Berlin Through the Lens Notes of Berlin dirt, noise, love, the search for flats, bicycle theft, packages that don’t get delivered… These things are so relatable. Do you think you could use the notes to create a profile of the typical Berliner? [Laughs] I was actually planning to do a little story based on real notes and how a day or a week in Berlin unfolds. So, you wake up because your neighbour is being noisy, you find that your bike has been stolen, you lose your wallet on the way to the U-Bahn, where you see someone who you want to see again, you spend your day searching for a new apartment… it’s the everyday life of people living here. What you’re capturing is such a deeply personal view of the city, and what it really means to live here. You just can’t make it up. And even if this form of communication is beginning to disappear, people have sent in 18,000 or 19,000 notes over the last few years. It’s an archive that will never really go away. Do you write notes yourself? Yeah. I found my first apartment through writing a note. I wrote a note and stuck it around certain streets where I wanted to live, and two days later some artist called me and told me I could live in his apartment for the next year. Also, some years ago I met a girl in a club. We walked to the tram station together but I didn’t ask for her number; maybe I was too shy [laughs]. So I wrote a note because I wanted to see her again. I knew where she lived because she told me where her tram station was, so I stuck 20 or 30 notes around the station and she called the next day. You had an exhibition recently, a room in temporary art space THE HAUS - Berlin Art Bang. Tell us about that. Something I always wanted to do was to have a room completely covered with notes that I printed out. I covered the ceiling, the walls and the floor with the best of the last six years. I have done certain exhibitions but not such creative ones as this, and it’s a very nice feeling. I spent sometimes one or two hours in the room watching people – I don’t usually get to see my audience so it was a great motivation. It makes you happy to see that you are making people happy. I would like to continue more with the exhibition stuff, the material is there. Apart from potentially more exhibitions, what’s next for you? I’m planning to do another photo book, but it will be made with quality paper and design in mind. Of course it’s way more expensive to produce that kind of book, so it won’t be an amazing commercial project, it will address a different audience. Once you know about Notes of Berlin, it’s impossible not to notice them everywhere. Contribute your finds to the project at notesofberlin.com Top left: “Calling the cops because of loud music???? How pitiful!!! Move to Charlottenburg if you want quiet!!!!” Top right: “Doorbell is defective! Either call, yell, or go home!” Bottom left: “Optimist seeks 2-room flat for themselves and their daughter, up to 400€ all included.” Bottom middle: “To the two ‘fucking-acrobats’ in the building. It would be fantastic if you would close the window during your nightly yodelling practice and not tyrannise the entire neighbourhood. It makes us sick that we’re constantly being ripped out of our sleep by your howling and all the residents have to close their windows, just because your ‘openair tournament’ fills the whole courtyard. Screwing is not an Olympic discipline and your nightly presentations won’t be greeted with thunderous applause.” 6 <strong>Issue</strong> <strong>Four</strong>
Berlinstagram Berlin Through the Lens Summer 2017 7