Workshop: perception / perspective
Together with Photographer Tomás Correa i have developed a workshop about how your point of view influences your perception. It’s about how we all look individually to our environment depending on our background and situation in time.
We have developed the Workshop at first for a group of Social Work Students from The Netherlands visiting Berlin. We wanted them to experience the differences in perspective you can have on this city. And how these different perspective influence your perception.
Part1 Tempelhof
We started the Workshop at Tempelhof. Tempelhof is an interesting place with a lot of different functions throughout its history. That is why Tempelhof can be seen as a symbol for different things.
After a brief introduction on the History and the use of Tempelhof, the photographer gave a short introduction about how to look as a photographer that always looks beyond the first impression.
Then all the student got the assignment to walk around on Tempelhof for 30 minutes and make 1 picture that resembles one of the themes above. They could take as many pictures as they want, but eventually they had to choose one that represents their theme the best. They had to imagine they had to present the picture to someone who is deaf and communicate in 1 image what Tempelhof is about for them.
After 30 minutes of shooting all students got back together and discussed their pictures in small groups. They had to guess from each other what theme they wanted to represent. It was interesting to see how creative people were in representing the theme and still were able to communicate their perspective.
After the first round of discussing the first image the Students that had the same theme got together and discussed what they had in common and what the differences were in their approach.
Part 2 Neukölln
The second part of the Workshop took place in the neighbourhood Neukölln, a neighbourhood with an interesting history. It was once a small village that was included by the always growing city. Than it became very popular for immigrants because of its cheap houses. A lot of social project were started in the neighbourhood to make it a better place to live. That worked and it became more and more popular for students and artists. Which makes the rents go up. This process of gentrification is visible throughout the whole neighbourhood. A process which you can look at from a lot of different perspectives.
After a brief introduction on Neukölln and the gentrification process the students were asked to walk around the neighbourhood with a voice recorder, and try to describe what their impression of the neighbourhood was.
They had to put in words what they saw, smelt, felt while walking around Neukölln. Imagine you are telling a blind person what the neighbourhood is like.
After the students walked the round with their own perspective they got an voice recorders from another student with another perception. They walked the same route again but now with the perception of someone else.
The reactions of the students were great. Sometimes it was so weird that the perceptions were so alike and sometimes their eyes were opened for complete different things on their second round.
And of course we ended with a German beer in a real gentrificated hipster bar.