During our visit to Berlin, we had the opportunity to experience “The Jewish war memorial Museum”, As soon as entering I was overwhelmed with the building itself, the building made from concrete slabs, upon entering one room we felt trapped within concrete blocks, this was both claustrophobic yet beautiful, presenting the real issues in which the Jewish experienced, being trapped away.
One section that truly inspired me was a section titled “The Void” as we entered it was an open plan space, the walls spanning meters high in deep grey concrete slabs, alike its own prison, lights had been strategically placed around the room creating a haunting yet captivating space. This lighting show inspired my idea for my exhibit at Holden gallery June 2019; I will place spotlights throughout a dark corridor giving a similar impression, although my lights will be static lights unlike this beautiful display.
The following room was deep, claustrophobic you could touch either side of the walls within the span of your arms, you look up and fee insignificant to the great height of concrete slab surrounding you, around 15 meters high there is a small gap, giving the haunting feeling of not being able to space, this was something fascinating to me especially pared with the ladders that started around 10 meters up the concrete slab, while being in this room there was such awareness of your space and the sounds around you and this is something I felt was a great achievement showing isolation in its realist form.
This is something i aim to take forward within the future, to take a space and giving it emotion, this is something we do typically with film when using film lighting and colour grading although there was something captivating at the simplicity of using concrete and natural light to create such an emotion and to infect be able to express a momentary feeling of complete isolation
