Excerpt from The Word Berlin by Maurice Blanchot:
Berlin represents, for everyone, the problem of division. From one point of view, it is a strictly political problem for which, we must keep in mind, there are strictly political solutions. From another point of view, it is a social and economic problem (and therefore, also political, but in a wider sense), since it represents the confrontation of two economical social systems and structures. From yet another point of view, it is a metaphysical problem: Berlin is not only Berlin, but is also the symbol of the division of the world, and something even more: a “point in the universe,” the place in which the question of a unity which is both necessary and impossible confronts every individual who resides there, and who, in residing there, experiences not only a place of residence but also the absence of a place of residence. And this is not all. (…)
Translated by James Cascaito, published in 1982 by Semiotext(e) in The German Issue, 60–65. Blanchot’s text first appeared in an Italian translation by Guido Neri under the title Il nome Berlino published in 1964 in il menabò 7, 121–25.
Curated by
Sinaida Michalskaja and Shahin Zarinbal
Participating artists
Sitara Abuzar Ghaznawi, Sanna Helena Berger, Cihad Caner, Dana DeGiulio, Pau? Sochacki
at Shahin Zarinbal, Berlin
until January 20, 2024