WALK WITH IRINA NOVARESE 2013

WALK WITH IRINA NOVARESE: BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ. Berlin 28 June 2013. Picture Valentina Marinone, Stefania Migliorati and Art & Tours.

“The Novel of Alfred Döblin Berlin Alexanderplatz is the starting point: the ‘map’ to observe Berlin. The novel is set in the working-class neighbourhoods near Alexanderplatz in 1920s Berlin. Döblin’s epic tale is about a small criminal, Franz Biberkopf. The story begins when he is released from Berlin Tegel prison, paralyzed by fear of having to face his life again in the infernal metropolis. This time, he swears, Franz Biberkopf will be a respectable man, ein anständiger Mensch; this time, he’ll stay far away from crime. But he can’t. He wants to believe in human goodness, but the part of the metropolis that he knows, concentrated in the main streets around the proletarian Alexanderplatz (‘Alex’) in East Berlin, grinds him down. Using montage techniques close to Döblin work – multiples points of view, newspaper articles, songs, speeches – a kind of performative experience will lead the participants to a walk between Alexanderplatz and other venues of the metropolitan life narrated by Döblin. Shifting between facts and fiction, between the original 1929 plot (considered one of the most innovative literary works of the Weimar Republic) and the contemporaneity of Berlin, a new geographical and historical space will be constructed through the visual perception of the existing and the ‘real’.” Irina Novarese.