form of

some other things that are seeping into the mechanics (and that IS a shot of a different section of scaffolding than the one I posted before. I have been making a lot of scaffolding. tomorrow I should be able to post shots of what the scaffolding is accumulating into):

everywhere you go in the touristy part of Berlin there are racks and racks of postcards showing what the city looked like immediately post-world war II. a scale of destruction and desolation that is almost unfathomable. and always black and white images. so even from far away you can tell which postcards are of the destroyed city. at one time Berlin had something like 12? 8? majestic ceremonial city arches/gates or "tors". now I think the Brandenburg Gate is the only one left. well, that is until the one magical night next week when our "Meaning Tor" goes up at twilight. the meaning machines will be suspended in the middle of the arch, to be approached from either side. so the gate becomes a theatrical proscenium of sorts. and always a portal, a shift.

the scaffolding has also found itself growing out of a fascination with the structures that support signs--like old neon and shop signs, billboards. as well as the most basic beginning to rebuilding something. and now they end in clumps of wood---influenced perhaps by the numerous historical paintings we saw in Prague of peasants in wooden shoes. I spent a day trying to imagine what it would be like to walk around in wooden shoes and had to process the information somehow...

the 2-sided gate was also necessary here because of the strangeness that is Berlin's history as a divided, 2-sided city for 40+ years. think of all those cold war movies where the 2 sides exchange information or prisoners or suitcases in the middle of a bridge. that bridge is here. from either side.

and always here, I have to be honest, I am aware of the Nazi past. right now the city is reverberating with revelry and fireworks and cheering that is wide and loud as (I guess) Deutschland advances in World Cup soccer. something about this wideness of the sound brings my mind back to that image I found last summer of the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. waves and waves of stadium arms saluting Hitler. Tom thinks maybe firearms are going off now too, like maybe cannons? I guess there's something about how disturbing people can be as a group or mass. yesterday on our way to the performance we passed a poster advertising a Mark Rothko exhibition. it features a photo of Rothko in his studio and someone had painted out his head with heavy black paint and then written "Rubin Rothko" underneath. on a shop further down the street the same heavy black paint was used to make a Jewish star on a shop window. if anyone wants to read some incredible writers about what is the weight and responsibility of the German past in the present, W. G. Sebald and poet Paul Celan.