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Whatchamacallit 15: With New Eyes

With New Eyes: Grüsse aus Berlin

Since I’ve been spending more time at home, I’ve been spending more time looking at my things – and I realize now that I actually have very little representing the Berlin that I live in.

“With New Eyes” is a notable exception: back on October 29, 2011, I took a tour of Berlin’s hot spots as if I were blind. Did I “see” Brandenburg Gate – well, with my eyes I did, but since I was blind, Pariser Platz has a lovely fountain that one can listen to.

The tour was fantastic – my memories of the tour still jibe with the blog post I wrote about the tour: Doing the Berlin Stadtrundfahrt Again: This time as if I were blind.

This tangible souvenir of the tour hangs on a hook by my front door – so I see it quite often. It comes with a CD with music/audio created based on the sounds collected at each one of the six stops long the tour: the Hauptbahnhof, under Kronprinzerbrücke, in Pariser Platz, in the Jewish Holocaust Memorial, along Vossstrasse, and inside Quartier 206. Each of these six stops is also represented with tactile art.

The audio does come up in rotation on my phone, always a pause that refreshes. The fragility of the tactile art means that I rarely interact with it. In writing this post, I looked and felt some of the pieces again.

The artist behind this, Katrien Ligt, was incredibly creative and wonderful in creating this tour.

It left its mark on me.


During the Covid-19 crisis, I am going to try and make a point of writing a blog post about an object in my home.

We’ll see how long this lasts.

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