GROUND 0101 (The Fall Issue)

SN. Well, that’s because New
York is big white spot.
IO. True, but then I also realised
this patterns within
the city’s space, at first this
marvellous sense of living
in a multicultural city where
everybody loves each other
and then that strong sense
of otherness and stigma attached
to you depending of
where you live, how you look
like and so on.
SN. It is not because it is
multicultural or that everybody
loves each other, a
city is like a puzzle. I have
several friends in New York
who speak about the city, I
remember telling to friends
once living in Central Park
West that I was going down
to Greenwich Village and they
asked me what the hell was
I going to do there? That’s
again, what for me stranger
is, it is like I could be uptown
and feel at home then go to
Greenwich and do my business.
That is why it is always
important, at least for me, to
have a kaleidoscopical point
of view, because nothing is a
whole when we talk about a
city. For instance, we worked
together for Wir Sind Alle
Berliner, and that space do
not reflected what Neukölln
is, I’ve been to Kreuzberg and
the Kreuzbergers would say
they don’t like Neukölln, people
in Charlottenburg probably
say same things about
the rest of the city. So, one
have to take into account the
fact that a city is some sort
of Mille-feuille, do you know
what is a Mille-feuille?
IO. A layer cake?
SN. Yes, but notice that in
the cake those layers do not
touch each other, they are
isolated by a layer of cream.
In order to have a whole picture
of a city one must integrate
all those layers. I cannot
come here and describe
Mitte and then say this is
Berlin. That’s why it is important
to have all the strangers
to have a take in Berlin,
but it’s not necessarily that
they must become Germans,
because even among themselves
they should not concentrated
in a specific location.
But of course, if you look
at their cultural complexions,
some might have African
background, Middle Eastern
background etcetera. At the
same time they are all strangers,
even the germans in the
shows are strangers according
to my definition of stranger.
IO. Those are the differences
I would find between these
two metropolis New York and
Berlin, although there are a
lot of analogies amidst the
two cities. But for example,
when it comes to distribute
the hierarchy of the cake’s
layers, in the case of United
States this can be spotted
through racialized markers
of separations, I mean one
find in New York the Manhattan
and Brooklyn scrambled,
then the Bronx and Queens.