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Project "N.N-Zwischenliegend" (2015 – 2019)

 

Erika Matsunami

 

 

-       Digital photography (double exposure), environmental noise/sound

 

This photo series represents a part of the spiritual (cognitive) stories in an experimental photographic documentation. It is focused on the theme of “ambivalence” in the city of Berlin, such as dichotomy ambiguity, diversity regarding light and shadow, hope and disappointment, peace and aggression, illusion (... and reality; in this case, where I stand and where you are standing).

 

 

Background of the project N.N-Zwischenliegend:

 

I came to Berlin for the first time in the summer of 1989. At that time, I was in Berlin-Kreuzberg (West Berlin) near the Wall (at the border to East Berlin) and on the western side of Oberbaum Bridge. After 1989, new forms of social order emerged and in 1990 came the reunification of Germany.

 

Twenty-five years later, in the summer of 2015, I started with the photo series N.N-Zwischenliegend, and I photographed the places where I had been at that time – in Kreuzberg, i.e. on the “west side”, and in East Berlin, more precisely in Mitte and Friedrichshain.

 

After the end of the Cold War, a new era of democratisation, globalisation, and the rise of neoliberal capitalism began.

 

A quarter of a century later, I reflect on the ambivalence in contemporary society, such as the current crisis of financial capitalism or the demand for authoritarianism and protectionism in the global economy and politics, but also the looming ecological catastrophes. At the same time, the message of post-fact politics in naive realism is reinforced.