In the issue of November/December 2009 of Kaleidoscope magazine, Joao found an article that was titled: Is Detroit the new Berlin?? In the article, Chris Sharp, the author, referred to a common perspective of Detroit as 'the new Berlin' within the art world. It is this kind of perspectives that deny any uniqueness of a place like Detroit, and its initiatives that actually succeed in creating a new strategy that is based on the actual situation, both hyper-local as on a city-scale. At the same time, this perspective romanticises the whole Berlin situation, without actually knowing about the ins and outs of the origins of the current situation and the policies that are behind it. The article was accompanied by some photo's of Corine Vermeulen, which were totally appropriated in order to enhance the 'spectacle-factor' of the Detroit situation by which many people are so enticed. Recently, I've been to Berlin, and to illustrate how easy it is to make any comparisons, assumptions, references like this, I performed some hard-core, shameless ruin porn. Here's a little visual result of it.
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yes, community gardens too....
....... and as a final moral message from Berlin.....
Goodbye now. Sweet dreams....!
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