This picture looks like an ordinary daily scene in a certain city. The pavement and buildings, and details like the gas lantern suggest that it is probably Berlin. The cars reveal that it is somewhere mid 80s. It has been raining, people walk across the street. The grocery is open.
Just a normal street scenery in Berlin somewhere in the 80s. Yes it is, and no, it isn’t. This is the Dresdener Strasse in Kreuzberg, and 10 meter to the left is the Berlin wall. It is part of a huge panorama “Die Mauer” (The Wall) by the artist Yadegar Asisi, in which the artists shows that every day life behind the Berlin wall was normal, although the location and circumstances were not at all.
Panoramas by Asisi
Yadeagar Asisi (*1955 Vienna) grew up in the East German cities Halle and Leipzig. He studied architecture in Dresden and Art in West Berlin. Since 1993 he works on panoramas which resulted in the worlds largest panoramas in old gasometers in Dresden and Leipzig. Currently, panoramas can be seen in Dresden, about the baroque period, and in Leipzig, about the battle of the nations in 1813. Until 2012 the panorama about Pergamon was exposed in Berlin. Since 2012 the panorama Die Mauer is exposed, near Checkpoint Charlie.
Panorama The Wall
Asisi lived in Kreuzberg in the 80s near the wall. He came up with the idea of this panorama when he was asked what living behind the wall was like, to show how people adapt to conditions as a strategy to survive. Helped by old photos, paintings, drawings and memories he worked 4 years to construct a detailed scenery of a normal fictitious autumn day in the 80s. It resulted in a huge panorama of 60 x 15 meter, supported by light effects and audio fragments.
It’s a nice opportunity to feel the existence of the wall within your heart instead of listing solely the facts. To see the small strip that is left of the Sebastianstrasse (-which you may recognise from Marillion’s Kayleigh videoclip-), children playing, people painting gravity on the wall, tourists touching the wall, making selfies, visitors looking over the wall, the todesstreifen between both walls and pigeons sitting on the wall or just flying around. All spotted by guards in a watchtower….
Absolutely worth a visit!
Asisi Panometer Berlin
Friedrichstrasse 205 (Checkpint Charlie) 10117 Berlin
www.asisi.de
September 2012 till at least the end of 2014
Open Daily 10-18
Entrance fee 10 Euro
U6 Kochstrasse
