I am here – an exploration of space

A combination of directions from people in Karlshorst.

Remake of my visual map from the first day.

 My impressions of Karlshorst.

First try of my visual map. I chose the train station from my hometown. #Merle #day1 #iamhere2018

#merle #alldays

Todays exhibition @htw-berlin

#Sofia #day4 Our experience and what we learned.

#Sofia #Day3 A place in other people eyes.

#day4 On the last day we filled out a template to present our project and communicate what we learned and experienced about Karlshorst during the week. Overall I can say that I changed my mind about the people living here. I definitely had some prejudices about Karlshorsters and their attitude. But people were so nice and obviously had a strong connection to their district. I would still not move here, because I feel connected to the north of berlin and need a bit more vibrance to feel at home.

Places in other peoples heads.

On the third day we were asked to walk around and ask strangers to quickly sketch us the way to a certain direction. We were astonished, at how reluctant people were to generally sketching on paper. Someone even printed out the google maps screenshot, rather than using pen and paper, that we had ready for him. Generally it was really interesting to see how different other people communicate places, as well as the distances between them. They found shapes that I would have personally never used. Also many of them had quite different subjects that were important to them, which I would not have found interesting at all ( a man gave us a full description of the tank we would find in front of the russian museum, rather than letting us know the streets we need to walk to get there.) In the final result, I tried to celebrate the variety of graphical elements, just like the variety of interesting and generally helpful people we met in Karlshorst. But still the layout was meant to give a way a sense of disruption and chaos, which was my personal impression of Karlshorst the last few days.

Today we walked around Karlshorst and asked strangers for directions to some spots or attractions. Some of them drew their directions on paper for us. I started making a collage out of my memories of the people we talked to and their outward appearance. The dashed line shows our walk around the neighbourhood. We chose to always take the direction the people showed us, so our route seemed a little aimless. I also riped the pieces of paper apart and arranged them intrusively. Tomorrow I am going to take a second look and finish the project.   

This collage is made out of signs and orientation marks I found in Köpenick. I took a pile of pictures, collected them on my laptop and decided to draw and put them in the order of my walk. The green line marks the footprints of my walk, the pink stripes stand for the visual expressions that popped out every second that I walked with open eyes.

#Merle #iamhere2018 #day2