Berlin/nilreB: Tourist Journal

After spending eight months in West Berlin as an artist in residence (1986-’87), Kobland wanted to send something back that would describe his impressions of living in a divided city. A journalistic collection of impressions of a haunted place, the tape invokes the landscape of past and present Germany through still images, archival film clips, fragments of radio news reports and a segment of John F. Kennedy’s ’Ich bin ein Berliner’ speech. Cutting this material with footage shot on the plane (whether Kobland is leaving Germany or just arriving is impossible to say), Berlin/nilreB: Tourist Journal constructs a portrait of this newly-reunited city through the eyes of an outsider. Intuitively, Kobland grasps the inarticulate changes developping in the socio-political field. At a moment in time when no one truly believed in a possible reunification of East en West Germany, the downfall of the Berlin Wall is already reflected in Kobland’s film.