“Disneyland of the DDR” brought back to life

By Joel Alas
Photo by Megan Cullen

Of all the events commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall, this surely rates as the quirkiest.
Yesterday (Sunday November 8) a pair of artists, assisted by a team of aged electricians, restarted a giant Ferris wheel that has sat dormant in an abandoned East Berlin theme park for almost a decade.
The park, called Kulturpark Plänterwald, was known as the “Disneyland of the DDR” and attracted millions of East Germans each year. Yet the property has deteriorated since its closure in 2001, and is now an overgrown oddity of the former east.
The park’s centrepiece, a 45-meter high Ferris wheel, was installed in October 1989 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the formation of the DDR, one month before the fall of the wall.
Artist Juan Linares said he hoped that the unexpected sight of the wheel turning again would remind people of the period before German reunification, and of the consequences over the past twenty years.
To reactivate the wheel, Linares tracked down Plänterwald’s former electricians, who, armed with off-market parts, managed to spark the giant red wheel to life, creating an eerie sight for passers-by.
Linares and his partner Erika Arzt first dreamed up the idea of reactivating the wheel some five years ago when they first relocated to Berlin. They discarded it as fanciful, but recently returned to the concept, negotiating with the indebted park’s administrator for permission, and securing funds to pay for the required work.
All parties were surprised when, after eight years immobile in Berlin’s often wet and cold weather, the wheel began turning with little audible complaint.
“We thought because it hasn’t been moved for eight years, it would generate some rusty sounds, but it actually runs quite well,” Linares said.
It seems unlikely, however, that the wheel will ever again carry passengers due to lingering safety concerns.

Open to interpretation

While disconnected from any of the official celebrations of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the event provided an opportunity for reflection, he said.
“It is open for people to project themselves into the event. You might relate to the history of the park itself. It is all about how you contextually frame the event. The event can just be a wheel turning.
“There is also something paradoxical about the coincidence of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall, and the still-lurking effect of the financial crisis. The fall of the wall represented the consolidation of neo-liberalism as the main ideological framework that ironically has led us to an economic crisis and with it a potential questioning of its foundations.”
The park’s former owner Norbert Witte said he was moved by the sight of the wheel turning once again.
“I have often wished that it would run,” said Witte, whose controversial life has been the subject of tabloid fascination, documentary films and even an opera.

Uncertain future

With the restarting of the Ferris wheel comes renewed excitement about Plänterwald’s future. Will it ever be restored to its former glory?
With a mountain of debt attached to its title deed, it seems highly unlikely that any buyer would be willing to saddle themselves with the park’s fiscal obligations. Each year plans are mooted for its restoration or redevelopment, none of which ever come to pass.
For now, it remains an object of local curiosity. Yesterday, as the wheel spun, a young enthusiast of the park led a group of paying guests on guided tour of the ramshackle grounds. Tours have been operating each weekend for the past few months, and have proven so popular that the tour guides have extended their operations past their original schedule and into the winter.
Linares said there was something appealing about the imagery of an abandoned theme park.
“It has a slight feeling of the mythical landscape of Arcadia, where something has been taken over by nature. I would say it is a cliché, and I like that, because there is this space where people project themselves into it. But I don’t know how long it will remain like that. There would be a lot of people who would like it to remain like that, and I would be one of them.”

Der Spiegel: Doctors return to Afghanistan

By Joel Alas

In 2004, five Medecins Sans Frontieres workers were murdered in Afghanistan, leading the organization to withdraw after more than 24 years of providing basic health care in the country. Doctors with the group have now returned to provide treatment at hospitals in Kabul and the contested Helmand region.

Five years ago a team of workers from Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) were killed in a brutal roadside ambush in Afghanistan. The deaths caused the Nobel Peace Prize-winning medical relief organization to withdraw from the country in bitter circumstances, blaming, in part, international armed forces for militarizing humanitarian aid.

This week, MSF attempted to put the tragedy behind it as it dispatched its first team of doctors to the troubled country since 2004.

Michiel Hofman, head of the MSF mission, said the safety of doctors and patients would depend on keeping weapons out of the hospitals.

"I was quite shocked to see that in most health structures, the normal rules for the neutrality of health systems did not apply. International forces and police would regularly go into hospitals to harass patients. Hospitals would be attacked. There is a dire record of respecting the neutrality of health structures," Hofman told SPIEGEL ONLINE by telephone from Kabul.

Read more: Der Spiegel

The secret history of Times New Roman

Today The Financial Times Magazine publishes my feature article on the secret history of Times New Roman.
The world's most popular font was once praised for looking as if it were designed by nobody at all. Now the question of who designed it has developed into one of typography's greatest controversies.
The font’s commonly-accepted history is embedded in its name – a new roman-style typeface produced for The Times of London in 1931. Yet typographic expert Mike Parker has revealed a more sinister story behind the famous font, one involving theft, lies and cover-up.
According to this alternative history, Times New Roman was drawn by an American yacht designer in 1904, but was forgotten for almost three decades before being rediscovered and plagiarised by typographers for The Times.
Parker's theory is gathering acceptance, with even The Times newspaper itself conceding the American's possible authorship of the ubiquitous typeface.
But the theory faces fierce criticism from the typographic vanguard, with some experts dismissing it as a hoax supported by flimsy and fabricated information.
Whatever the case, it is clear deception has been propagated – the only question is whether the lies were told eighty years ago or far more recently.

