezvous, sleeping on the floors of friends' places, studio visits...

All this and no gallery/museum hopping, no tourist checklists, none of that. Berlin is too big and diverse to take in in one trip alone. The unspoken rule was to keep it real, curiosity driven, and driven by art. Usually, we would start a day walking towards Strasse des 17 Juni, crossing the Spree River and inevitably we would veer back (wearying too soon of the forced march of tourism) to the neighborhood centered around the intersection of Friederichstrasse, Chausseestrasse, Torstrasse and Oranienburgerstrasse; this, where the pull of street cafes (great street food, Turkish d?ners for example, and prices are reasonable) and the amiable streets proved to be irresistable.

I'll be back, for sure. "Berlin is New York in the seventies." Property is accessible, reasonably priced (studio rent is pretty low, art people!), the population (at least in this neighborhood) is diverse and anchored by a happy middle class, publc transportation is ample, clean and fast, and the scruffy edge. How can I explain here how I find graffitti, trash, abandoned lots, and dilapidated buildings reassuring? In short, because the vector of gentrification is present but not yet active and such places present a possibility for the imagination, unlke what I've seen in Southern France for example, where life is so perfect and ordered that I can't imagine carving out a living space of my own within it.

A message to all my young artist friends: get your butts over to Berlin post haste.

I've got a load of blog posts for you and pardon me while I spit into my hands and chop some wood for a while. I've got to get this stuff out and get myself into the studio. Here we go....