FOR 28 years The Berlin Wall stood as a symbol of the divided Germany and a Europe, indeed world, divided along ideological, military, and economic lines.
Today its remains in the Friedrichshain area of the city, known as The East Side Gallery, are covered in vibrant graffiti and murals and it has become a place of expression for German artists. However the Wall has also become a place of creativity and expression for a group of GMIT film and TV students who have created their own ‘Berlin Wall’ as part of their degree programme.
The Wall - Wir Sind Berliner is a new exhibition in the GMIT Cluain Mhuire campus, Wellpark, which will be officially opened to the public tomorrow at 11.30am by a member of the German Embassy.
As you walk down a corridor in Cluain Mhuire, you see a sign for Berliner Straße. The sign is in the font used in streetsigns Germany and on top of the signpost is a little toy Trabant car. Proceed further and you pass by four sections of a wall - replicas of the wall which surrounded West Berlin from 1961 to 1989.
The walls are grim and grey, but their intimidating nature is countered by being adorned with large photos of a group of young people seeing the sights and ‘having the craic’ in Berlin. On the corridor windows here are street and S and U-bhan maps of the city, while on the opposite wall there are posters featuring puns on German movies as well as a series of film reviews of classic and contemporary German films. All the while German jazz, Krautrock, and Ost Rock play in the background while video footage of the city is played on a screen.
This exhibition is the creation of six students - Matt Micucci, Gill Christie, Emmaline Dowling, Gavan McNulty, Gerard Butler, and Peter Morris - overseen by Jenny Farrell, German lecturer in the School of Humanities, GMIT.
Ms Farrell, born and raised in East Berlin in the former German Democratic Republic, says it is a Geseamtkunstwerk - a ‘total work of art’ involving numerous different disciplines. She describes how it came about.
“The students are studying German as part of their degree and it was important they go to a place where the language is living, so we went to Berlin last October,” she says. “While there the students took video footage and photographs of the city. The German Embassy visited the GMIT and said it would be willing to sponsor activities relating to Germany. I thought there was all this footage and photos and that it would be good to do something with them and the Embassy was interested and has funded the exhibition.”
A series of ideas eventually led to the creation of the Berlin Wall replicas. The replicas are made of wood but stand almost as high as the actual wall and have a rough concrete look, thanks to the heavy grey paint with which they are covered. The creation of the wall took two days and the overall effect is impressive.
The wall was largely the idea of Gill and Emmaline while a replica of one of the East Side Gallery murals was painted by Gavin, who also shot the video footage. The music was chosen by Gerard. “I have music from 1965 to the present day and all of it is from Berlin or focuses on Berlin,” he says.
Peter developed the ideas for the posters which pun German films (eg ‘The Lives Of Students’, ‘Goodbye Karl-Marx Allee!’ ) as well as designing the poster for the exhibition itself. Matt wrote the reviews of Goodbye Lenin!, Das Leben Der Anderen, M, Wings Of Desire, Olympiad, and Berlin: Symphony Of A Great City.
Aside from these individual tasks all the students helped in the creation of the wall and in putting the entire exhibition together. They also received help from Ms Farrell, photography lecturer Jim Vaughan, and production designer Declan Sheridan.
“It’s been a great opportunity for everyone in the class,” says Peter. Gill adds: “When you take holiday photos they often end up in a drawer but it’s great we’ve got a chance to do something like this with them.”
The Wall - Wir Sind Berliner runs at the Cluain Mhuire campus until Friday December 4 during college opening hours. For more information contact 091 - 770661.