See the font: Starling Read the full article

Nightmare at the Museum - Smithsonian artifacts lost to contamination

By Joel Alas

AN AUSTERE QUOTE is chiseled into the sandstone façade of The Smithsonian Institute’s Museum of American History, facing the National Mall in Washington: “No ignorance is probably without loss to him, no error without evil.”
Today researchers attempting to delve into the Institute’s archives find themselves at such a loss. Despite its lofty reputation, The Smithsonian is impoverished and in decay. An entire warehouse storing precious artifacts has been indefinitely quarantined due to asbestos and lead contamination.
Researchers requesting access to rare documents have been told the relics will remain inaccessible until the institute’s funding is increased, and with the budget already stretched, it is likely many historical treasures will remain locked away for years to come.
The state of the Institute’s archives came to light when researchers attempted to review documents relating to American art history which were bequeathed by private collectors to the Smithsonian for preservation and scholarly research.
The documents are housed in a storage building in suburban Maryland, one of dozens of facilities in and around D.C. which is owned by the Smithsonian.
Although not considered important enough to be displayed in the Smithsonian’s central museums, the documents are considered to be of immense scholarly value.
Valeska M. Hilbig, deputy director of the Museum of American History’s office of public affairs, confirmed the building was closed due to asbestos and lead contamination. She said entrance to the building was restricted to authorized personnel wearing protective clothing.
“The building in question is contaminated but the collections stored inside are not,” Hilbig said.
“The artifacts and archival materials of the museum are not damaged or at risk. They have been cleaned and are covered with plastic sheeting until we are able to move them to new storage facilities,” Hilbig said.
Although the Institute recently opened a new 300,000 square foot storage facility nearby, it lacks the funds required to relocate material from the contaminated building. The Institute’s budget is already stretched thin, and Hilbig said the relocation program remained at the mercy of federal funding.

Now I've got something to say

I haven’t written a post in months because I haven’t had much to say. That changed last week. Suddenly I got my voice back.



I’ve been playing around with an idea I call “direct journalism.” Put simply, it’s the idea of journalists connecting directly with their audiences by giving mini-lectures on the topics they research.

This came about through the difficulty I’ve encountered trying to sell my feature stories to newspapers and magazines in the current journalism market. Few publications have budgets for freelancers. Great stories are going untold.

The saying “necessity is the mother of invention” should be modified to “desperation is the mother of invention.” I felt a driving urge to deliver my story to an audience. Standing up and telling a room full of people seemed the only avenue to do so (aside from giving the story away for free on a blog – something I’m not willing to do. I spent a lot of time and money researching my information, and I’m yet to see an internet-based model that will allow me to recoup the required amount – but that’s another story).

Last week I organized the first Direct Journalism Talk at Betahaus in Kreuzberg, Berlin. I asked photographer Marco Baringer, a recent acquaintance, to join me. He spoke about his recent visit to Malawi to document the lives of school students there, showing a slideshow of his beautiful pictures. Then I got up and explained my story, which delves into the shadowy history of the font Times New Roman. It was a very old-fashioned town hall-style presentation, and we got a very positive response from everyone who attended.

I’ll probably organize more such talks in the future, and see if I can somehow bring the whole concept to the web.

Arvo Pärt in concert

I had tried to stir up excitement amongst my Berlin circle about the Arvo Pärt concert at the Berliner Philharmonie, but perhaps I hadn’t tried hard enough. In the end only two people joined me – Nate and Kelly, two young installation artists from the west coast of America.

“What Radiohead does for rock music, Pärt does for classical,” I enthused over and over (although I had used the same line to describe Johann Johannsson, so perhaps it had lost its effect). All we listen to in this town is dirty squelchy electro-techno. Last week I had treated my body to the softening effect of a sauna, and I felt it was time to give my ears a similar treatment.

The ticket price might have put some people off – 22 euros. But I figured that money is just time I haven’t worked yet, so I put into practice my ‘money is illusory’ mantra, and it worked. While waiting in line at the box office, a gentleman came up and gave me a free ticket. “My friend is sick tonight,” he explained, refusing any payment. The three of us split the cost of the other two seats, so it cost us just teens of euros to see a priceless concert. “In L.A, this kind of thing would be unaffordable,” Nate told me.

I had anticipated that the whole experience would be like a psychedelic trip. The trip began as we entered the concert hall. The Berliner Philharmonie, designed by Hans Scharoum in the 1960s, is a vortex of stairs and levels. I must have quick-stepped up and down every stairway and platform as I raced to find my seat before the lights dimmed. The construction is the physical realization of MC Escher’s design ‘Relativity’ (there I go recycling lines again – I used that description once in a story about the Linnahall in Tallinn, but here it’s even more appropriate). Once seated, I had a short conversation with the folk who had given me the ticket. The kind lady next to me let me share her program and also slipped me some peppermints. “That’s the composer sitting over there,” she pointed out, and there he was, Arvo Pärt in the sixth row in a concert tuxedo, looking like a revolutionary leader with his wiry grey beard. Out of costume, he could pass as a village fisherman. I kept glancing at him throughout the concert. He sat with his hand resting at the side of his face, his fingers quivering as the orchestra cried and roared.

