Berlin: City of Remembering and Forgetting
Course Details
Syllabus
Instructional Dates
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Travel Dates
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Credits
FAIR 337
Total Credits: 12
Prerequisites
None
Robert Yerachmiel Sniderman
In this Fairhaven College Global Learning Program, we will travel to the European metropolis of Berlin, a city marked by mass traumas and complex cultural lineages. In reading, writing, artistic research, collaboration, site study, and critical discussions, we will interrogate, debate, contemplate, and struggle through how violent histories are remembered and overwritten in the city and how they persist in shaping its present, entangling our roots and futures by way of immersive visitation.
We will investigate and respond to the living force of German colonization and genocides in southern Africa and the Pacific; Nazism and the Holocaust; the US and Britain’s bombing destruction of Berlin; postwar mass migrations, displacements, and resettlements; the four-decade separation of the city into opposing capitalist and socialist States; and contemporary communities of immigrants, workers, artists, organizers, and returned exiles. Most important, we will walk extensively, rooted in the above concerns, engaging Berlin’s turbulent layers and networks in everyday place-responsive practices of witness, creation, and participation.
During our collective study, we will work through the following core questions: What relations exist between German memoryscapes of historical violence and those in the US? How do we engage with the invisible, inaudible, intangible, and unthinkable realities underlying visible, audible, tangible, and thinkable landscapes? What are our own documentary and representational impulses and what ethical-aesthetic implications do they bear? How are Germany’s violent pasts negotiated within and between different demographic communities within and beyond its contemporary and historical borders? What is the role of art, literature, and cultural organizing in sparking, facilitating, and holding accountable processes of redress and reparations?
Program Highlights
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- Berlinische Galerie, permanent exhibition Art in Berlin 1880-1980
- Revolutionary Berlin Walking Tour: Rosa Luxemburg’s Berlin
- Weekly ‘Durational Contemplation’ seminar at the Institute for Art in Context, one of the longest-established academic institutions for social art practice in Europe.
- Floating University Berlin: A Natureculture learning site
- Ravensbrück Concentration Camp Memorial
- Jewish Museum Berlin, permanent exhibition Jewish Life in Germany: Past & Present
- Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW)
- Discussion with Pary El-Qalqili, Palestinian German artist on location of her documentary, The Turtle’s Rage (2012)
- FHXB Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum, permanent exhibition Re/assembling anti-racist Struggles: An open archive
- Savvy Contemporary: The Laboratory of Form-Ideas
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Testimonials
"The word that is called to mind when I think of Berlin, as explored in this program, is entangled; encircled, enclosed, and endeared.
We were given generous guidance and opportunity to engage directly, with and through our bodies, in sites of in/significance, ruin, preservation and memorial. I learned to take my own entanglings seriously, and to follow sensory cues toward constructive and creative expressions. It is a city, and program, of tension as well as release. I learned just as much about what it means to be enclosed in and care for a body, as it is to inhabit a place, all with the encouragement from peers, passersby, community partners, and professors.
Instances of engagement, such as the Tisch with House of Taswir, were each exceptional, even when challenging and heartbreaking. I say this because it fundamentally is not “easy” to do this work; though, discomfort was something I learned to be comforted in without erasing that ache, instead, humbling and finding myself more open as a result. Partly because our dialogue encircled itself, and asked us to hold a center for which we could examine from many different points of reference. Retaining a center is another lesson, I carry with me.
Lastly, there is much to be endeared by, the content aside. I call to mind the steady-tilting view from the railways, how it rocked me awake or asleep. The ever-present songs of birds carried in wind, and the many seedpods and swamps, I found new and familiar. I recall the sound of a tea spoon clinking the side of a glass, sitting in Turkish Cafés, and the hollering of music from windows and wheatpaste posters. I recall my peers, their ear-to-ear smiles and sometimes sobbing faces; their awe, hunger, critique, laughter, all which inspired me and allowed me the grace to show up however I was each day. Each time I look in their eyes, now, I feel our feet settle in both soils. We carry and share it forever. The stories, and stories, and stories, I participated in, and listened to, that I read, and that I wrote. I recall the way the city heeds its own vibrance."
Iliana Bradley, Spring 2022
Expectations of Participants
The course will span five introductory sessions at Fairhaven College, followed by over six weeks of immersive engagement in Berlin, Germany. In Berlin, we will meet on average three days a week, including a praxis-based seminar every Friday with international graduate students at the Institüt für Kunst im Kontext (Institute for Art in Context) of the Universität der Künste (University of the Arts) Berlin, wherein each Fairhaven student will be paired with an Art in Context mentor-collaborator. The Institute for Art in Context trains artists who explicitly situate their practice within a social context and understand art as an active, reflective form of cultural participation. Originating from an experimental project for further artistic education in the late 1970s, the institute, with this focus, is considered one of the longest-established academic institutions for social art practice in Europe. For several programs, participants must be able to walk for three to five hours a day with breaks for rest and eating. That said, we will always accommodate students with disabilities in all circumstances to ensure equal participation and opportunity in the program.
The remaining four days of the week may be used by students to rest, integrate heavy experiences, work on assignments, and explore Berlin. Student research in the form of critical, autobiographical, and artistic labor will culminate in the creation of an artist book or zine. To execute this, students will conclude the program in a bookmaking workshop at Colorama, a small art space and risoprinting studio, through which each student will design, print, and bind ten copies of their own book. We will work throughout the course, preparing and working toward the book production.
The program will end the second-to-last week of the Fall quarter, meeting once remotely for a final reflection session in exam week, and not returning to Western. Therefore, students will have the option to continue traveling in Europe afterwards through Winter Break. No previous study with memory, language/s, or culture/s of Germany is required, though students should have completed courses in advanced humanities, creative writing, and/or art studio courses.
Refrigeration is available for the program duration.
Students must work with the WWU Disability Access Center, Wilson Library 170, (360) 650-3083, drs@wwu.edu. For service eligibility, a complete diagnostic description from a qualified professional is required. Specific accommodations or services are determined on an individual basis and are modified to meet the unique needs of the student and their academic experience. Accommodation policies and procedures are highly individualized and centered on self-advocacy, realistic self-appraisal, and student growth. Each quarter, students need to activate their approved accommodations for each class. Students choose which of their approved accommodations they want to activate for each class.
We strongly recommend that all students traveling on this Global Learning Program are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to maximize the safety of the student cohort. Staying up to date with COVID-19 vaccines remains the most important step to protect yourself and your community.
Participants are expected to abide by all attendance policies of the program, including those for classes and excursions, and to adhere to the program schedule. Since the programs are academic in nature, parents, friends, partners, and families are not permitted on any part of the Global Learning Program. Personal travel must be outside of the course dates and not conflict with coursework or excursion schedules. Travel plans should be vetted by faculty beforehand to ensure personal plans do not interfere with meeting the learning objectives of the course.