Schauplatz : Berlin

by Iris Czak and Marei Wenzel

Cities are complicated, in particular when they are big – and Berlin is rather big.

Fortunately, we don’t see everything at once and whatever we do see is not always immediately in focus. One would otherwise go mad. We have our trodden paths, our perspectives, know our houses and familiar spaces, and build ourselves a city in which we don’t lose our bearings. Now and then we either voluntarily add another facet or are compelled to do so.

Iris Czak and Marei Wenzel take a different view. Their search for film locations takes them from a maternity ward to a prison, from a church to a conference room, from a sports hall to a pathology department, from a homeless people’s shelter to a villa, from a brothel to a living room and from the edge of a forest to
a city high street.

Their photographs are by no means iconic, nor can they be tidied away. They stand for nothing more than the places they depict: potential backdrops for one’s own life, for a passing visit, a short stopover or a final destination.

The whimsicality of the fantasy, “Anything Goes” is here countered by a deadpan “Anything Is” – and that is really quite disconcerting.