The mood became electric as the performers filed in – first the Ensemble Resonanz, then the Rias Kammerchor – and suddenly I became extremely nervous that I would disrupt the concert with some out-of-turn behaviour or noise, an errant clap. I was in a foreign environment, and I did not know the rules of conduct.

The conductor strode to his podium, long grey hair and a sharp etched face. Tõnu Kaljuste, another Estonian, an expert at Pärt compositions. I watched as he lifted his fingers and called the concert to order. It was almost as if he plucked the very notes from the score and held them mid-air like a spiderweb. The tangible energy of the whole glorious room was in his fingers, and he grabbed it and whipped it into a tornado of sound. I felt as if I were floating on a current of emotion, swooping and diving, thoughts and colours exploding around me. Kaljuste the conductor, looking like a Lord of the Rings wizard, more Sauruman than Gandalf. He led the orchestra with electricity coming from his fingers. He drew the breath from our lungs with the pull of his hands. In the split second silence before the crescendo, he took in a sharp suck of air, an audible inhalation that invited the players to explode in sound.

The first two pieces, ‘Orient and Occident’ and ‘Berliner Messe,’ were dark and surreal. The refrains collapsed and cascaded on each other. I tried to hear something of Estonia in the sound, and perhaps I could discern the dark misty marshlands and the everlasting twilight of midsummer.

The applause was cacophonic, especially when old Pärt descended to the stage. How often does anyone get to experience a night like this – the composer of modern masterpieces in the hall to hear his music and take a bow?

In the pause we joined the crush at the bar, chattering madly about our experiences. Nate and Kelly are no strangers to modern classical. Kelly actually studied piano and music theory, and she rattled off a string of recommendations. “George Crumb wrote a whole series of pieces based on astrology,” she said, “He also wrote a set based on dogs. At the end of the recording, some woman yells out `Fido!´”

As we returned from the intermission, I overheard two fellows speaking Estonian, and I couldn’t help myself. Perhaps it was a subconscious reason I went there, to get the opportunity to show off my partial understanding of an obscure language. “Kas teie olete Eestlased?” I asked, and they confirmed it. “See on vaga hea muusik,” I said, and they agreed.

As we reached the doors of the concert hall, a surly usher informed us that we were too late. The performance had resumed. The seating arrangement is so intimate that late arrivals cannot be permitted. I thought it an appropriate moment to show off my Estonian swearing proficiency in front of these chaps. “Kurat!” I said sharply. Rather than impressed, the two Eesti men looked shocked and offended. I suddenly realized that swearing is a very uncultured thing to do in a concert house, no matter what language you do it in. They kept their distance after that.

Thankfully we were able to steal back to our seats during a lull in the music. The orchestra and choir had taken up a rousing score by Erkki-Sven Tüür, another Estonian composer (it seems to be a requirement for Estonian composers to have umlauts in their name). Tüür is younger and more bombastic than Pärt. His scores ‘Action Passion Illusion’ and ‘Requiem’ could be soundtracks to psychological horror films or epic screenplays of clashing armies and colliding galaxies.

The highlight was the concert pianist, a bespectacled hunchback who stood over the opened lid of the grand piano and pummelled the strings with mallets, brushes, picks, and his bare hands. He looked like a mad scientist bent over his machines. Kelly tells me this abstract treatment of a piano is typical of 20th century classical.

I sat mesmerized for several minutes at the conclusion of the concert, and was one of the last to leave that beautiful multi-layered concert hall.

Later, on the walk back to the bus stop, we were treated to a spectacular light show on the inner-roof of the Neue Nationalgalerie, where tickerboard artist Jenny Holzer has installed a constellation of moving words and letters. We looked around for a spätkauf at which to buy a cheap beer so we could sit and enjoy the wet-but-warm evening air, but with no luck. “I don’t think we’re going to find cheap beer here. We’re in fancyland now,” I said as we looked around at the streetscape and skyline, Potsdamer Platz shining brightly to the east, and behind us the gold-layered confusion of the Berliner Philharmonie.

Impersonating the Impersonators

A few weeks ago my brother Josh and I organized an event here in Berlin. We called it 'The Museum Of Capitalism - Reactions to the Crash'. We invited people to fill a gallery space with art about economics. It was also a launch party for The Yes Men, political satirists who impersonate corporate spokesmen.

Last weekend (Sun Feb 15) The Yes Men won a major prize at the Berlinale Film Festival. Unfortunately The Yes Men weren't in town to accept the award. Instead, they asked me and two other friends to go along and accept the trophy - not just in their place, but actually pretending to be them. It's only fair, after all, the Yes Men pretend to be other people all the time. Here's what went down: