Thursday, August 19

Art writer Sean O’ Toole and I take the night train from Bern to Berlin. When the train seems to have reached rocket speed, Sean takes a photograph of a screen showing we have hit 250 km an hour.

Friday, August 20

I am in Berlin to give a talk at the Daimler Gallery, where curator Christian Ganzenberg is presenting Ampersand, current performative and contemporary art from South Africa juxtaposed with work from the Daimler Collection. My own piece from 1990, For Thirty Years Next to his Heart starts off the show, together with a section of Willem Boshoff’s classic Blind Alphabet and from there the visitor moves on to view new work from such artists as Robin Rhode, Nicholas Hlobo and Nandipha Mntambo, along with their European counterparts.

Under the auspices of the gallery, I will also do a Berlin version of my Other Voices, Other Cities series, in which I run a workshop with a group of local residents to try to establish what it is exactly about living in that city which is unique, and not quite like any other.

Christian, photographer Abrie Fourie and I breakfast together at one of the charming pavement cafes in Prenzlauer Berg to discuss the planning of the project. The workshop will be tomorrow. So today Abrie and I will cycle around Berlin looking for possible locations for the shoot, at which some days after the workshop, participants will hold up letters spelling out the message they have decided on.

El Anatsui’s hanging at the Alte Neuegalerie

The location will depend on the message, but I need to look around for possibilities first. En route around the city, we pass El Anatsui’s extraordinary hanging, which is cladding the columns of the Alte Neuegalerie as part of the Berlin wide ‘Who Knows Tomorrow’ series of exhibitions by African artists.

A possible location shot

Or should we risk the participants being run down by a tram? Abrie Fourie is the man in this shot.

By the way, I am lucky enough to be staying in a most gorgeous apartment, so spacious, with high, high ceilings and a red couch in the kitchen backing a long table, opposite the very contemporary stove and gleaming stainless steel kitchen equipment.

A beautiful kitchen

As I entered the apartment for the first time, in the early hours of Friday morning, I was seized with an immediate urge to invite friends known and unknown to dinner, to sit on the couch and talk to me over wine, while I, of course, would be cooking something delicious for us all to share.