HIER GIBT’S FAST NUR WUNDER

 

Site-specific installation / performance, X-wohnungen, Märkesches Viertel, Berlin 2005.

 

The performance Hier Gibt’s Fast Nur Wunder (Here there are only miracles) was situated in an apartment in the suburb Märkesches Viertel, Berlin. A story was told to me by an older lady that moved to the house when it was built. She was telling me this story to prove how much better it was compared to the poor and broken down area she had moved from. This was part of big development to clear out old ghettos and modernise the living in Berlin. A movement that happened all around northern Europe at the time.

 

She told me; in an area of West Berlin in the 1970s, in an anonymous block in an urban development housing 65,000 people, a seriously ill girl living hight up in he building could not visit her horse so her parents got permission to suspend very strict regulations for this case, so that the horse could visit her. 

 

Thirty years later the area is very different. One of the issues at this time is that people don’t meet and get to know each other. There is a fear of opening the door to a stranger. For this performance, a horse, Bonito, was moved into a 12th floor apartment. Visiting the installation, the audience, which included residents of the block, entered the apartment in pairs. They went through a dark hallway to an unexpected meeting with Bonito. Re-inventing and re-living the story encouraged other block residents to share their own stories with each other. Residents met with audience from the city and it generated more stories than the one about the horse. 

 

Bonito loved to have his audience, being a circus horse as he was, and became a bit of a celebrity in area. And he got a lot of carrots.

 

Installation/performance: Mixed media: apartment, horse, host, carrot, cake