The Walls of Berlin

Berlin's unique history of conflict, violence, and transformation has created an arena of extraordinary urban surfaces, from which the present-day city and its layered, wounded past are projected simultaneously. In The Walls of Berlin, acclaimed cultural historian Stephen Barber explores the intimate connections between those surfaces and the works of art and film that have both incised Berlin's urban screens and been inspired by them. Drawing on a vast range of material - from the...
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Berlin's unique history of conflict, violence, and transformation has created an arena of extraordinary urban surfaces, from which the present-day city and its layered, wounded past are projected simultaneously. In The Walls of Berlin, acclaimed cultural historian Stephen Barber explores the intimate connections between those surfaces and the works of art and film that have both incised Berlin's urban screens and been inspired by them. Drawing on a vast range of material - from the first films of Berlin in the 1890s to the city's place in contemporary digital art - this book takes the form of a series of image-propelled journeys across the face of Berlin and through its urban histories, excavating the ricochets among the city, art, and film. The Walls of Berlin is a rich cultural history of the city's memories - as well as its acts of forgetting - that illuminates overlooked spaces and the sensory presences that inhabit them.